As the judges pore over the nominees for the Pillar Award for Community Service, one question remains: Does your company make a difference in the community?
If it does, your business could join the prestigious list of 22 Pillar Award winners that have a positive impact on Northeast Ohio through their charitable giving and volunteerism.
The Pillar Award, sponsored by Medical Mutual of Ohio and presented by SBN magazine, honors companies of all sizes for giving back to the community. Past winners include Hallrich Inc., Unicare Corp. and Sentinel Consumer Products.
Also sponsored by Xerox Connect, Mars Employment, Renaissance Worldwide, COSE and The Cleveland Foundation, a group of companies that knows the importance of community giving, the Pillar Award’s purpose is to encourage a charitable environment and recognize creative efforts that make a difference through a four-pronged effort to:
- Publicize the issue of community service as it applies to the realities of today’s competitive business world;
- Share creative ideas about how companies of all sizes are having a positive impact in their communities;
- Honor companies that go well beyond the minimum expectation of community service;
- Create a sustaining fund, administered by the Cleveland Foundation, to aid local nonprofit organizations in their mission to serve the people of Northeast Ohio. To date, the sustaining Pillar Fund contains in excess of $20,000.
This marks the third year of the Pillar Award.
Nominations are judged by an independent panel that includes two former Pillar Award winners; Lee Fisher, president & CEO of the Center for Families and Children; John Palmer Smith, executive director of the Mandel Center for Nonprofit Organizations at Case Western Reserve University; Stephen W. FitzGerald, founder of the Nonprofit Newswire; and Judy Barker, senior vice president of civic affairs and corporate contributions for KeyCorp.
Winners will be honored at a banquet Dec. 7, and their good works will be featured in a special editorial package in the December issue of SBN. For more information, contact SBN at (216) 228-6397.
Dustin Klein([email protected]) is editor of SBN.
