AngelPoints

Business in a post-green world

2011-10-05T16:18:00.000-07:00

by Marc Stoiber

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A few months ago, Joel Makower of GreenBiz wrote an eye-opening article. He observed that with few exceptions, green brands had failed to capture more than a sliver of their markets.

The piece was thought-provoking, with a clarion call to rethink the way we position brands with strong sustainability credentials.

The subject deserves more analysis than an 800 word story can provide. So instead, I’ll touch on a few reasons behind consumer rejection of ‘green marketing as we know it’, and offer some thoughts on how we could build more resilient, successful green brands in the future.

Six good reasons to reject green

In 2011, OgilvyEarth released a study titled Mainstream Green. The research revealed that 82% of North American consumers had ‘good green intentions’, but only 16% acted on those intentions. Why? (http://www.ogilvyearth.com/thought-leadership/latest-research/)

They feel guilty. Using green products implied making sacrifices in things like efficacy and price. Buy a green cleaner, for example, and you feel bad about perhaps leaving the counters not-quite-so-clean.

It isn’t easy being green. Green = celebrity wannabe or crunchy granola hippie. Regardless of the moniker, making green choices means being labeled by your mainstream friends.

Green is the new pink. Half the population is male, and they think green is girly. Sure, green products used to tip the scales much more toward feminine (organics and spa products, for example). But today, green is energy, cars and lumber. Unfortunately, old impressions die hard.

Green costs. In some cases, it does cost more to make something green. But in a lot of cases it doesn’t. But similar to green being called ‘girly’, old perceptions die hard.

Green is confusing. When I got into green business, nobody could agree what the movement should be called: green, CSR, sustainable, and the list goes on. Sustainability may be a complicated, systemic issue, but our tendency to overcomplicate things like green certifications does the movement no favors.

Green suspicion. Why do more people buy Clorox Greenworks over Seventh Generation? Because they trust Clorox to get the job done. Mainstream consumers have a soft spot for mainstream companies. These are the companies who need to engage on the brand level.

Those are just a few of the reasons cited by OgilvyEarth for mainstream consumer reticence toward green. But is there a solution?

Futureproof brands

I believe we have to stop thinking about sustainability, and start thinking about futureproof brands.

Futureproof brands are brands that are resilient, that can thrive in a chaotic world. They’re brands that can weather storms created by sustainability issues (diminishing resources and punitive environmental legislation, for example). But they are also built for a world of cultural mashups, and a rapidly morphing communications landscape.

The following five pillars of futureproof brands may help us rethink our perspective on green for the mainstream.

Sustainability. Sustainability does make business sense. Unfortunately, as we see above, mainstream America isn’t buying it.

Smart brands like Nike believe the solution is to incorporate sustainability into every business decision, but not into the brand. That way, the promise of athletic performance is never diluted, but the company is positioned to perform more efficiently and sustainably.

Innovation. Many companies are ill-equipped to produce a steady stream of innovation. Most approach it haphazardly…a few pet projects in the pipeline, and little to no system for creating a steady stream of new products, services and business models.

For a brand to be futureproof, it must have an innovation plan that not only encompasses short term cosmetic changes, but longer term shifts that will line up with consumer needs 5, 10, 20 years from now.

Design. More than ever before, cultures are mixing and ethnic groups intermingling. English is not the de facto first language, America is not the sole generator of popular culture, and ideas do not flow in one direction from developed to developing markets.

In this cultural cacophony, what do all of us understand? Design.
Good design creates a visceral reaction in people. It conveys beauty while aiding function. It generates
feelings of wonder and drives desire.

Is your product well designed? Give it to a child or to someone who doesn’t speak your language, and see if they can understand how to use it. Even better, see if using it puts a smile on their face.

Perennial insights. Great brands are driven by great consumer insights.

It pays to hold up your key insights to scrutiny, and brainstorm on their relevance in the future. At worst, this exercise might provide you with the alarming news that people won’t need your product forever. At best, it will get you thinking with broader scope, and answering briefs that allow far greater innovation.

Social Interaction. I cut my teeth in an advertising world where brands were displayed in metaphoric show windows – consumers were only allowed to see them in their best light, and there was no interaction allowed.

Today, brands, and companies, are like fishbowls. Consumers can look at them from every angle, even stick their hand in and slosh around the water. There are no boundaries.

We all tend to think of social interaction as synonymous with social media. As a new technology. That’s missing the point.

The point is, people are getting involved. Communication is a two way street. We’re not creating communication campaigns, but movements. Can your brand embrace that?

And Your Brand?

Is your business ready for a post green world?

Here’s a good place to start looking for the answer. I call it getting outside the jar.

Once you’ve been at a company for more than 6 months, or working on a problem for more than that time, you’re inside the jar. The world looks normal, but you can’t see the most obvious things. Like the writing on the label.

The result? You end up going along the same old path, with the same old results

That won’t work if you’re trying to find your way in the post-green world. Because we need new ideas.

So I would challenge you to find someone, or a team of people, who can help you think outside the jar about where your company is going.

Get these people to study your company, or brand. And get their candid opinions on where it’s is going.
95% of what they say may not be relevant or useful. But I can guarantee you it will be surprising. And a few of their points may start your brand down the right path to future success.
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Marc Stoiber is a creative director, entrepreneur, green brand specialist and writer. He works with clients to build resilient, futureproof brands.

Marc's leadership positions have included VP of Green Innovation at Maddock Douglas, President and Founder of Change Advertising, National Creative Director of Grey Canada and Creative Director of DDB Toronto.

He has helped two ad agencies rise from obscurity to market prominence, and his work has been recognized by virtually every international industry award for advertising and design.

Marc writes on brand innovation for Huffington Post, Fast Company, GreenBiz and Sustainable Life Media. He also speaks on the subject from coast to coast, and has been featured at TED. He can be reached at marc(at)marcstoiber.com.

Launching and Supporting a Green Team

2011-08-17T16:47:00.001-07:00

Every spring, eBay hosts an innovation expo that inspires its employees to come up with innovative ideas to benefit its users. In September of 2010, eBay announced the winner was a powerful idea called “simple green shipping.” This eBay-branded box reduced the environmental impact of the eBay marketplace because it was reusable and composed of 100% recycled content. The eBay Green Team was so enamored by the idea, they worked to make it successful world-wide. 100,000 boxes were sent to 100,000 people and eBay found that if each box was used 5 times, they would save 4,000 trees, 2.4 million gallons of water, and over 293 thousand watts of energy. EBay’s customers loved it too because it saved them money while saving trees. The commercial success of the box can be attributed to the efforts of the Green Team. This story has inspired us at Angelpoints to explore and think intuitively about the importance of Green Teams.

Typically, Green Teams consists of a voluntary group of employees that are dedicated to supporting waste reduction, recycling, and responsible purchasing of items such as light bulbs and paper. In the eBay example, a Green Team tested a sustainable innovative product design. Whatever your goals, here are some important steps to consider when establishing a Green Team at your company.

How do You Build a Successful Green Team Within an Organization?

· Strong Executive Support - The company must believe in the ideas that the Green Team puts forth, take it seriously and initiate it in a proper manner. The executive support validates the importance of team work within the organization and helps to prioritize and remove obstacles.

· Align Green Team Goals With Sustainability Goals of Company - This is significant because Green Teams won’t receive support if they are taking their goals in a different direction then the company’s goals.

· Foster Diversity Amongst Team Members – Choose representatives from different business units, department levels and cultures in order to provide varied perspectives and insights along with new ideas. Having management, administrative assistants, with IT and housekeeping as team members can give everyone the ability to contribute and become unique assets.

· Keep Teams Fresh - Move around positions of leadership among different people to create new opportunities for leaders and ideas.

Source: Webinar Powerpoint Slide #14 (Password: greenteam)

How do You Make Sure That Launching The Green Team Goes Smoothly?

· Appoint One or Two Team Leaders –Leaders should be committed to the program so they can manage the Green Team, oversee programs, and act as a liaison between management, maintenance staff, employees, and recycling vendors.

· Hold Meetings Consistently (Every Two Weeks Seems to Work Great) – The meeting should help to set up a basic program and discuss how to best implement this program. The team should make decisions and split up tasks.

· Come up with Project Ideas as a Team - The team should then come up with project ideas that can range from deciding what exactly to recycle, to deciding whether solar panels would be a worthy investment for the company.

· Create systems For Measuring And Tracking Initiatives - Technology and software tools are available today to help keep track of your progress and prove the worth of investment resources (i.e. http://www.angelpoints.com).

Benefits of The Green Team

Green Teams can have a profound effect in an organization, and for the planet. Shoshannah Lenski, from the Boston Consultancy office, found that 75% of surveyed employees thought that becoming environmentally conscious within a company was significant to morale, talent retention, and recruiting. This means that employee retention and engagement goes up by merely becoming greener! It also is critical in professional development. Clorox’s Suzanne Henricksen said her experience in managing a workplace change project was instrumental to her development of leadership skills.

The most evident benefit in establishing a Green Team comes from the reduction of costs and the environmental impact. Becoming efficient and sustainable pays off in the long run, because it saves energy and conserves resources. Betsy Hansen, a Senior Marketing Manager at Sun Microsystems, decided to eliminate one printed direct mail piece, which saved the company 4.63 tons of paper along with thousands of dollars. This can lead to an enhancement of brand reputation and profitability because consumers are more willing to buy from a company that shares similar values as them. In eBay’s case, the work of their Green Team led to product innovation and increased customer satisfaction.

