By Floyd Keene, President, The Triple EEE Foundation
Recently, I began thinking about major trends that will affect philanthropy in upcoming years. I concluded that the following five are likely to occur, and, if they do, they will change the face of American philanthropy forever. In fact, the fifth trend alone—the emergence of social issue-specific Super PACs—has the power to forever change the flow of philanthropic funds within America.
By Juanita Garcia, GenCorp Foundation
I don’t know about you, but I find my company’s employees are my best ambassadors. Employees at Aerojet are proud of the work they do – developing propulsion systems that power our nation’s exploration of space and help keep our military men and women safe in defense of our country.
As director of the company’s corporate foundation, employees often introduce me to nonprofit groups and projects that could benefit from GenCorp Foundation grants. Our foundation’s primary giving focus is STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Mathematics) Education to ensure our nation’s future workforce is equipped to perform in the 21st century’s technology marketplace.
The foundation funds in 12 diverse communities across the United States – and each of our Aerojet sites has a distinct corporate culture. Yet common at each site, I find our employees are a generous group – giving of their time and talent in a variety of ways through volunteering in their communities and opening their wallets for our annual workplace giving campaign.
Because the GenCorp Foundation mission is focused on education, foundation funding does not often support organizations and causes in which our employees are personally interested. So in 2010, the GenCorp Foundation board approved allocating funding for each Aerojet site to use in conjunction with employee volunteer efforts. Dubbed Aerojet in Action, local volunteer committees organize team volunteer activities and are empowered to give a grant to support the school or nonprofit where Aerojet employees provided much-needed volunteer power.
