Posted by
Rashid Ferrod Davis in
When I look back at the first 100 days of P-TECH – the Pathways in Technology Early College High School – it becomes clear that rigor, roadmaps, and role models have been essential to our success. The P-TECH grades nine through 14 model is a forward-thinking example of what can happen when public educators and the private sector work together toward our children’s success. P-TECH also represents new paradigms in American education – a public-private partnership that blazes a pathway from high school through college to careers, a hybrid of high school and college that enables the creation of that pathway, and a repeatable model that any community can follow to connect education to employment. Following our example, Chicago will open five grades nine through 14 schools this fall, and Mayor Bloomberg recently announced plans for three more schools in New York.
P-TECH students – a self-selected group from across New York’s five boroughs – will earn both the high school diploma and an associate degree in technology following a rigorous, six-year program. To accomplish this, our students (and their parents) have had to accept the challenges posed by 90-minute classes and a longer school day. They have had to be ready to tackle Workplace Learning in addition to their core academic curriculum. With help from a dedicated faculty and from the IBM mentors assigned to each pupil, our students have had to rise to the challenge of pushing themselves academically while acquiring the cultural orientation of industry professionals.
Posted by
Kirsten Schroeder in
Through years of consulting on education issues for state departments of education and local school districts, I’ve witnessed the challenges of implementing educational programs designed to connect high school graduates to college and career. Today’s economic environment – coupled with evolving global competition for jobs – has intensified the pressure on cities and states hoping to grow and sustain their economies by developing a sustainable pipeline of qualified workers.
To build a robust pipeline of in-demand workers, educators and city leaders must work together to deliver affordable, quality education. In turn, the presence of a well-trained workforce strengthens local economies by attracting and retaining competitive employers. Chicago’s leaders understand this challenge, and embarked on a bold examination of their own educational systems – the Chicago Public Schools, the City Colleges of Chicago, and other education and training providers. Their goal was to develop a strategy to realign educational resources, develop a more educated workforce, and attract more jobs to the city.
Enabled by an IBM Smarter Cities Challenge grant, the City of Chicago pursued its core strategic initiative to forge public-private partnerships between employers and educational institutions. Such partnerships would be essential to identifying needed workforce skills, targeting school curricula to address those needs, and connecting the city’s graduates to meaningful careers. Chicago’s leaders were particularly inspired by IBM’s partnership with the New York City Department of Education and The City University of New York to develop a grades nine through 14 schools model to connect education to industry.
This innovative model – implemented last September at the Pathways in Technology Early College High School (P-TECH) – was designed specifically to create a pipeline from high school to college to employment. Working together to ensure the success of P-TECH graduates, the public and private sectors developed a rigorous and relevant STEM-focused curriculum (Science, Technology, Engineering, Mathematics) that culminates with the associate degree; reinforced learning with mentor/protégé relationships for all students and faculty; and will make sure that P-TECH graduates are first in line for job consideration at IBM.
Chicago used its Smarter Cities Challenge grant to pursue two goals:
- Develop a strategic plan to integrate career and technical education
- Create a guide – the Roadmap for Career and Technical Education – to opening grades nine through 14 schools
The city is moving ahead with its plan to open five new P-TECH-model schools, each in partnership with a private-sector sponsor.
My six team members and I collaborated with civic and education leaders for three months to develop Chicago’s strategic plan. Starting in October 2011, we conducted a series of interviews to develop an understanding of the existing career and technical education service providers and the needs of the communities they served. We wanted to learn about existing programs, any projected changes, and the challenges that stood between the schools and their goal to deliver quality educational services to students.
To supplement our interviews, we conducted a high-level data analysis of the city’s workforce skills and projected demands. This analysis was critical to determining the industry focus areas of the five new schools – information technology, health care, transportation & logistics, advanced manufacturing, and hospitality. Our analysis confirmed those industries as the most high potential forChicago’s workforce, and mapped the connection between anticipated industry needs and current degree and certificate programs in the city’s education system.
