Defining CR success, one smile at a time

By Elizabeth Knight
/Ukrainian Journal of Business Law, January 2009/

Truthfully, it is difficult, at times even controversial, to measure the success of a CR project. Common indicators like the number of books collected or the number of participants involved often overlook the more important, though subtle, impact of a CR activity.

At PwC we have done several things in 2008, but perhaps the most striking was our most recent initiative.

Our leadership developed an idea: to celebrate the tenth anniversary of PricewaterhouseCoopers, why not have an auction in the midst of the celebration, which would benefit sick children desperately in need of assistance? Our guests for the celebration would be our clients, and what better way to work with them to give something back to the community than auctioning items off for a good cause?

As part of our plan to focus this project on what really mattered, we would ask the hospital to have the children draw pictures that would then be sent as season's greetings cards to our clients. In this way, those who helped the children would be able to feel a part of the difference they made. But rather than just telling the hospital to have the kids draw pictures, we decided to bring the supplies and some early New Year cheer to the children. This idea became reality after many painstaking hours of planning and work.

We identified a local children's hospital that needed our support and was willing to work with us to come up with a way to implement our objectives. They were excited about the idea of the Art Day we planned so that the children could draw as many pictures as they wanted for us. And they candidly pointed out what they needed most – medicine.

What we ended up with were several items to be auctioned off at our celebration, many beautiful pictures and a lot of smiling faces.

The auction was a success, not so much because of how much money it raised, but because of the discussion it generated and the goodwill it cultivated.

However, the Art Day was the true gem of the project. There were only a few children staying at the hospital on the day we visited because the heating had only just been turned on. While initially we thought this a bit of a disappointment, it enabled us to spend four hours distracting these children from the discomfort of their illness and brightening their days.

Naturally, we had to warm up to each other. The children weren't quite ready to communicate with us, but once we unpacked all of the art supplies and set-up a little snack table, they slowly started to make their way towards us. On went the holiday music, and thus began a morning spent with some amazing children. Their drawings were fantastic and their doctors and parents even seemed enthused with the event.

We ended the morning handing out special gifts to each of the children; things like books and games and building blocks to give them something to do while they were stuck in the hospital. There is no simple way to describe their faces when they saw what was in store for them. Four-year old Maksym could not wipe the smile off of his face after receiving his very own Disney character game, neither could his mom.

This day brought immediate satisfaction to all: PwC volunteers, children, doctors and parents.

We are now finalizing the purchase and delivery of the medicine to the hospital. This process has been time consuming, but the chief doctor involved has been most helpful. Her cooperation has enabled us to keep this project moving forward.

Fortunately, the season's greeting cards have already been printed and should be arriving in our clients' mailboxes just in time for the holiday season. It is our hope that the joy this experience brought us will be reflected in these cards.

For some of you, this story may not seem like such a success. However, for us it was a tremendous first step in actually putting our CR ideas into action. This is only just the beginning of what we hope to be many more cooperative efforts incorporating our clients, our firm, our employees and our ideas into an effort that brings makes a difference in the community.