Employees Sign On To 'Make a Difference'
When she was with the PR firm Mona Meyer McGrath & Gavin in the early 1980s, Sara Gavin, along with her senior partners, helped to inaugurate a pro bono plan to assist
local nonprofit agencies crafting strategic communication plans. The program got a big boost in 1986, however, after Weber Shandwick acquired Mona Meyer and incorporated the pro
bono plan into the existing company.
Nearly 20 years later, the program, now multi-faceted, has become a company-wide institution called Making a Difference which enables Weber employees to, well, make a
difference in their local communities.
The program has three pillars. These include said pro bono work. Each year Weber Shandwick employees spend a full day with a number of nonprofit agencies with the goal of
selecting pro bono clients for the following year. Eventually, a Weber Shandwick team provides these clients with a crash course on basic communications. Gavin says it's crucial
that employees select the nonprofits. "It needs to be the employees' decision," she says, "because they want to choose nonprofits in which we have the resources to help out and
make sure our abilities are most aligned with the nonprofits' communications needs."
During the last decade the agency has provided more than $1 million in pro bono support to more than 30 organizations. Recent pro bono recipients include Project Foundation,
Minnesota Youth Intervention Program, Down Syndrome Association of Minnesota and the National Institute on Media and the Family. "There's something very material about doing
something in a community where you live and work and it's very instructive for us as a PR agency to understand the issues in the community and get that front-line view, which
enriches us as practitioners," Gavin says.
The second element of the plan, started in 1992, is called "Telling Your Story." Each winter the office hosts this annual workshop for nonprofits at the headquarters of the
(Minneapolis) Star-Tribune. Account executives teach classes on the PR fundamentals: How to refine your message; how to organize an event; how to use the Web for effective
communications; and how to write cogently.
"Many employees give up all or parts of their Saturday to have one-on-one sessions with nonprofit reps to put them on a proactive communications plan," Gavin says. In a stroke
of serendipity for the program, about five years ago a reporter from the Star-Tribune, stumbled in on the workshop. The reporter ended up speaking with the nonprofits. Ever since
that happy accident, reporters from the Star-Tribune have attended "Telling Your Story" workshops to provide tips on working with the media.
The third pillar, Weber Shandwick on Loan, started in 2003, has taken Making A Difference to another level. Here's why: whereas only account staff members participate in the
pro bono and "Telling Your Story" aspects of the program, Weber Shandwick on Loan allows non-account executives to get involved. Employees have volunteered with the local Ronald
McDonald House, which caters to families with critically ill children and Hearts & Hammers, a Minneapolis-based program that helps disabled families fix up their homes.
Weber Shandwick on Loan "allows us to make the program encompassing for every employee," Gavin says. However, for all three elements of the plan teams are forged among
"employees who may not normally work together and that creates new relationships internally which, in turn, creates better programming."
A fourth, less formal aspect of Making a Difference encourages employees to participate in the program via e-mails and sign-up sheets. Informal or not, around 75% of employees
at Weber (Minneapolis) take part in the program. Making a Difference, however, goes beyond the four walls at Weber Shandwick Minneapolis. In 2000, for example, Weber's Hong Kong
office adapted the program for its local markets.
Julie Hurbanis, a senior VP at Weber Shandwick Minneapolis, who oversees community relations, says Making a Difference is not just a cutesy name. "It works so well because
employees are driving the plan rather than the CEO saying, 'Here's where we're going,'" she says. "Every year employees tell me that they get more out of the program than they are
able to give to the organizations."
Contacts: Sara Gavin, 952.346.6174, [email protected]; Julie Hurbanis, 952.346.6277; [email protected]