The new playbook that we developed jointly with city and education leaders will serve as the template for deploying the grades nine through 14 schools model. Based on our work, Chicago is now able to develop the five schools to focus specifically on employers’ anticipated needs for a skilled workforce. This model of affordable, quality education will help meet the city’s need for economic growth, and will serve as a blueprint for other cities and communities that need to build a pipeline from education to jobs.
Kirsten Schroeder is a Partner in the K-12 National Practice component of IBM’s Global Services Division. Ms. Schroeder specializes in the development and implementation of business systems as well as business process redesign for public sector clients.
Download the “STEM Pathways to College and Careers Schools: A Development Guide” playbook.
Download the Grades 9-14 Chicago and IBM School Partnership fact sheet.
Related Resources:
Mayor Rahm Emanuel: Building a Smarter Chicago
U.S. News & World Report: Grades 9 Through 14 School Model Strengthens Education-to-Work System
Smarter Cities Challenge, Chicago: Contributing Expertise to Build Sustainable Value
Student Perspective: How P-TECH Inspired New Hope After Just One Semester
Student Perspective: Switching to a Grades 9-14 School
Posted by
Rahm Emanuel in
The City of Chicago has just announced its intention to open five grades nine through 14 schools that will confer both the high school diploma and an associate degree in technology – creating a direct connection from high school to college to careers. Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel comments below about the important roles these Early College STEM Schools will play in the city’s economic development and jobs strategy.
How will these new grades 9-14 schools play into Chicago’s economic development and jobs strategy?
Mayor Emanuel: Chicago’s new STEM (science, technology, engineering and math) Schools (grades 9-14) will represent an important step toward strengthening both our education system and Chicago’s skilled workforce. There are 100,000 jobs in Chicago right now that are going unfilled because companies are not finding workers with the appropriate skills. In order to keep and attract businesses in Chicago, we need to provide top employers with the country’s best-trained workforce. STEM schools will help address this gap in skills between employers and applicants.
What are some of the ways you hope the IBM experience in NYC and the Playbook will help Chicago implement this new grades 9-14 education model?
Mayor Emanuel: We worked closely with IBM to develop the Roadmap for Career and Technical Education, which we’ll use together with the STEM Pathways to College and Careers School Guide – the IBM Playbook. One of the major benefits of the grades 9-14 schools model is that it can be repeated successfully for other industries and in any school district. The IBM Playbook will give Chicago a recipe that we can adapt to our unique needs as we connect our educational offerings to jobs.
How has Chicago coordinated the partnerships across secondary and post-secondary schools and with corporate sponsors to create these new schools?
Mayor Emanuel: Public-private partnerships among educators, city leaders, parents, students and corporate sponsors are essential to creating these schools and making them work. Everybody has to contribute, and no single group can do it alone.
Chicago Public Schools, City Colleges of Chicago and IBM are working together on one of the first grades 9-14 schools. An IBM Smarter Cities Challenge team reviewed the Chicago labor market and found that the largest area for job growth over the next six years is in information technology. IBM will work with the school system and CCC to develop the curriculum for the IT-focused school, and will provide mentors for the school’s students and teachers. Graduates will then be first in line for jobs at IBM – a model that all of our corporate partners will follow.
Part of the grades 9-14 school model is to have an extended school day which you also just implemented across the school system. How do you see this helping train our students?
Mayor Emanuel: For far too long, our children have been shortchanged. With the full school day, our students will have the time to dedicate to core subjects like reading and math. Studies have shown that preparing students for 21st century jobs requires more time. Students need the additional learning time and personalized attention to master today’s curriculum – especially in STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Math) subjects. A key component of ensuring that students are prepared for college-level work is bolstering their STEM skills so they will not require remediation in these areas. Students requiring remediation in STEM subjects have a very high post-secondary failure rate.