Source: Webinar Powerpoint Slide #7 (Password: greenteam)

Conclusion

A Green Team is an excellent resource to gain a step ahead of the competition for companies moving towards sustainability. Employees will be willing to volunteer their time to move towards a greener company the majority of the time as long as the executives seem like they are encouraging it, and thus management should push the concept. If an organization uses these tips as guides to initiate and run the Green Team, the company may see very positive changes towards creating a green future.

Adding 3D to Tech Innovation

2011-07-22T08:42:00.000-07:00

Just got back from Fortune Brainstorm Tech, a gathering of innovators from all walks of technology, hosted at the stunning Aspen Institute. A super event put on by a great team at Fortune Magazine. I felt lucky to be among the speakers.

Tossed together were investors, large-company executives and start-up entrepreneurs, all in search of the best technology ideas. I can't capture it all here. We talked gaming, gadgets, security, social, mobile, media, clouds, commerce, and much more. Here are three new companies that stood out for me and epitomized the spirit of innovation I found there:

1. Sound Cloud - youtube for sounds.
2. Clever Sense - pandora for everything except music
3. Lytro - a camera that lets you take a shot and then, with ease, re-focus any part of the shot and create 3-D perspective. You could hear the "ooohs" and "ahhhs" during that demo.

On the final evening, two beers into a reception surrounded by blue-maroon peaks and lavender, our host greeted us with what felt something like a challenge. "You are change agents," she said. "You have the unique ability to change the world." Standing there at the height of dusk, shoulder to shoulder with some of the brightest entrepreneurs on the planet, it was hard not to feel like the possibilities were endless.

But here lies the rub. During two full days of seeing the coolest apps, games and devices under the sun, I can't recall one panel discussion or demo focused on this goal. I kept waiting for it. Instead, there was this recurring theme, playing over and over again: "we make the coolest stuff, which will make a ton of money, which we'll use to make cooler stuff that will beat our competitors, which will make us even more money." Coolness and riches reverberated through the hills like the sound of music. It was fun and addictive, but it was, in a sense, just hurling pigs at birds.

I found myself wanting more. Couldn't PhDs who had locked themselves in rooms for two years dreaming up ideas come up with ones that would inspire us and make the world better while making bundles of cash? The answer had to be "yes."

"Hey," I said to the CTO of Clever Sense, "what about using your app to serve up causes that match peoples' tastes as seamlessly as Pandora serves up their favorite tunes?" "We could do that," he said with genuine interest. To the hip, boyish founder of Sound Cloud I asked, "Could you guys crowd-source every bird call and capture the voices of refugees?" "Yes!" he declared, a grin revealing every one of his teeth.

These were change makers to be sure, and yet the whole conference seemed stuck in a two-dimensional world of coolness and wealth, when it could have achieved 3D vibrancy simply by adding the dimension of social consciousness. (In this regard, Katzenberg was both there and not there.) Fusing strong business models with strong social missions is one of the most important innovations in business today and companies young and old must explore this dimension if they hope to become and stay great.

Next year, I would like to lead a panel of three innovators who use their technology to address social issues that they are uniquely positioned to address. The questions I will ask are: 1) what issue(s) are you addressing? 2) how do you measure your social impact? and 3) how does your social mission affect your brand and your culture? I expect it will be a lively and inspiring conversation. I cannot wait.

Organizations Must Incorporate Sustainability Within Their Business Models in Order to Strengthen Their Brand and Create Efficiencies

2011-07-06T12:41:00.000-07:00

On June 28, 2011, FedEx announced that it would release 4,000 new fuel efficient vehicles as part of an effort to decrease pollution and become more energy efficient. Dan Beal, the vice president of Global Vehicles at FedEx, stated that “Our goal has always been to optimize and operate our vehicle fleet in an economically and environmentally sustainable manner so that emissions are reduced while serving our customers in the best possible manner.” FedEx, like other leading organizations (including GAP*), understands that aligning CSR strategies to improve their business model efficiencies is a means to create both a reputable and profitable brand.

For a company to be sustainable, it needs to be environmentally conscious in making its business decisions, as well as energy efficient and more resourceful than its competitors. Companies are adapting their business models to become more sustainable because it gives them a competitive edge and consequently improve their profitability. When reading about “The impact of CSR on brand reputation and sales,” I saw that 56% of people are more loyal to a brand that shows that they care about the environment which has become a hot topic due to the increased scare of global warming. The article also shows that 61% of people are more likely to buy from a company that has a good reputation with respect to being genuinely committed to help improve the planet. This shows that sustainability and success are very strongly correlated since sustainability leads to reputation and reputation leads to more loyal customers.

Due to the economic downturn, and increased global competition, it has become crucial for companies to be sustainable. During this post-recession time, by becoming more sustainable, companies are being able to save energy and lower consumption of resources, and perhaps most importantly, boost productivity and increase brand awareness. Companies that don’t understand the business value of sustainability run the risk of impeding their growth and being hurt economically in the long-term. Small to large enterprises are digging their own graves by neglecting to take advantage of sustainability as an essential strategy to reduce costs and enhance efficiency because they are too engrossed in the short term outlook and profitability. The sustainability framework follows the rule of “less is more” by using fewer resources to produce the same, or more, outcome and during this process they will create efficiencies and reduce costs in the long term. Sustainability fosters resourcefulness and gives customers what they want while leaving behind small environmental footprints.

In summary, becoming a leading organization in any industry today means finding ways to become more sustainable. For some companies, this means producing more with less to cut costs while sending a strong message of conservation to customers. A recent survey release by Packaging World shows that 72% of businesses' sustainability initiatives exceeded their expectations in terms of benefits. Sustainability is considered in 68% of business decisions due to the advantages of cost reduction and brand enhancement. The profound effect that sustainability has for a business goes beyond profitability, making a lasting positive impact on the balance sheet, the community and the planet.

Related Links:

DHL also following the trend of becoming sustainable -- http://ow.ly/5ul0s

Initiatives eBay is taking in order to be energy efficient and sustainable -- http://ow.ly/5y6b0

*What GAP has done to be successful in its sustainability programs -- http://ow.ly/5ydcX

Hitting the CSR Jackpot

2011-06-15T21:56:00.000-07:00

I got a flood of emails this morning from friends and business partners, all containing variations on the same subject line, "did you see the article in the Times this morning?" I clicked the links and glanced at the article's title: "To Be Good Citizens, Report Says, Companies Should Just Focus on Bottom Line." Uh oh, I thought, another jab, channeling Friedman, at our business model and my core beliefs about business. What will my team think? I thought about how I would cover up and downplay the news. I braced myself for concerned calls from our board and shareholders.

Fortunately, I was wrong. The article argues the same point that we have been making for years to our clients, namely that "traditional corporate social responsibility programs and corporate philanthropy aim primarily to produce a social benefit and that any profits that may materialize are byproducts." This is true. We recently surveyed over 100 companies and found that only 8 of them thought about profits when creating their social responsibility programs. I am constantly amazed by how sheepish our clients are about seeking out or stating clearly the financial benefits associated with their corporate responsibility initiatives. This is clearly a problem to fix.

If you read the Report about which the article was written, a short 14-pager that can be digested in about 5 minutes, you'll see three key points:

"Executives targeting profitability...will generate social benefits more efficiently and sustainably than those using typical strategies for CSR."

"Private benefits [i.e., profits] generated by investments that create social benefits can be very large, and so considering them may be as worthy of executives' time as other parts of their companies' operations."

"[Focus] on the single bottom line does not imply that companies' involvement in activities that create social benefits will diminish. On the contrary, we argue that these activities will become more common as companies make a case for them in terms of the single bottom line."

The authors correctly contend that, with respect to how they calculate social investments, most companies solve for Y, where Y equals social outcomes, when they should be solving for X, where X equals financial outcomes. Solving for X would allow these companies to make smarter and perhaps bigger social investments, thereby increasing Y.
The best example of a company that nails this proposition is Toms (http://www.toms.com/). If you listen to Toms CEO and Founder, Blake Mycoskie, you'll hear an inspiring story about how he started the company with no business plan and only the desire to help others. On the surface, he's the opposite of the proverbial billiard player in Friedman's work, who makes "his shots as if he knew the complicated mathematical formulas that would give the optimal directions of travel." Listening to Mycoskie, you'd think he didn't care where the eight ball ended up. But semantics aside, here's a company that has generated enormous profit and shareholder value by making investments that create social benefits, exactly what the Times report advocates. Moreover, the company's soaring profitability is the critical factor in its ability to increase its investments in social benefits, as evidenced by their new commitment to cure lost vision in developing countries by selling great-looking sunglasses. If investments in social benefit don't create profit now or down the road, they should surely be scrapped; otherwise, they are detracting from a company's long-term viability. How can anyone's math refute this? Conversely, investments in social benefit that create enormous profit, like Toms, should be heralded as great business innovations and examples of corporate leadership for others to emulate.

What the authors of the report neglect to identify, in my opinion, is the profit multiplier effect that companies can create when they identify their own Toms opportunity. They touch briefly on the importance of aligning social mission with business model in a compelling way, when, for example, they say "a mining company would probably be better off training workers who could contribute to its supply chain than managing a primary school," but they don't go nearly far enough. The important observation for executives is that finding their Toms opportunity is about aligning mission and model in such a way as to make them profitable, exciting and inseparable. Like two sides of a coin, mission and model create value together. Without both, the value is dimished. When both are in perfect harmony, employees and customers sing your praises and customers and investors literally throw money at your company. I'd venture that today 99% of CSR programs do not accomplish this. Granted it may not always be easy to do -- what should Altria do? -- but when done right it can create much higher return for shareholders, because of the multiplier effect, than most any other investment the company can make.

