Instead of Giving, Why Not Do?

“A couple of years ago an author told me “I wrote a book on philanthropy in American corporations. It isn’t working very well.” 

I said, “You know what is sad? So many American businesses destroy lives every day, but we make a lot of money, and then we feel really good when we write a check to the United Way for $1 million. But I believe we are creating the need for the United Way in the first place by destroying the lives of the people who create the wealth that enables us to give. I believe the greatest charity is what we could do at work every day to take care of the people entrusted to us.””

Bob Chapman, Chairman and CEO of Barry-Wehmiller in his book Everybody Matters

I read this book a few weeks ago and was reminded of this section when looking at the responses of a number of corporate leaders to the death of George Floyd and ensuing protests asking for an end to racism in America. It seems like too many corporate leaders are announcing a few things: 1) We are looking at our internal processes to ensure we do not allow racism to affect decisions, 2) We are auditing our vendors to ensure that they do not engage in racism, and 3) we are writing a check to some external organization (e.g., Black Lives Matter). While I commend all three of these actions, it does beg a question: What were you doing before? 

In this year’s HR@Moore Survey of Chief HR Officers we asked questions about both the challenges in increasing the number of racial minorities in the pipeline for senior operating roles and what things they had found effective for increasing that pipeline. Regarding the question about what they had found effective for increasing minority representation, of the 90 responses that have come in as of this writing, 8 literally answered “Nothing” or “Not a priority at this time” and an additional 23 did not bother to answer. Over the next month or so I will summarize some of the results (the survey has not closed yet) but I just write this to shine a light on what is NOT being done (almost all respondents filled it out before Floyd’s death). 

I hope it’s not the case, but I fear that some of these checks seek to purchase absolution for abdication of the responsibility to build black talent in the organization up until now. It may be that your organization’s failure to invest internally has created the need for those external organizations to whom you are writing the checks. 

So, in the spirit of Bob Chapman, rather than feel good about writing a check to some other organization, why not focus your time, energy and money on solving the problem in your own organization?