Which industries, in addition to technology, are expected to provide the greatest opportunities to Chicago’s grades 9-14 graduates with STEM careers?
Mayor Emanuel: After an analysis of Chicago’s labor force, the IBM Smarter Cities Challenge team of experts determined that healthcare, hospitality, and manufacturing will provide the greatest opportunities to Chicago’s grades 9-14 graduates. We’re looking at IT jobs in these industries, and not just preparing students to work at an IT company like IBM. Our goal with these grades 9-14 schools is to attract and retain a diversity of top-paying jobs to Chicago by providing a well-trained workforce to employers.
The Honorable Rahm Emanuel was elected the 55th mayor of Chicago on February 22nd, 2011 and was sworn in on May 16th, 2011. A native of Chicago with three terms representing his North Side district in Congress, Rahm Emanuel is deeply rooted in the life of the city.
Download the “STEM Pathways to College and Careers Schools: A Development Guide” playbook.
Download the Grades 9-14 Chicago and IBM School Partnership fact sheet.
Related Resources:
U.S. News & World Report: Grades 9 Through 14 School Model Strengthens Education-to-Work System
Building the Pipeline to Tomorrow’s Jobs: Smarter Cities Challenge, Chicago
Smarter Cities Challenge, Chicago: Contributing Expertise to Build Sustainable Value
Student Perspective: How P-TECH Inspired New Hope After Just One Semester
Student Perspective: Switching to a Grades 9-14 School
If you are in New York today, look up at the Empire State Building. It will be lighted blue and green for International Corporate Philanthropy Day, an international advocacy day intended to build awareness of public-private partnerships and to inspire businesses around the world to engage more fully.
I’ll be commemorating the day by attending the Billion + Change campaign event, where I’ll speak about IBM’s 2.5 million hour service pledge that has helped inspire 500 companies to lend their best business skills and talents to serve the needs of nonprofits at home and around the globe. As a globally integrated enterprise, IBM is committed to supporting all of the communities in which we work and where our employees reside. We are also committed to skills-based volunteerism, by which we “teach a person to fish” by imparting the expertise and intellectual capital of our global workforce. Many of the tools that IBMers are using to make our communities smarter are now generally available to the public free of charge in the form of our Activity Kits.
To see some of the terrific work that IBM is supporting around the world, take a look at our Centennial Grants program, through which we have awarded 11 grants totaling nearly $1 million. These grants – which support projects that apply IBM’s Smarter Planet strategies to community service – fund innovative projects developed by IBM volunteers in areas such as environmental sustainability, economic development, and civic engagement.
Happy ICP Day, everyone!
Diane Melley is Director of Corporate Citizenship & Corporate Affairs at IBM.
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IBM Corporate Citizenship Efforts “Enrich the Ecosystem.”
Posted by
Jim Amsden in
New Orleans is a fantastic city that has had its share of challenges over the last few years. We spent the first week doing discovery: interviewing and meeting Mayor Mitchell Landrieu, many members of his staff, community leaders, the US Army Corps of Engineers, representatives from Tulane University, and the local IBM team. We collected a virtual library of documents and held workshops to explore key issues in greater depth. Over the course of the three week period we met with over 60 people representing a wide cross-section of perspectives and interests who provided us with a view of the beauty and potential of the City of New Orleans, as well as the challenges the city faces in realizing that potential. We met some truly fantastic people with incredible capabilities and insight, many of whom left lasting impressions on us all.
We spent the second week establishing the scope of the problem, attempting to address not only the issues raised in the New Orleans SSC application, but also those re-enforced through the discovery process. Our scope was to address planning and performance management issues to help the city determine what services they should provide, at what service levels, and how should they provide them efficiently, effectively, and within available resources in order to maximize outcomes delivered to its citizens. In order to do that, we also had to address the creation of an effective Information Supply Chain to provide the information needed to do the planning and performance assessment, and to drive appropriate actions for closing gaps between needs and capabilities.