When a company makes an investment that generates high social benefit, high revenue and high employee morale all at the same time, that's called hitting the jackpot. What the smartest CSR leaders should be seeking is to hit this jackpot by uncovering their Toms opportunities. If they do, they will not only generate huge profits and solve important social needs, but they may just find themselves in succession to become the next CEO. If you're interested in doing this, please let me know and we'll help.

Andy Mercy, CEO

Thoughts on Innovation and Responsibility Following a White House Business Council Roundtable

2011-06-02T15:41:00.000-07:00

Last week I had the privilege of attending a White House Business Council Roundtable, part of a series of discussions between the Obama administration and business owners around the country. Twelve business owners and I, along with the Director of the Office of Advisory Committees at the Department of Commerce, discussed whether President Obama is acting on the promise he made in his State of the Union address, to “out-innovate, out-educate, and out-build our competitors,” and what more can be done to get there. I learned about some of the good work the administration is doing and learned from the experiences of my peers, but I left feeling like Obama and his team were missing a great opportunity to fulfill this promise by capitalizing on one of the most exciting innovations in U.S. business history. I call this innovation the “Tom’s Shoe Moment.”

The Tom’s Shoe Moment finds its roots in our country’s unique brand of social responsibility that De Tocqueville first identified in the late 19^th century. Most recently, it is borne out of the corporate social responsibility (CSR) movement, which strives to align business objectives with social and environmental objectives in order to create new business opportunity. I’d say it’s the culmination of this effort, in fact, moving from alignment to total integration, as has been achieved by the Tom’s Shoe company. If you’re not familiar with Tom’s, check them out. They are growing fast, with a tribe of fanatical customers and employees that think of their mission and (business) model as inseparable truths. Their “One for One” model means that with every pair of shoes they sell, they give one to a child in need. It’s simple and clear and the company has out-innovated its competitors with this innovation. Never before has the opportunity for this type of innovation been greater. There is no denying that a tipping point has been reached in the psyche of the American consumer, investor and employee that makes this innovation possible.

If I were part of the Obama administration, hoping to out-innovate while ushering in the “new era of responsibility” that he so eloquently summoned in his inaugural address, I would take a close look at this model and think about how to incentivize more businesses to shift towards it, as well as how to export it for the world to follow. As it now stands, far too large a chunk of federal investments goes towards strategies that don’t support this type of innovation. I believe the President cannot execute on his promise unless he shifts investments towards programs that accomplish this type of true innovation. Businesses that start now have the advantage of being able to fuse mission and model from the very beginning. Companies that have legacy models will take time to evolve and would benefit from help.

When it comes to out-educating, I think we should look to this same tradition for a clue. As a parent of three, I have seen first-hand what bands of volunteers can do for a public school. They instruct, fundraise, feed, make safe and generally help the place hum. Our budget-starved public elementary school wouldn’t be half the place it is were it not for our volunteers. The problem for many schools, particularly in our inner-cities, is that parents don’t have the time to volunteer frequently because they work so hard. I see an opportunity for the retiring boomer generation to fill this void and make an enormous difference in our public schools. Policy should support this strategy by offering these boomers incentives to get involved.

Americans have always loved to band together to help. As the President said in his inaugural speech, the problems we face may be new, but this spirit is old, dating back to our founding fathers. He’d be smart to tap this uniquely American spirit if we are to out-innovate and out-educate for years to come.

- Andy Mercy, CEO

Astonishing Volunteer Management Data

2011-01-31T12:37:00.001-08:00

At AngelPoints, we are continually leveraging our technology platform’s usage data to increase participation in employee volunteer programs (EVPs), sustainability initiatives, and employee giving/disaster response campaigns. One figure that was recently shared internally is how much of an impact using the volunteer event promotion tools has on event participation.

Over 87,000 events created through AngelPoints Enterprise Volunteer Solution (EVS) were analyzed, and it was determined that when a company creates an event without using the event promotion tools available in EVS, 52.1% of the events have participants. In contrast, when a company uses the event promotion functionality of AngelPoints EVS, the participation figure skyrockets to 94.5%. The beauty of the AngelPoints event management tool is that it allows for easy segmentation, deep customization, and powerful deliverability to make sure the event promotion efforts are maximized without requiring a lot of input from the system manager.

This is a great reminder for everyone running an EVP, regardless of what technology you use to manage it: make sure to understand what your technology is capable of. In addition, consider the importance of usability; the easier your technology is to use, the more it will be used, and the more effective your volunteer programs will be. Lastly, when promoting a volunteer event, make sure you understand how to get the right message in front of the right people at the right time.

Top 3 Strategies for Sustainability Employee Engagement

2011-01-05T17:13:00.000-08:00

Incorporating sustainability in business strategy is a continually evolving topic. Not long ago, most would consider sustainability as a topic primarily suited for companies looking to reduce waste in their production process. More recently, a lot of attention has been placed on reducing waste within a company’s supply chain. Today, the vision for incorporating sustainability into business strategy has expanded even wider, and is now applicable to businesses of all types and sizes. The new frontier in sustainability is engaging employees in sustainability, and that’s where HR professionals come in.

There have been good and bad approaches to engaging employees with sustainability, so before we get into all the great ways HR leaders are tackling this new frontier, I have a word of caution. While it is great to encourage your employees to take actions that save company resources, and promote healthy and sustainable living, credit must be given to the employees. As soon as a company neglects to give credit to its employees for their sustainable behavior, the company opens itself up to being criticized for taking credit for their employees’ actions, and risks being accused of green-washing.

Now that the word of warning is out of the way, we can get into all the great ways HR leaders are engaging their employees in sustainability. Here are the top sustainability oriented employee engagement strategies and tactics we’ve seen employed by HR leaders:

Involving employees in the company’s commitment to become carbon neutral or reduce carbon emissions.
Engage employees in reducing waste, saving resources, and living healthy.
Rewarding employees who achieve goals that are aligned with the company’s sustainability strategy.

The first strategy is a good place to start for HR professionals looking to embrace sustainability employee engagement. Companies have gone about achieving this strategy by promoting walking, biking, and carpooling to work. Using a carbon calculator, you can measure how much initiatives to promote sustainable commuting are reducing the carbon footprint of your company. Tracking this on an ongoing basis can be tedious, but is certainly possible. Also, automated means for tracking and rewarding these sorts of behavior is available. The main benefit to your company is that this strategy aligns employee values with company values, which in turn helps turn employees into ambassadors for your brand.

The second strategy is where sustainability employee engagement starts to get sophisticated. Putting in place the right process and system to measure exactly how much employees are reducing waste, saving water, saving trees, and living healthy can do wonders for engaging employees. When an employee sees how their personal lifestyle changes impact the company, the environment, and themselves, it reinforces the connection employees have with your company, and empowers them to realize an internal paradigm shift to a more conscientious person. On the flip side, what doesn’t get measured doesn’t get recognized.

The third strategy is a great approach to layer on to a core sustainability employee engagement program. Some company’s have engaged their employees with sustainability focused contests, and have offered prizes for high achieving employees, departments, or offices. One approach is to have offices or departments competing against each other to see who can save the most trees, conserve the most water, lose the most weight, eliminate the most waste, or reduce their carbon footprint by the largest amount. Obviously, you’ll want the reward to have a sustainable focus, but other than that, most any reward will do. The real focus is on the process of behaving more sustainably in a fun and engaging way.

Engaging employees with sustainability initiatives is a powerful component of a sustainable business strategy. Sustainability employee engagement produces tangible results in the form of retention, recruitment, and creating brand value. This brand value is especially important in a new business landscape where turning employees and market influencers into brand ambassadors adds more value to a company than the old recruitment and retention tactics that worked well prior to the age of social media and transparency that we are now all a part of.

The most visionary HR and marketing leaders are already making employee engagement through sustainability a business imperative. The fact that they are able to do so at lower cost than their cohorts at large enterprises due to leveraging the same technology that large enterprises use, and employing their best practices, is all the more reason to adopt sustainability policies. A strong sustainability employee engagement program distinguishes their company from their competitors, both in the eyes of their current and future employees, and their customers. For additional reading on the topic, check out The Business Case for Environmental and Sustainability Employee Engagement.

Christine Arena Interviews Andy Mercy, Founder/CEO, AngelPoints

2010-04-07T11:22:00.000-07:00

Earlier this month, Christine Arena for 3BL TV interviewed AngelPoints Founder and CEO, Andy Mercy:

Key take aways from the interview are:

Employee engagement is the bridge between what companies say they want, and what they do in reality. An engaged workforce is the difference between a CSR and sustainability program that transforms a company, and a CSR and sustainability program that green washes a company.
Companies can engage their employees better by increasing transparency and tying their community activities to their business strategy. Let employees connect the dots between how your company is serving its customers, and how it is serving its community.
CSR and sustainability initiatives are intimately connected. Taking action to reduce your carbon footprint by biking to work will keep you healthy, which in turn lowers your company's healthcare costs.
What doesn't get measured, doesn't get managed. Make sure you meticulously measure your volunteer programs, philanthropy activities, and sustainability initiatives so you know what impact you have on your company, community, and environment.

In the words of CEO of Campbells Soup, "to get it right in the marketplace, you need to first get it right in the workplace." To that end, he tracks two metrics to gauge success: share holder return and employee engagement. The term "employee engagement" is often used loosely, but in this case it is determined consistently from the Q12 Gallop Poll. If you want to measure success, you'll want to know how you can engage employees better. One sure fire way to do so is to increase transparency...there can't be a disconnect between what employees do day to day, and what green teams are involved in. Create activities to get employees involved in volunteering, and let the employees connect the dots between their activities volunteering and the broader company strategy.

