Client: Stiles
Location: Fort Lauderdale, FL
Number of Employees: 300
Client Goal:
Stiles is recognized for developing more than 40 million square feet of quality office, industrial, retail, mixed-use and residential projects throughout Florida and has been a pillar in the community for more than 60 years. Stiles approached Strategic Philanthropy, Inc. in 2012 to complete an evaluation of the company’s past giving efforts and to devise a community relations/corporate philanthropy plan that would allocate the company’s dollars to nonprofits that best met their business goals and objectives. The result was the creation of new tracking systems to assess funding for sponsorship/professional associations as well as the launch of an external and internal website to communicate the company’s charitable priorities to employees and community partners.
Project Elements:
In order to generate support for this project, Strategic Philanthropy employed a dual-phased strategy. Phase I consisted of meeting with key members of the leadership team as well as upand- coming employees to get an understanding of the company’s past giving efforts. This process allowed for employees to give input about the company’s charitable donation process and began a buy-in process from key individuals. In Phase I, a comprehensive analysis of the company’s past giving efforts was also completed. This analysis shed light on the overall impact the company had in the community but also how all of the good work the company was doing was not being communicated with key company stakeholders and employees.
Phase II of the strategy included creating a task force that was comprised of seven senior executives who helped drive the strategic philanthropic process. The task force met four times to devise a corporate philanthropy structure and plan that would assist the company in aligning its dollars with the organizations that best met their business goals and objectives.
Results:
As a result, the following was accomplished:
- Established three (3) key funding priorities to help focus Stiles’ future giving efforts
- Created giving guidelines as a way to assist organizations and employees in understanding the company’s charitable priorities. These guidelines serve as an objective way the company can review all requests and find the sponsorship opportunities that best align with their business goals and objectives.
- Devised a budget based on the importance of the funding priorities as well as to assist with sponsorship decisions
- Created measurements of success based on the company’s funding priorities
- Aligned the company with key organizations within the funding priorities and secured maximum visibility
- Identified employees to serve on various boards
- Created an internal and external structure for solicitation requests
- Developed a volunteer tracking system
- Established company-wide volunteer initiatives