We then analyzed our findings from the discovery process and formed a set of hypothesis that organized and guided our vision, recommendations and roadmap for enabling New Orleans to become a 21st century City. Our findings centered around four areas or themes. The first was Mayor Landrieu’s vision for 21st Century Government: establishing a culture of performance through objective metrics and actions that drive how government organizations work in order to do more with less. The Mayor wants to be able to see, hear and know how the city is performing against priorities in order to create appropriate actions for closing any required performance gaps. The second theme was Active Community Partnering. No city has the resources required to address all problems. Partnering with the community establishes a collaborative environment in which citizen priorities and needs can be accurately assessed and the hard choices that have to be made can be shared between the service consumers and providers. Open government is needed to provide citizens the information they need in order to contribute to their government and to achieve common good. The third theme was Outcome Based Culture, which recognizes that the role of government is to deliver outcomes that address citizen needs, at a price they are willing to pay. The City’s planning process, Budgeting for Outcomes, was designed to support delivering the most high-priority outcomes possible with available revenue. Key performance indicators are established to ensure operations deliver the planned outcomes, helping realize citizen needs and city goals. The final theme was Data Informed Decision Making, which includes ensuring decisions, actions and operations were driven and informed by complete, accurate, timely and secure data to the stakeholders that need it, and in a form that they can consume.
Read the rest of this article.
Jim Amsden is an IBM Solution Architect, Government Industry.
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Posted by
Dana Rickman in
For the last 20 years, the Georgia Partnership for Excellence in Education has worked side by side with business, community and government leaders on education issues that help enable the state’s explosive economic growth. Our mission has always been to inform and influence these leaders through research and nonpartisan advocacy to improve education policies and practices throughout the state. In furtherance of our educational mission, the Georgia Partnership publishes the annual Top Ten Issues to Watch – an examination of current research, state policy developments, and national trends that will impact the work
of educators and influence child outcomes and indicators.
One of this year’s Top Ten issues focuses on the role education plays in Georgia’s economic development, and reports findings that have far-reaching national implications for cities and states facing the challenge of how to connect education to employment and economic growth. The issue highlights the relationships among academic achievement, workforce training, and regional competition for top employers offering the best jobs both across Georgia and nationally.
Specifically:
- Twenty-first century globalization and technological advances have made nearly obsolete the 20th century progression from high school to steady, long-term employment and full participation in the economy.
- A study released by Governor Nathan Deal’s office indicated that more than 60 percent of Georgia’s jobs will require some form of postsecondary education by 2020 – just eight years from now.
- Despite these requirements, only 42 percent of Georgia’s young adult population has some form of higher education degree.
The bar to career employment with a middle-class income is at an all-time high. And the disconnect between where we are and where we need to be has jeopardized Georgia’s current and future economic health. To address these issues, Governor Deal has taken a first step with the Complete College Georgia Initiative (CCGI). Funded in part by a $1 million grant from Complete College America, CCGI is a statewide effort to implement innovation and reforms to increase postsecondary certificate and degree attainment among Georgia’s workforce.
Every state needs a properly educated workforce to meet the requirements of a growing economy. In a nation where 52 percent of employers report an inability to find qualified workers, we have already witnessed the damage incurred when good jobs leave in search
of a better-educated population. The key to success will involve moving more people through the education and skills pipeline while we forge a direct connection among education and skills and jobs.
To continue this work outlined in the Complete College Georgia Initiative in 2012, state and agency leaders must focus on collaboration between the K-12 and higher education systems. We must engage middle school and high school students to begin developing their college and career ambitions. And, each education agency must have a shared understanding about what “college and career readiness” really means. These steps will go a long way to ensure that Georgia’s high school graduates are ready for college and career, and can help serve as a model for other states facing similar challenges.
