"It's amazing to look out here and see so many faces all here today to help us to create a better place, a better environment for our young people," said Felix Rouse, CEO of the Boys & Girls Clubs of Newark, N.J., to a crowd of 400 PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) volunteers last week. "The impact you will have will be substantial. There are thousands of kids every year that are touched by this facility." Watch video.
This month, 30,000 PwC employees nationwide are volunteering their time to organizations in need. This is up from 29,000 volunteers in 2006. "For the month of June, all of our PwC offices across the country are doing a variety of community-service projects, some large-scale, some small-scale, but all of our people have the opportunity to get out there and make a difference," said Elaine Thornberry, PwC Community Service Day project leader.
PricewaterhouseCoopers is No. 12 on The 2007 DiversityInc Top 50 Companies for Diversity® list, which comes from the results of the Top 50 survey ranking companies on CEO Commitment, Human Capital, Corporate Communications and Supplier Diversity. PwC made this list partly because of its philanthropic efforts, demonstrated by this remarkable community-service day.
How does volunteerism help to recruit the best talent and improve human capital? It increases employee morale and directly feeds into retention. High employee retention means low turnover, which saves money in the long run. Not only that, but employees want to give back to their community and to communities in need, and many actively seek out companies that make a strong effort to do so.
"We at PwC know the young group of people now, the 'millenials' as they're called, consider community service an important part of their lives," Thornberry said of the almost 50 interns PwC recruited for the summer, many of whom were volunteers on the day DiversityInc visited. "This is a great opportunity for them to not only meet fellow PwC colleagues and learn about the firm but to give back to the community."
For the second year, the PwC Florham, N.J., office honored its commitment to volunteerism by donating one full business day to the local community. The firm partnered with Jersey Cares, an organization that links corporations with projects in need. At last year's Community Service Day, Jersey Cares linked PwC with RISE Academy, a charter school for low-income children in Newark. Jersey Cares Project Manager Jessica Sansone calls PwC the "rockstars of volunteerism."
For more on Top 50 companies and volunteer innovations, see the December 2006 issue of DiversityInc . In Newark, one of the most influential projects of the day was the clearing of a baseball field, which hadn't been functional in more than 10 years. "When we get folks who are willing to come out and volunteer, you're talking about hundreds of people doing projects that would probably take us a year to complete ... After today, baseball will happen here," said Rouse.
The best part: The kids didn't even know PwC was coming. The whole thing was a surprise. "We haven't even told them you're here today," said Rouse. "We will be using those backstops to start our rookie-league division of baseball for little kids."
Every PwC volunteer could sense the impact they were making. "It's exciting, it's fulfilling. I live in Newark, so it's like giving back to my own community," said Darryl Williams, a PwC reprographics clerk who just celebrated his 25th year at the company.