Sustainability initiatives can go a long way in helping to engage employees. Broadly speaking, sustainability encompasses reducing your carbon footprint, conserving/preserving resources, health and wellness, and connecting with others. Make sure to clearly define the fact that volunteering is a way of connecting with others, and so is intrinsically connected to sustainability. For example, riding your bike to work reduces your carbon footprint, and is good for your health, which in turn lowers a company's health care costs. Another example is paper reduction through double sided printing and reducing the amount of material you print saves money across the organization, and is good for the environment as well.

What doesn't get measured doesn't get managed. Companies that embrace rigorous measurement have been able to achieve above and beyond an improvement in their department; they have achieved a transformation in their company and community. With an increase in the availability of measurement tools, employees across the board are being held accountable for measuring results. CSR and Sustainability teams have been granted some leniency in this regard, but that leniency will not last as CSR becomes a central part of a company's strategy. Make sure your company's CSR and sustainability programs are in good shape by being in open communication with members of your HR and Marketing teams. Make sure to explore all avenues to connect CSR and sustainability programs to improvements in retention, increased ability to attract top talent, and leadership development...your friends in HR will appreciate it. Also make sure to connect with your peers in marketing, since much of what you do can be leveraged for cause marketing efforts and PR.

Best Practices, Tips, and Training from AngelPoints

2009-08-18T07:54:00.000-07:00

Training Opportunities for AngelPoints Clients
AngelPoints now offers three training session to ensure that your team is using your volunteer management site to maximum benefit. Each session is limited to 25 participants, so sign up today if you haven't already taken advantage of this great opportunity.

AngelPoints Overview for New Managers
This training is recommended for new Event, Group, or System Managers, or anyone who needs a refresher. It covers the basics of using the system, including creating and managing events, using the calendar and File Manager, and validating hours.

To sign up for the next session on September 1, click here.

AngelPoints Group Manager Training
This session provides more in-depth training for Group Managers, including advanced tips for creating and managing events, adding and editing content, and getting the most out of AngelPoints reports.

Click to sign up for the next session on August 19 click here, or for next month's session on September 23 click here.

System Manager Training
AngelPoints training for System Managers is now offered once per quarter. This session covers managing users, understanding access levels, managing site content, tips for designing your site, and best practices for editing content and promoting special events.

To sign up for System Manager Training on September 30, click here.

Save the Date for the State of the Product Call
Join Vice President of Product Stephane Giraudie and the AngelPoints team for the next State of the Product Call on Tuesday, September 15 at 10:00 A.M. Pacific time. During this call, Stephane will share product development news, our plans for the remainder of the year, and give an update from the Ideas Bank. This is also your chance to share feedback about new features and ideas with AngelPoints. Keep your eyes open for your invitation next week!

Tip: Adding "About Page" Content to the Login Page
Did you know you can now link About page content from the Login page? Adding links from the Login page is an easy way to share information about your program with employees who may not have logged in or created a password yet. Please contact your Account Manager if you would like to link About page content from your Login page.

Best Practices and More Tips for Using AngelPoints
AngelPoints Customer Support regularly publishes best practices to both the AngelPoints blog and archives them on the AngelPoints help site. To view the archive, click Help on your AngelPoints site, and navigate to Extras and Examples > Tips and Tricks. Here you'll find:

How to make your external links open in a new browser
Guidelines for posting images to your site
How to hide a published event
How to use a custom search result link on your home page
Best practices for launching your AngelPoints site

Using a custom search result link on your home page

2009-07-28T15:19:00.000-07:00

What do you do if you have a specific series or day of events that you want your users to be able to find easily without having to search through an entire list of upcoming events? It’s as simple as using the Advanced Search feature to find and create a link that will take your users to a “Results” page that will then list all of your specific events. This is a great feature if you have a group of events that are for a specific department, organization, cause, etc.

The most important thing is to use a unique “Keyword(s)” within your event title, but adding causes and/or skills is helpful too. Let’s say you had several Earth Day specific events, but that the company also has many other non Earth Day events scheduled on that same day. Place the words “Earth Day” in the title of each event. Select an appropriate cause and/or skill and create your events. Now go to the Advanced search page (from the home page), enter Earth Day into the “Keywords” box and set the date (or date range) to the date of your event. Select the causes and/or Skills that you chose when creating the events. Unless all of the events are in the same city and/or state, leave those fields blank. Now run the search. The result should be a listing of just your events. Copy the URL in your browsers address bar and save it in notepad (or any editor).

If you have System Manager access you can do this next part yourself, otherwise you will need to enlist the help of the System Manager to post the link. Edit your home page content to add a comment that makes it clear that this is where to click to find the events they are looking for, such as “Do you want to volunteer for one of our Earth Day events? If so, Click Here.” From within the content editor select the word “Here” then click on the add hyperlink button and paste in the URL you copied earlier. Hit update and you’re done. Now when your users are greeted with the welcome page, there will be a link right there in front of them to take them to the listing of your specified events.

Note: using the causes and skills is not necessary but it is a great way to insure that your search results will continually contain only your events, since the odds of someone else creating an event with the exact same parameters are very slim.

What Every Volunteer Manager Wants to See: Your Event is Full!

2009-06-22T11:34:00.000-07:00

We're always excited to announce features that make your AngelPoints site more user-friendly, especially when the ideas come from our most knowledgeable users -- our clients. One such idea is a simple designation to let users know that an event is full without having to click through to the event's detail page. Thanks to your feedback, we've now added "event full" information to event listings to improve your volunteers' experience.

Site Configurable? No, this feature is now enabled for all AngelPoints clients.

Motivating Employee Volunteerism During Tough Economic Times
AngelPoints is pleased to spread the word about a very timely research project by LBG Associates and the LBG Research Institute, and invites your company to participate. This study is designed to help companies make crucial decisions to bring their volunteer programs more in line with today’s economic realities -- and employees’ needs and desires -- by answering the following questions:

Are employees more driven to volunteer during this recession, or are they so depressed that they are in a state of inertia?
Are employees not using workday-based programs, such as skills-based, pro bono, or paid time off, for fear of losing their jobs?
How are companies successfully motivating employees to volunteer during these tough times?

How can you help? Click here for details on how to participate in the study. Participation involves answering a short online survey and providing access to employees for their input.

See You at the National Conference on Volunteering and Service
To all of you who are attending the National Conference on Volunteering and Service in San Francisco this week, welcome to our neighborhood. We look forward to an fantastic week of presentations and opportunities to meet with you, including our client gathering on Tuesday evening. We'd also like to wish good luck to all of our clients who will be presenting at the conference, and provide a special thank you to Anna Hennes of Cerner, who will be presenting about AngelPoints in the Technology for Managing Corporate Volunteer Programs panel on Tuesday morning.

Follow Us on Twitter
Do you like your news in small doses? AngelPoints is now on Twitter. Follow us for quick updates, resource links, and all the rest at http://twitter.com/angelpoints.

Client Awards and Congratulations!

2009-06-17T11:07:00.000-07:00

AngelPoints would like to congratulate two of our clients, PG&E and Deloitte, who each have won a 2009 Bay Area Volunteer Award for service and dedication to their community, hosted by The Volunteer Center of San Francisco and San Mateo Counties.

PG&E has won the coveted Corporate Community Involvement Award for an outstanding community involvement program, as well as service, and Mark Edmunds of Deloitte has won the prized Corporate Community Champion Award, which recognizes the achievments and dedicated leadership of a single corporate officer.

Congratulations to both, as they continue to achieve great success using AngelPoints!

Motivating Employee Volunteerism During Tough Economic Times

2009-06-10T10:20:00.000-07:00

We at AngelPoints are pleased to help spread the word about a very timely research project by LBG Associates and the LBG Research Institute and invite your company to participate:

MOTIVATING EMPLOYEE VOLUNTEERISM DURING TOUGH ECONOMIC TIMES

In these tighter times, many companies are viewing employee volunteerism as a cost-effective way to continue to make an impact in their communities.

But how motivated are employees to volunteer right now?

There’s an urgent need to help companies make crucial decisions about ways to bring their volunteer programs more in line with today’s economic realities -- and employees’ needs and desires. A new research study from LBG Associates and LBG Research Institute is designed to provide that help, by answering the following questions:

Are employees more driven to volunteer during this recession, or are they so depressed that they are in a state of inertia?
Are employees not using workday-based programs, such as skills-based, pro bono, or paid time off, for fear of losing their jobs?
How are companies successfully motivating employees to volunteer during these tough times?

LBG’s new survey is unique in that it will include both the voice of the employee volunteer manager and the employee. By comparing research from both groups, this study will provide a much needed and robust view of today’s volunteering landscape.

How can you help? Participate and/or sponsor!

Participation involves answering a short online survey and providing access to employees for their input.

And LBG is offering highly affordable sponsorship levels! For more information, please call Linda Gornitsky at 203-325-3154.

OR

Sign up to participate and sponsor and receive the full study: https://app.e2ma.net/app2/survey/33143/7955/034825fd3b/1976341442/1807819/67170791/

Sign up to participate and receive the executive summary of the report: https://app.e2ma.net/app2/survey/33143/7953/02140d3192/1976341442/1807819/67170792/

Scheduled Maintenance and Other AngelPoints Updates

2009-06-04T11:47:00.000-07:00

AngelPoints has a scheduled maintenance this Friday, June 5. AngelPoints client sites will be unavailable from 10:00 P.M. PDT - 2:00 A.M PDT for a database upgrade.