Dana Rickman, Ph.D. is the Director of Policy and Research at the Georgia Partnership
for Excellence in Education – an independent, nonpartisan, nonprofit coalition of business, education, community and government leaders who share a vision of improving education in the state.
Download Top Ten Issues to Watch in 2012
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Posted by
Ariel Zwang in
Google “social entrepreneurship,” and you’ll get more than three million hits. The common consensus that runs through the many definitions of this term is the belief that we only can solve such ancient problems as homelessness, hunger, violence and so many others through innovative thinking. This realization often leads us to what appears to be the next logical step: the creation of organizations – whether for-profit or nonprofit – through which to bring fresh approaches to old social ills.
But what does it really take to address social problems on a large scale? How can we focus our efforts to achieve the greatest good? In an economic climate where increasing human service needs must be met with fewer resources, will “innovative” approaches to social entrepreneurship help charities…or get in their way? This last question was raised in
“5 Challenges for the Nonprofit World,” a recent Chronicle of Philanthropy article in which the authors illuminate some of the many challenges – most of them financial – faced by nonprofits in 2012.
When it comes to social entrepreneurship, the temptation to “start fresh” can be strong.
I certainly understand that draw, as starting a small organization can make someone feel close to a cause. But I would suggest that there is a better option – reaching out to one of the many established organizations that provide the highest quality advocacy and social services, and learning how to collaborate with them to make a difference.
Of course, innovation – regardless of economic conditions or an organization’s mission –
is still critical. My organization, Safe Horizon, was created 32 years ago to bring services to victims of crime and abuse. These services were groundbreaking at the time. Safe Horizon now has more than 600 staff in 50 locations throughout New York City to help clients who have experienced some of the worst things people do to each other – child abuse, human trafficking, domestic violence, and sexual assault. And while there have been hundreds of thousands of non-profit organizations that have opened their doors since Safe Horizon’s founding in 1970, an analysis by the Stanford Social Innovation Review ranks us among the few that have grown to more than $50 million in revenues. That’s because our ideas have worked.
The reality is that social services on a truly significant scale are delivered by established nonprofits – typically in partnership with government. So while there is no question that creativity, ingenuity and innovation are needed to solve social problems, they must be complemented with strong management. Only a well-managed organization can overcome the challenges of the nonprofit world to deliver meaningful assistance to its constituents – hundreds of thousands of people each year, in the case of Safe Horizon.
A sizeable and professionally run nonprofit enterprise enjoys numerous benefits of scale that can enable it to provide much more to people in need than a smaller organization. Among them:
- A continuum of integrated services: At Safe Horizon, for example, survivors of domestic violence can receive shelter, legal services, counseling, court accompaniment, and even a change of their locks – all from a single organization instead of having to seek such help from a patchwork of sources.
- Evaluative data: With resources dedicated to evaluation, we can determine – over large groups and over time – what really works best to help people in need.
- Deep expertise, training, and technology: As the organization that runs New York City’s domestic violence, rape crisis, and crime victims’ hotline, Safe Horizon has made tremendous investments in building staff and systems that provide the most professional support possible to callers.
- Highly professional management: Large organizations attract experts in technology, finance, and general management who are at the top of their fields.
When new ideas prove to be useful and good, they result in growth for the organization implementing them. From my perspective, those who want to do the most to address social ills should support the successful work of the best-managed service organizations. When well-managed organizations deliver services on a large scale, they provide the most value to the greatest number of people in need. This is an essential approach to strengthening our social safety nets at a time when all of us must do more with less.
Ariel Zwang is Chief Executive Officer of Safe Horizon, the nation’s leading provider of services to victims of crime and abuse.