AngelPoints Training
We'd like to thank all of our clients who have joined us for live AngelPoints training webinars over the past couple of months. As a reminder, we offer beginning and advanced training sessions via GoToMeeting each month, and you can sign up for either session on the AngelPoints website:
http://www.angelpoints.com/index.php?page=events#training

There are two sessions coming up. The next advanced session is Wednesday, June 17 and the next beginner session is July 7.

We are also working on recording the different topics covered in these sessions and will add them to the Help site. Stay tuned for an announcement of availability.

User Data Imports
To create a more transparent data upload process and give you easier access to your data upload information and results, we have added a report for System Managers that shows:

The status of all your imports (In Progress, Pending, Completed)
File information including the date received, the file name and size, the number of users in the file, and the date the upload was completed
Details about the upload, including errors, users added to the system, users modified, and users removed

To see this information, select Users > User Imports from the Manage tab.

Design Updates
If you have recently logged into AngelPoints, you will have noticed a few new design changes including new tab placement and a change to the design of call out boxes. There are a number of reasons we make changes to the user interface; chief among them are to accommodate client feedback, to make the site as usable and engaging as possible, and to incorporate new features. When such updates are associated with changes to existing features or workflow, we make every effort to alert you in tandem with -- or ahead of -- the launch.

State of the Product Call
Due to the timing of the National Conference on Volunteering and Service and other client initiatives that are taking place over the next couple of months, we are delaying the next State of the Product call until early August. We have many exciting updates to share with you and also look forward to introducing our new Vice President of Product, Stephane Giraudie. Please be on the lookout for your invitation in the coming weeks.

AngelPoints Ideas Bank
Your feedback and suggestions are extremely valuable in shaping the AngelPoints product direction. If you haven't visited the Ideas Bank in a while, please stop by, vote or comment on current ideas, and add your top wants and needs for the product to the list. The AngelPoints team is actively involved on the site and uses this forum to ask for more information and to give you the status on different ideas.

If you do not have a log on, contact Professional Services Manager Kate Derrick at kate AT angelpoints DOT com.

How to keep an event “Invisible”

2009-06-01T10:35:00.000-07:00

You have an event coming up and you want it to be exclusive (at least initially) to one specific group. You want to be able to promote it to them, possibly add some of them to the roster yourself but do not want the general volunteer pool to be able to sign up for the event. In order to have access to both the promote and roster features you will have to publish the event.

Here is how to keep your event “Invisible” to all.

When creating the event, under Event Location, give it a zip code of 00000 before you publish it. Since the system bases what opportunities to display on the Home Page and Event Calendar by way of the end users zip code, the event will not appear for anyone (it will still appear within the Manage pages to any managers with access to the group it is assigned to).

By using the Promote feature you can then target your specific group and it will send an email to them with a direct link to the event so they will be able to see it and sign up for it. You can also click on the “View as a volunteer” link from within the event description after you have published, copy the URL from the browser and send that directly to users you want to have sign up.

Once the group you are focused on having sign up has done so, or you choose to open the event up for all to see, simply go back and edit the event description and put in the valid zip code.

Note: The “Driving Directions” link in the event will not function properly until you enter a valid zip code.

How to make your external links open in a new browser window

2009-05-28T10:02:00.000-07:00

Follow these simple steps if you would like to make the hyperlinks you create in your events and/or site content open in a new browser window.

Note: This is easiest done if you create the hyperlinks before creating the majority of the body of your event/content, as it will be simpler to locate your link in the code.

Once you have entered your text and created the hyperlink, click on in the Design/HTMLview button in the lower left corner of the editor window.
Now looking at the HTML code, locate your hyperlink url.
Place your cursor between the last quotation mark at the end of your URL, and the> symbol, hit the space bar once and then enter target=new

You can now click the Aa on the Design/HTML view button and finish creating your content.

June Training Sessions for AngelPoints Clients

2009-05-27T08:25:00.000-07:00

Are you just getting started with AngelPoints, or could you use some tips for advanced users?

AngelPoints Customer Support is offering free scheduled online training sessions twice per month to clients. The first session each month is intended for those just starting out with AngelPoints (or who need a refresher), and the second will offer a more advanced look at the functionality as well as a training on new features. Trainings will be an hour in length, including time for questions.

AngelPoints Training: Session 1

Date/Time: Tuesday, June 2, 2009 at 8:00 a.m. PDT

Description: In this session, you will receive an overview of the AngelPoints site, including features and functions on the Home page, My Page, and the About page. In addition, the purpose and use of each AngelPoints report will be discussed. Finally, you will learn about the different event types supported by AngelPoints, and how to:

Create events and flexible opportunitiesManage eventsUse the monthly calendarUse the File ManagerValidate hours
To sign up for Session 1, visit: http://www.angelpoints.com/index.php?page=angelpoints-training-session-1

AngelPoints Training: Session 2

Date/Time: Wednesday,June 17, 2009 at 10:00 a.m. PDT

Description: Topics covered in this session include:

Advanced training on creating and managing eventsBest practices for adding and editing contentAdvanced training on AngelPoints reports, including running each report, how to interpret results, and tips for using filtersTraining on new features

To sign up for Session 2, visit: http://www.angelpoints.com/index.php?page=angelpoints-training-session-2

The power of video and music

2009-05-22T14:29:00.000-07:00

I recently saw a commercial that reminded me why we do what we do at AngelPoints. It was a series of clips depicting people in the act of helping others set to the Jackson Five song, "I'll be there." My wife and I got choked up watching it.

We at AngelPoints work tirelessly to build the best technology platform we can so that our clients can more easily engage their employees and customers in good deeds -- activities that strengthen communities, build a better corporate culture and improve lives. Unfortunately, sometimes we lose sight of the magic -- the emotion and power that results when people give of themselves to others. The AngelPoints platform enables and keeps track of hundreds of thousands of selfless acts around the globe every day. And yet those of us who work here and, quite frankly, those who control budgets for employee community engagement, too often only see these acts as so many data points, a handful of charts and graphs devoid of human emotion.

What we need, perhaps, is a healthy dose of Hollywood, a roaming film crew that travels from town to town capturing employees in the act, producing short films like the State Farm commercial. How great it would be to see the looks on peoples' faces, to be reminded before we go home at the end of the day of the powerful emotions and pride community engagement creates. We could even send these videos to CEOs and EVPs of HR, who would never again cut volunteer programs from their budgets for risk of extinguishing the very heart and soul of their company.

So, here's an open invitation to all aspiring photographers and film makers out there to send us your footage. We want to see and hear what you're doing. We may even launch a competition if people are interested...

AngelPoints Simplifies Its Look

2009-05-20T06:28:00.001-07:00

Sometimes, it's the subtle enhancements that make a difference. If you've logged into your AngelPoints site recently, you may have noticed a cleaner look around the site, including better placement of the Log Out and Help links in the upper right and changes to the design of the boxes on the right. We are always looking for ways to make our user interface simpler and more engaging and these are the just the latest improvements toward that goal.

Monthly Training Sessions and Other Updates from AngelPoints

2009-04-29T15:36:00.000-07:00

New Monthly Training Sessions

AngelPoints Customer Support will be offering free scheduled online training sessions twice per month to clients beginning in May. The first session each month is intended for those just starting out with AngelPoints (or who need a refresher), and the second will offer a more advanced look at the functionality as well as a training on new features. Trainings will be an hour in length, including time for questions.

AngelPoints Training: Session 1

Date/Time: Tuesday, May 5, 2009 at 8:00 a.m. PDT

Description: In this session, you will receive an overview of the AngelPoints site, including features and functions on the Home page, My Page, and the About page. In addition, the purpose and use of each AngelPoints report will be discussed. Finally, you will learn about the different event types supported by AngelPoints, and how to:

Create events and flexible opportunities
Manage events
Use the monthly calendar
Use the File Manager
Validate hours

To sign up for Session 1, visit: http://www.angelpoints.com/index.php?page=angelpoints-training-session-1

AngelPoints Training: Session 2

Date/Time: Wednesday, May 20, 2009 at 10:00 a.m. PDT

Description: Topics covered in this session include:

Advanced training on creating and managing events
Best practices for adding and editing content
Advanced training on AngelPoints reports, including running each report, how to interpret results, and tips for using filters
Training on new features

To sign up for Session 2, visit: http://www.angelpoints.com/index.php?page=angelpoints-training-session-2

Option to Email a New User When an Account is Created

When adding a new user to AngelPoints on the Add New User page, you can now opt whether to automatically email login information to the user.

Site Configurable? No, this feature is enabled for all clients.

My Upcoming Events List

Your upcoming events list, found on the My Page tab, now includes events you've signed up for that take place more than six months from the current date.

Site Configurable? No, this feature is enabled for all clients.

Ability to Hide Event Discussion

The Event Discussion feature is now site configurable. By default, Event Discussion is enabled for all clients. To turn off this feature on your site, contact your Account Manager.

Site Configurable? Yes, please contact your Account Manager if you would like to enable this feature.

Removing Yourself, Friends, and Family from the Event Roster

If you need to cancel your participation from an event, any friends and family that you signed up to attend with you will now automatically be removed from the roster.

Site Configurable? No, this feature is enabled for all clients.

Site Content Improvements

The content on the landing page for new users has been revised to provide clearer steps for getting started with the site. In addition, the headings on the Create Event and Post Flexible Opportunity pages have been revised to be shorter and more direct.

Site Configurable? No, these content changes have been made on all client sites.

Flexible Opportunities

It is no longer required to associate a group when you create a flexible opportunity.

Site Configurable? Yes, contact your Account Manager if you would like to make it optional to associate a group with a flexible opportunity.

Board Membership Report Available to Group Managers

Group Managers now have the ability to view and download the Board Membership report. This report will display membership information for all groups managed by the Group Manager.

Site Configurable? No, this feature is enabled for all clients.

Emailing Event Managers Through the Contact Roster Feature

An Ideas Portal request has been added to the Contact Roster feature. A checkbox is now available on the Contact Roster page to copy event managers on email sent using this feature. Thank you to the clients who suggested and voted for this!

Site Configurable? No, this feature is enabled for all clients.

Tips and Tricks Added to Blog, Help Site

Did you know that the AngelPoints blog and Help site now contain tips for using AngelPoints? Many of you have already benefited from Peter Clay's best practices on the phone; now he's providing his expert advice online. To make sure that you get the latest, add the AngelPoints blog to your RSS feed or regularly check the Tips and Tricks section in your Help site (in AngelPoints, click Help, then click Extras and Examples in the Contents list to get to Tips and Tricks).

You can also get the latest release notes on the Help site (with links to related topics). To do so, click AngelPoints Help in the Contents list, and then click Release Notes.

SF Bay Area Volunteer Awards

2009-04-13T15:49:00.000-07:00

A few upcoming Awards in the San Francisco Bay Area to be presented May 6th, 2009 at "Hats Off! A Celebration of Community Volunteers" - get your nominations in now before it's too late!

2009 Nonprofit Board Leader Award

The Nonprofit Board Leader Award recognizes the achievements of outstanding nonprofit board members in the Bay Area.

2009 The Corporate Community Champion Award

The Corporate Community Champion Award, established in 2002, recognizes the outstanding volunteer leadership achievements of a Bay Area corporate leader.

2009 Corporate Community Involvement Award

The Corporate Community Involvement Award, established in 1992, is awarded to a Bay Area business that operates an outstanding employee involvement program.

New Enhancements and Upcoming Tab Changes

2009-04-10T04:22:00.000-07:00

Two significant changes have been made to the tabs on the top of your AngelPoints user interface. These changes will take effect with the next release of AngelPoints early next week.

First, the name of the About tab will be configurable, allowing you to rename the tab to be more reflective of your program. If you would like to change the name of this tab on your site, please contact your Account Manager.

Second, because comprehensive Help is now available from the link on the upper right of your site, the Support tab has been renamed FAQs, and will now be available from the footer of your site rather than the tab area. You can still provide custom content to your FAQs page as before; however, you may also opt to remove this page entirely from your site if you find that you do not use FAQs or if you prefer to provide Q & A about your program on your About page. To remove the FAQs link and page from your site, contact your Account Manager.

Google Maps Now Used for Driving Directions
Driving Directions on the Event Details page now link to Google Maps rather than Yahoo Maps. In addition to driving directions, Google Maps also provide public transportation and walking directions where available.
Site Configurable? No, Google Maps are now used on all client sites.

Schools and Universities Added to the Organizations Database
All public schools and universities have been added to the Organizations database. This information comes from the National Center for Education Statistics and the Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System, respectively.
Site Configurable? No, public school and university data has been added for all clients.

Coming Soon! Ideas Portal Implementation
We're excited to pre-announce our next Ideas Portal implementation. Later this month, we will be providing a checkbox to copy event managers on email sent using the Contact Roster feature. Thank you to the clients who suggested and voted for this helpful feature.

Guidelines for posting images to your site

2009-04-09T14:53:00.000-07:00

It is best when posting images to your site either in an event or on any of the content pages that you use images no larger than 500 to 600 pixels wide and use the jpg or gif format. Keeping it below 600 pixels wide (preferable 500) will ensure that your image does not push around the rest of the page making it look awkward and using the jpg format will generally lend to a better (deeper color) image than the gif format.

If you do not have a program like PhotoShop you can use Microsoft Office Picture Manager or even Windows Paint to do your resizing.

See How You Can Take Your Employee Volunteer Program to the Next Level: AngelPoints White Paper Now Available

2009-04-07T08:57:00.000-07:00

Are you able to reap the full benefits of your employee volunteer and CSR programs? Can you energize and excite your employees about community involvement and CSR at your company?

CSR and volunteer program managers commonly report several challenges:

Insufficient resources for efficient and effective program management;
Difficulty reaching and engaging employees; and
Difficulty collecting the qualitative and quantitative data to articulate the impact of their programs to customers, employees, corporate stakeholders, and their communities.

AngelPoints' newest white paper discusses the benefits of employee engagement in community involvement and CSR initiatives and looks at technical solutions to the challenges listed above.

To download your copy, visit:

http://www.angelpoints.com/index.php?page=download-whitepaper

State of the Product Call Update

2009-03-25T11:30:00.000-07:00

This morning we held our second, quarterly "State of the Product" Call to give our clients some insight into what we’ve been up to over the last quarter in terms of product development, and what our priorities will be for the next quarter.

Thanks to the 40 people who joined the call and asked questions. For those of you who couldn't make it, here are a few highlights of our accomplishments over the last quarter. If you want to hear what we have planned for next quarter there will be an audio recording available soon (for clients only):

Since the last State of the Product Call on November 11, the AngelPoints engineering team has completed:

8 releases
10 roadmap feature sets or large modules
53 smaller enhancements

We spent significant time this quarter on 2 new modules:

Rewards: Manage volunteer incentive programs that drive employee participation.
Organization Management: Manage your company’s own list of approved non-profit organizations, add organizations, or edit organization information including mission statements and organization logos.

We also worked to improve the functionality of current feature sets & make things easier to use:

New Help Site: Replaces the support wiki and provides much clearer support and help documentation
Upload Participant List into Event Roster: Upload users to a roster from an excel spreadsheet (currently only available for SSO clients)
Improvements to Event Search: Added flexible opportunities to the event search and gave them more search capabilities
Validate Hours Page: Enhanced functionality for approving/denying volunteer hours
CRA: Improvements made for CRA module (used by banking clients)

Kate Derrick, our Professional Services Manager, also gave an update on the ideas bank where clients have been logging their ideas for what our product priorities should be.

Over the last quarter, we've implemented four feature requests that came from the ideas bank and we currently have four in development. Two more have been added to our upcoming roadmap.

The ideas bank has been incredibly helpful to me as I look to prioritize the product roadmap going forward so keep the great ideas coming.

Looking for Inspiration? Check out the BCCCC Film Festival

2009-03-24T03:31:00.000-07:00

There's no question that video is a great medium for telling your company's CSR story. This year, the Boston College Center for Corporate Citizenship has put together a film festival featuring short videos that demonstrate and promote corporate citizenship.

To watch the videos and cast your vote for the winner, visit:
http://www.bcccc.net/index.cfm?fuseaction=Page.ViewPage&PageID=2068&stopRedirect=1

Voting ends at 11:59 EDT on March 25. The winning video will be announced at the 2009 International Corporate Citizenship Conference on March 30 in San Francisco.

We're pleased to see entries from a number of AngelPoints clients, and wish all the contenders luck! Your creativity and efforts are an inspiration.

Reminder: State of the Product Call Scheduled for Next Week

2009-03-19T05:39:00.000-07:00

Just a quick reminder to AngelPoints clients: the quarterly State of the Product call is scheduled for next Wednesday, March 25 at 10:00 a.m. Pacific. If you haven't already registered, please add your RSVP at http://www.angelpoints.com/index.php?page=register-for-the-state-of-the-product-call.

This quarter, Director of Product Angie Schiavoni will give an update of the product roadmap, including a discussion about our new Rewards module. We'll also be sharing an update from the AngelPoints Ideas Portal.

We look forward to having you join us for the call.

New Customization Options

2009-03-11T15:24:00.000-07:00

The latest update to AngelPoints includes several new customization options:

Viewing Lifetime Hours
Motivate your top volunteers by showing them how much impact they've made. You can now opt to display lifetime volunteer hours on the dashboard.

Site Configurable? Yes, please contact your Account Manager to enable this feature.

Customizing Login Error Messages
You can now provide customized messages for user login errors. Error messages are displayed when users enter an incorrect user name or password, when they have one more attempt at logging in before they are locked out of the system, and when their account has been locked due to too many failed login attempts.

Site Configurable? Yes. If would like to change the default error messages provided by AngelPoints, please contact your Account Manager.

Customizing CRA Help Text
We have added rollover help to the Create Event page for clients using the CRA module. When you hover your mouse over the help icon next to the CRA Eligible checkbox, text is displayed to help your volunteer program managers better determine whether to use the CRA Survey as part of the event screening process. If you would like to customize this message to be more specific to your program, you can do so on the Manage > Setup > Content page.

Site Configurable? No. The help rollover on the Create Event page now defaults to on for clients using the CRA module and you can customize the text..

Conference Board 2009 Report Sees 45% Increase in Employee Volunteering

2009-03-11T11:01:00.000-07:00

Thanks to Chris Jarvis at Realizing Your Worth for pointing this out...

The Conference Board just released a report, The 2009 Corporate Philanthropy Agenda: How the Economic Downturn is Affecting Corporate Giving, based on a February 2009 survey of 158 companies on planned changes in corporate giving programs.

Although the report noted that there was going to be a decrease in giving, it also stated that "Volunteerism will see the biggest increase, with 45 percent of the survey respondents reporting a resources increase."

Although many companies are experiencing layoffs and significant cutbacks in their budgets, they can still demonstrate their commitment to the community by allowing their employees to continue to make an impact.

AngelPoints State of the Product Call Scheduled for March 25

2009-03-11T07:27:00.000-07:00

AngelPoints quarterly State of the Product call has been scheduled for March 25, 2009.

If you are a current AngelPoints client, please join us for an information-packed hour as Angie Schiavoni, Director of Product, gives an update of the product roadmap, including a discussion about our new Rewards module. We’ll also be sharing an update from the AngelPoints Ideas Portal.