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Posted by
Stanley S. Litow in
In the March 2012 issue of Harvard Business Review, Harvard Business School professor Rosabeth Moss Kanter writes that “when business, academic, and policy leaders collaborate to bridge the gaps [between their silos], they create a fertile environment for job growth and more-inclusive prosperity.” Professor Kanter enumerates four key goals that should be on the agenda of every leader, and cites several IBM citizenship programs – Smarter Cities Challenge, Supplier Connection, Transition to Teaching, and the Pathways in Technology Early College High School (P-TECH) – as outstanding examples of companies can “[think] outside the building [to find] opportunities to influence the system around them.”
- “Link knowledge creation and venture creation to speed the conversion of ideas into market-ready enterprises. [Smarter Cities Challenge/Milwaukee and the Milwaukee Aquaponics Innovation Center]
- Link small and large enterprises to promote the growth and success of small and midsize companies and revitalize large corporations through partnerships with innovative SMEs. [Supplier Connection]
- Improve the match between education and employment opportunities. Develop a job-ready workforce through apprenticeships and other education-industry links, including new structures for schooling. [New York P-TECH, a grades 9 through 14 institution that directly connects education to employment]
- Link leaders across sectors to develop regional strategies and produce scalable models that build on local assets and attract new investment.”
Professor Kanter concludes:
Besides creating regional coalitions, business leaders can be institutional innovators. Creative leaders think not only outside the box but also—in my preferred metaphor—outside the building, finding opportunities to influence the system around them. Consider the efforts of IBM, already described in this article. They are business-strategic, involve a wide range of functions, and directly address ecosystem challenges. IBM leads the semiconductor research consortium in Albany; assists the aquaponics innovation districts in Milwaukee; runs Supplier Connection for SMEs; participates in creating six-year high schools in New York and Chicago; and retools engineers as educators through Transition to Teaching. Institutional innovations create better ways to focus R&D, supply chain, or training investments. When the private sector uses its core business capabilities to invent new prototypes for structural change, the public sector gets models to take to scale.
Read “Enriching the Ecosystem” (free registration required)
Rosabeth Moss Kanter is the Ernest L. Arbuckle Professor of Business Administration at Harvard Business School and the chair and director of Harvard University’s Advanced Leadership Initiative. Professor Kanter is the author of SuperCorp: How Vanguard Companies Create Innovation, Profits, Growth, and Social Good (2009).
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Giving Kids the Right Start with Science and Math
Posted by
Bill Boverman in
As we mark this year’s International Childhood Cancer Day, please consider joining the World Community Grid project seeking to find childhood cancer treatments. The International Confederation of Childhood Cancer Parent Organizations established International Childhood Cancer Day in 2002 to raise global public awareness about childhood cancer. The tragic reality is that 175,000 children worldwide are diagnosed with cancer each year, and an estimated 90,000 of these children will die from the disease.
World Community Grid is running Help Fight Childhood Cancer – a project designed to help find a treatment for this dreaded disease. The Principal Investigator for the project is Dr. Akira Nakagawara, president of the Chiba Cancer Center in Chiba, Japan. Dr. Nakagawara is also the President of the International Society of Pediatric Oncology, Asia (SIOP) – one of the driving forces behind childhood cancer awareness.
Please help us in raising awareness of International Childhood Cancer Day and the Help Fight Childhood Cancer project. Then join the global effort to help find treatments for childhood cancers by contributing your unused computing power to World Community Grid.
If you already are a member of World Community Grid, click here to find out whether your computer is set up to help with this vital project. If you haven’t yet signed up for World Community Grid, please register now so you can help us provide technology to researchers so they can make the world a healthier place. Joining is safe, secure, and free.