The Details:

Who: Current AngelPoints clients

When: March 25, 2009 at 10:00 AM PST - 11:00 AM PST

Where: Call in number and online meeting information will be sent
following your RSVP.

How: Primary company contacts can RSVP by clicking here.

Paine's Stimulus

2009-03-05T11:15:00.000-08:00

"I like the man that smiles in trouble, that gathers strength in distress, and grows brave by reflection. Tis the business of little minds to shrink."

- Thomas Paine

At a time when American independence was still undecided, Paine published his infamous 48-page pamphlet called Common Sense and with it moved thousands of everyday citizens closer to freedom from British rule. The pamphlet was one of the most influential of the revolutionary era. It spread beyond wildest expectations, doing something like the 18th-century equivalent of tweeting across the colonies. It was also an enormous financial success, selling 120,000 copies in the first three months, going through twenty-five editions and selling 500,000 copies in the first year alone. Paine was a master of the social media of his time, but because his ideas would have gotten him executed for treason, he wrote Common Sense anonymously. In its wake, had he wanted to he could have stolen away to his comfortable home in Greenwich Village to spend his royalties and enjoy life in anonymous splendor. But that was not his calling. Instead, he did something worthy of historical awe. He donated his royalties to George Washington’s Continental Army, reportedly saying: "As my wish was to serve an oppressed people, and assist in a just and good cause, I conceived that the honor of it would be promoted by my declining to make even the usual profits of an author."

Paine's influence was outdone only by his moral fortitude. One could argue that his contribution to the Continental Army was both a brilliant bit of cause marketing (promoting his honor through philanthropy) and one of the greatest investments of all time, yielding centuries of liberty, growth and prosperity for millions of people. For me, he serves as a model citizen, standing for what he believes, using his influence to move others to action and then forgoing short-term gain in order to ensure long-term upside. This model served man and country well in the case of Thomas Paine. His was surely not the business of little minds.

Fast forward to the year 2009. Today. Now.

Another great mind has emerged on the political landscape, a master of social media who sways thousands with his simple and bold message and his sermon-like style. Indeed, Barack Obama has inspired a generation of people with his clear and hopeful vision for our country and he has done so by communicating directly to the people. His micro-contribution campaign success and his ability to harness YouTube are, like Paine's pamphlet, case studies in social media, what some could call election 2.0. But the similarity does not end there. What many people find most compelling about Obama, including me, is his Paine-like insistence that we must stand up to our current challenges not grudgingly, but gladly, with courage. It is these moments that have given me goose bumps during his speeches, like during his inauguration when he summoned the "New Era of Responsibility" and said: "what is required now is a recognition, on the part of every American, that we have duties to ourselves, our nation and the world, duties that we do not grudgingly accept but rather seize gladly, firm in the knowledge that there is nothing so satisfying to the spirit, so defining of our character than giving our all to a difficult task." We must seize our duties gladly. This is surely the stuff of Thomas Paine.

If we view the world through a Painsian lens, we can spot examples of those who stand up to challenges gladly and those who shrink from them. Ultimately and perhaps urgently, which way the scale tilts could determine the fate of this country and, perhaps, the world. This is why I watch with such interest the debate over the stimulus package. The investments we make today will ultimately reflect our willingness to face challenges with fortitude or to shrink from them. Billions will get lost in the gordian financial mess to cover credit swaps and narrow interests, or billions will stimulate education, innovations in health care and a green revolution. Fear will compel us to focus on short-term market losses and gains or courage will compel us to look to the future prosperity and health of our nation and the planet. We will invest the way Paine did or we will invest the way Thain did. To my mind, it's pretty much that simple.

Of course, if I had my way, it would be game over and we'd all grin and bear it as we forge ahead in the spirit of responsibility, like Shackleton's men on the glacier or the small band of Washington's men huddled by dying campfires on the shores of an icy river. We have built AngelPoints with this single purpose: to tilt the scale and play a part in the new era of responsibility that is required of us all. If Paine could move thousands with a short-stack of paper, then surely we can move millions with the use of the web and through the leadership of the world's best companies. To be sure, a growing majority of the population and an expanding fleet of companies are making tangible investments in the new era of responsibility. Our exceptional growth over the past eight years is a testament to that good news. But more than a handful are not yet on board and some are even reversing their stance at this very moment. On the same day that Bank of America executives jetted to New York to refute Cuomo's inquest into $3 billion in suspicious bonuses funded by you and me, the bank was eliminating the position of a good friend of mine, Bob Mandala, VP of Team Bank of America, the unassuming but passionate man behind their award-winning employee volunteer program, which has mobilized hundreds of thousands of people to serve their communities and put buckets of sweat behind the promise of being the so-called "bank of opportunity." Just last week, one of the largest producers of food in the world, operating in 67 countries, employing over 150,000 people, slashed and burned over three years of effort to take its employee community engagement program global. No longer will this company have the opportunity to leverage its enormous sphere of influence to spread organic agricultural practices to millions of farmers and students. Gone in an instant. Done.

Amidst the economic meltdown, when executives feel the heat of battle, it's not always obvious to redouble investments in programs that don't produce immediate profit. But I'm pretty sure it wasn't obvious to the average business owner in 1776 that they should put their money on a boy who chopped down a cherry tree and then defeated the British empire.

I recently read a story that John F. Kennedy liked to tell, about an early-20th-century French marshal named Hubert Lyautey. As the story goes, one day Lyautey says to his gardener, "Could you plant a tree?" The gardener says back, "Come on, it’s going to take 50 years before you see anything out of that tree." The marshal looks the guy in the eye and says, "It’s going to take 50 years? Really? Then plant it this morning."

The corollary to Paine's quote above is that it's the business of big minds to grow. We've seen dozens of companies that are growing amid the gloom, increasing their investments in responsibility at this critical time. Companies like Campbell's, Travelers, Wells Fargo, Deloitte, GE -- these are companies that are gathering strength in distress. While these companies are suffering bumps and bruises through tough times like everyone else, I have no doubt about their long-term success. And for individuals who are suffering set-backs, the question of how we invest our money at this critical time will surely tip the scale. I can only hope that there is a large number of modern-day Thomas Paines out there. The battle has just begun.

AngelPoints web demo 3.12.09

2009-03-02T15:22:00.000-08:00

Are you tired of managing your volunteer program with Excel spreadsheets and Outlook emails? Is your in-house system outdated and ineffective? Are you ready to take your EVP to the next level?

Join us for an online demo and see the value AngelPoints can bring to your employee volunteer program:

* Increase Productivity. Manage your program more efficiently and with fewer resources using the comprehensive suite of AngelPoints volunteer management tools.

* Enhance Brand Reputation. Track, measure and report on your program's impact to demonstrate its value to your customers, your community and your management team.

* Leverage Talent Capital. Strong employees = strong companies. Engage employees and build a strong program that will help recruit and retain quality people while providing opportunities for skills-based learning, team-building, networking and fun.

Demo will take place Thursday, March 12, 2009 8:00-8:30am PST Sign up now!

Can't make it on March 12? We host live demos once a month. Check out the upcoming schedule here.

Nominations Are Now Open for the Corporate Engagement Award for Excellence

2009-02-27T04:49:00.000-08:00

The Points of Light Institute is now accepting nominations for outstanding workplace volunteer programs to be considered for the annual Corporate Engagement Award for Excellence (previously known as Awards for Excellence in the Workplace).

The Corporate Engagement Award for Excellence will be presented at the 2009 National Conference on Volunteering and Service in San Francisco, California, June 22 - 24.

To learn how to nominate your program, visit http://www.pointsoflight.org/awards/workplace/nominate.cfm. Nominations will be accepted through March 31, 2009. Best of luck to all of your fantastic volunteer programs!

New Online Help Site, Event Icons, Search Enhancements from AngelPoints

2009-02-24T04:28:00.000-08:00

AngelPoints Releases New Online Help and Website
We are pleased to announce a number of new resources to assist you in using AngelPoints to effectively manage your Employee Volunteer Program.

Chief among these resources is our new comprehensive online Help, which you can access by clicking Help in the upper right corner of your AngelPoints site.

This Help site will soon replace the AngelPoints Support wiki, so please update your bookmarks. AngelPoints Help provides explanatory and step-by-step information for all your common and not-so-common AngelPoints tasks. We are also working to build out a compendium of FAQs, Troubleshooting Tips, Best Practices and Examples, and other customer requests over the coming quarter, so stay tuned for more to come on the new Help site.

We've also launched a new website and this blog to keep you better informed about AngelPoints news and product updates as well as best practices in the CSR and volunteerism fields. You may also want to check out our Resources page, where you can find links for more information about
Your feedback about the new Help site, website, and blog is important to us, and suggestions are welcome by emailing marketing AT angelpoints DOT com.

First Wave of New Icons Released
A big thank you to all the users in our beta program who've helped us fine tune the icons used throughout AngelPoints. The first set has been released to better identify event types. Our next round will include icons for actions such as editing, finding an event, adding or removing oneself from the roster, checking weather, and checking driving directions. Following are the new icons that you will see on AngelPoints starting now:

Enhancements to the CRA Module
For AngelPoints clients using the CRA module, there are two new enhancements.
First, Flexible Opportunities and Recurring Events can now be marked as CRA eligible events. Second, the fields LMI, Employee Role, and Financial Activity are now all site configurable and can be removed from the CRA Details page. By default, these fields are all displayed; to remove them from your site, please contact your Account Manager.

More Intuitive Search for Flexible Opportunities
AngelPoints has released a number of improvements to make searching for Flexible Opportunities more intuitive. Because these are significant changes to the user experience, we'd like to prepare you for these enhancements.

First, the option to Search for Flexible Opportunities has been removed from the Home navigation bar. Users can now simply click Search for Events, and the Search for Events page will list both Scheduled Events and Flexible Opportunities on the same page, separated by tabs. In addition, the link to Flexible Opportunities in the Quick Links box has been updated to display the Search for Events page with the Flexible Opportunities tab foremost.

Users also now have the option to search for Flexible Opportunities by zip code, causes, and skill as well as by date.

Validating Hours Just Got Easier, Other Updates from AngelPoints

2009-02-10T09:50:00.000-08:00

AngelPoints' redesigned Validate Activity Hours page now makes it easier for you to find and approve hours for your volunteers. Date search options have been moved to the top of the page, an option to search by groups has also been added, and new tabs make it easier and faster for you to manage Pending, Approved, and Denied hours.

Additional improvements indicate a reordering of the columns to be more intuitive and an indication of which hours were volunteered by Friends and Family. We also now display where the organization came from (whether it was from the IRS database, was a Write-In, or came from another source).

Site Configurable? No, this feature is now enabled for all AngelPoints clients.

Event Reminders and Follow-Up Emails - You're in Control
Managers now have the capability to specify whether they'd like to send event reminders and event follow-up emails for each event they manage.

Site Configurable? Yes, please contact your Account Manager if you are interested in turning on this feature.

Events Report Download Now Includes Event Manager Email Addresses
We'd like to thank one of our AngelPoints users for using the Ideas Portal to suggest that we add event manager email addresses to the downloadable Events Report. This idea has now been added!

Site Configurable? No, this feature is now enabled for all AngelPoints clients.

Note: The product changes described in this post apply only to AngelPoints Version 2. If a feature is listed as site configurable, please contact your account manager to enable it for your site.

New Feature Announcements, and an Update from the Ideas Portal

2009-01-29T09:00:00.000-08:00

Keeping Your Volunteer Team in the Loop
This blog (in conjunction with your AngelPointers client email newsletter) gives you the most relevant information about changes to AngelPoints products and services that increase your productivity and drive engagement. To ensure that AngelPoints users at your company are aware of new features, we suggest that you point your system, group, and event managers to this information. Some ways to share: post a link to this page or copy its content to one of your custom content areas, such as the News & Information area or an About page.

Share Your Stories
Do you have stories that showcase your company’s commitment to volunteering? Have you found better ways of using AngelPoints to increase your productivity? Has AngelPoints better enabled you to promote your company’s events and boost engagement? If so, we’d like to write up your story as a case study, impact spotlight, white paper example, or best practice suggestion.

To share your expertise, please contact Molly Hovorka, Product Marketing Director, by email at mhovorka AT angelpoints DOT com.

Feature Updates

Note: The product changes described below apply only to AngelPoints Version 2. If a feature is listed as site configurable, please contact your account manager to enable it for your site.

Board Membership - Users can now specify whether they are representing your company when serving on organization boards. The Board Membership and Board Participation report downloads both show company representation.
Site Configurable? No
Canadian Charities Added to the Database - The organization database has been updated to include approximately 84,000 Canadian organizations.
Site Configurable? No
Submitting IVA Hours - Now when your users use the copy functionality to log additional Independent Volunteer Activities (IVAs), the date will default to today's date instead of the last date they logged.
Site Configurable? No

Also, when a user adds a new IVA, you can opt to make the Detail/Description field required. This is especially useful for clients who use the CRA module and need to track more detailed information about these activities.
Site Configurable? Yes
Validating Hours - It is now easier to see more information about a volunteer’s participation when validating hours. Previously, you could click his/her name to send an email for more information. Now when you click the user’s name, his/her participant report is displayed. If you still need more information, an email link is available on the participant report page. Watch for more improvements to the Validate Hours page coming up over the next few months.
Site Configurable? No
Updating Groups Via Data Feeds - If a data feed contains new group information for a user, the new group information replaces the existing information in the database. If the feed does not contain any group information for a user, the existing information remains as the current group.
Site Configurable? No
Standard Text Boxes - Standard plain text boxes have replaced the rich text editors on the Submit Hours and Notes to Manager pages for all event types, as well as CRA Notes. By making the notes process simpler, overall usability will be improved and the number of errors reduced .
Site Configurable? No

Your Ideas = Our Action
By now, you've heard about the AngelPoints Ideas Portal. Thank you to everyone who has already logged in, voted on ideas, and commented on them. We're also in there responding to ideas and keeping statuses updated. If you haven't yet logged into the Ideas Portal, you're missing your chance to guide the AngelPoints product roadmap. You can vote on or "promote" any idea. We use the Ideas Portal to ensure that we give you what you need from our product. Some of the ideas that have received votes and comments so far:

A report to track which users haven't yet filled out their profiles
Mark events as "full" from the event list view pages

We're also happy to announce suggestions from the Ideas Portal that we've added to our Roadmap and are committed to delivering:

Additional options when searching for organizations
Improving the organization search
Making flexible opportunities CRA eligible
Event Manager email addresses on the downloaded Events Report

If you are still unable to log in to the Ideas Portal or if you have any questions about how it works, you contact Kate Derrick at kate@angelpoints.com.

AngelPoints Seeking Beta Testers for Rewards Module

2008-12-17T09:00:00.000-08:00

In an effort to ensure that you receive timely and relevant product news and updates from AngelPoints, we've given AngelPointers a new look and direction. AngelPointers will now be emailed to clients one to two times per month as we release new features, and will be cross-posted here on the AngelPoints blog. Typically, you will find brief updates in your email version and more in-depth coverage online.

We are also launching a new website and user Help system early next year. AngelPointers will tie into our product blog on the website, giving you the option of subscribing to an RSS feed for the all the latest about our products and services as well as trends in volunteerism and corporate social responsibility. You'll find complete user documentation in the new Help system, and each release will include release notes directing you to changes in the product.

Please let us know what you think by dropping us a line at marketing AT angelpoints DOT com.

Sneak Preview of Rewards

AngelPoints is preparing to start beta testing its new Rewards module in the beginning of January. The initial release of this module will allow you recognize and reward employee volunteers through grant programs, and a subsequent release will add a merchandise rewards catalog. Volunteers will be able to see rewards for which they are eligible at a glance, as well as peruse the full catalog.

If you would like to beta test the rewards module, please email Angie Schiavoni , Director of Product, at beta AT angelpoints DOT com.

CRA Task List

Many of our clients who use the CRA module have asked for a way to go straight to the task list without hitting the CRA dashboard. Starting December 17, your CRA landing page will be your task list.

News From the Ideas Portal

We'd like to thank everyone who has added ideas and comments to the Ideas Portal since it's launch last month. The Ideas Portal allows select system managers from each company to provide feedback and post ideas on AngelPoints, and we'll keep you updated on the progress of ideas posted. There are currently almost 40 ideas on the portal and we have already added several items to our product roadmap based on your feedback, including showing users that an event is full, better management of shifts within an activity, and the inclusion of flexible opportunities in event searches and event listings on the home page. Please keep the great ideas coming.

Improved Usability, Addressing Clients' Needs are the Themes at AngelPoints First State of the Product Call

2008-11-19T09:00:00.000-08:00

50 Attendees Join AngelPoints for the First State of the Product Call
Ever wonder what new features AngelPoints has planned or what is happening with your feature requests? 50 attendees joined the AngelPoints team for our first State of the Product call on November 12. This forum, which will be scheduled quarterly, is your opportunity to hear a recap of recently released features, find out about upcoming product plans and share your feedback and questions with AngelPoints. The team also unveiled our new Ideas Portal, giving you more say and better insight into the way we prioritize feature requests. Keep your eyes open for information about our next call in the first quarter of next year.

AngelPoints Launches Ideas Portal
AngelPoints recently launched our client-driven Ideas Portal. This portal is a space for you to tell us what you need from AngelPoints products and services. You can post your ideas, as well as vote and comment on ideas posted by other clients. AngelPoints will be commenting and updating the status of issues to give you greater transparency into our product development process. We will be using the Ideas Portal as we plan out our future roadmaps and will give priority to the items with the highest votes.

We are currently in a soft launch of the Ideas Portal, so we ask that you designate one primary person from your company to be point of contact for adding ideas. To gain access to the Ideas Portal, please contact Kate Derrick at kate AT angelpoints DOT com. (If you RSVP'd to the November 12 State of the Product call, you should have already received your log-in information.)

New Icons and Usability Improvements
Improving your user experience is one of our top priorities. To this end, we’ll be making a number of changes over the coming months to improve usability and the overall look and feel of AngelPoints.

Some of these changes are relatively minor in nature, such as using standardized, more intuitive icons. The new Driving Directions icon is an example of a change you’ll soon be seeing when we update all of our system icons before the end of the year.

Addressing more substantial usability issues, such as those that will streamline your workflow, will undergo refinement through out beta testing program before being communicated and released to you. If you are interested in participating in the AngelPoints beta program, please email beta AT angelpoints DOT com and we will contact you.

Flexible Opportunities Improvements
Several improvements have been made to Flexible Opportunities. First, volunteers can now search for Flexible Opportunities by location, and the default date range on the search is consistent with other scheduled events. In addition, the Flexible Opportunities have been added to the monthly Manage calendar, making it easier for manager to see all events in one place.

Rewards
Much of AngelPoints’ product news through the rest of the year will center around the development and launch of our new Rewards module to better support programs such as Dollars for Doers and grants. We’ll keep you informed here in AngelPointers of these additions so that you can coordinate with your Account Manager to add them to your site.