Bill Boverman is Executive Project Manager, Application Services Delivery Excellence, with IBM Global Business Services
Read More About World Community Grid:
World Community Grid and the Greening of Information Technology
I’ll Take “Curing Malaria” for $1,000, Alex
Japanese Version:
ワールド・コミュニティ・グリッドは小児がんの治療薬の発見を支援しています
みなさん、国際小児がんデー（International Childhood Cancer Day）をご存知ですか？毎年、世界中で17万5千人もの子ども達ががんと診断され、そのうちおよそ9万人の子ども達が幼い命を奪われています。こうした悲しい現実を知ってもらう目的で、国際小児がん親の会連盟（International Confederation of Childhood Cancer Parent Organizations）は2002年に国際小児がんデー（2月15日）を設定しました。
国際小児がんデーを契機に、小児がんの治療薬の発見を支援しているワールド・コミュニティー・グリッドのプロジェクトへの参加を是非ご検討ください。ワールド・コミュニティー・グリッドでは、この非常に恐ろしい病気の治療薬の発見を支援するため、「ファイト！小児がんプロジェクト」（Help Fight Childhood Cancer Project）を展開しています。このプロジェクトの研究責任者は、千葉県にある千葉県がんセンター センター長の中川原 章氏です。中川原氏は、国際小児がん学会（SIOP）のアジア代表も務めており、小児がんについて知っていただく活動を推進していらっしゃいます。是非、ワールド・コミュニティ・グリッドに登録し、皆さんがパソコンを使用していない時間のコンピューティング能力を「ファイト！小児がんプロジェクト」に提供してください。これによって、小児がんの治療薬を発見することに貢献できる、この世界的な取り組みに参加することができます。
既にワールド・コミュニティー・グリッドのメンバーである皆様は、こちらをクリックいただくと、現在ご使用のパソコンが、このプロジェクトを支援できるようにセットアップされているかどうかを確認できます。ワールド・コミュニティー・グリッドに未登録の皆様は、こちらをクリックして今すぐご登録ください。ワールド・コミュニティー・グリッドは、セキュリティーが確保された環境であるため、安全に参加できます。参加は無料です。
子ども達に対する小児がんの脅威を少しでも少なくし、より健康的に暮らせる世界を実現できるよう、皆様の積極的なご参加とご協力をお願いいたします。
Posted by
Diane Melley in
At the recent Wharton Social Impact Conference, I spoke about how corporate social responsibility (CSR) can complement core business strategies. This topic could not have been more timely, given IBM’s launch of our new services grants portfolio for 2012.
The evolution of our Corporate Citizenship grants portfolio mirrors that of our corporate strategy. In the same way that we have maintained our core values of service and integrity while adapting to the changing business landscape of our first 100 years, our CSR portfolio has evolved from donations of cash and computer hardware to sharing our wide-ranging expertise to help improve the human condition. Along the way, we have maintained the link between our culture of service and our business strategy in an effort to create sustainable value around the world.
I lead a team whose mandate is to deliver software, services and consulting grants to our nonprofit partners. Our grantees rarely get access to the type of cutting-edge technology that we offer, but with our help they’re able to serve their constituencies better. For example, last year we awarded Families First a grant to access Statistical Package for the Social Sciences (SPSS), a computer application that examines an organization’s existing data to uncover unexpected patterns and associations – thereby helping to anticipate change and devise strategies to improve outcomes. Using SPSS, Families First was able to vastly improve its analysis of client data to improve risk management and compliance.
We also have donated access to our LotusLive collaboration suite – a “cloud-based” solution that enables quick, easy and secure Web conferencing, file sharing, online community building and more. Cloud computing offers users the ability to increase data storage and application use without investing in new infrastructure. It’s a breakthrough technology that enables our grantees to exchange information and manage projects more easily – all from the convenience of an Internet browser. Our grantees have used LotusLive to:
- Deliver webinars to share best practices across the Latin American Network of fair and sustainable cities;
- Use webinars and file sharing to increase the effectiveness of planning processes; and
- Build relationship networks to connect health care personnel assisting in the Haitian relief effort.
I am humbled every day by the incredible work that organizations in our communities are doing on the ground, and thrilled to help provide the tools they need to work better, faster and smarter.
Diane Melley is Director of Corporate Citizenship & Corporate Affairs at IBM.
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