When Hasbro Inc. Vice President of Community Relations Karen Davis sat down with other executives to map out the toy company’s community-giving strategy, community service quickly emerged as a central pillar. The Pawtucket company’s employees already spend thousands of hours annually volunteering and Hasbro often lends its expertise to community efforts.
So the company aimed to encourage others, specifically children, to engage in community service. When executives learned that an assortment of organizations planned to merge to form an institute to do just that, Hasbro pulled out its checkbook. To speed the formation of the new organization, Hasbro committed a five-year, $5 million grant – its largest-ever single gift.
Known as GenerationON, the organization, run by the Washington, D.C.-based Points of Light Institute, officially launched in October.
“Service is a thing that resonated because it’s really true to who we are,” Davis said. “It’s part of our DNA.”
For about a decade, the toy maker has operated Team Hasbro, an in-house group of employees who put their professional skills to use on volunteer projects. To encourage volunteering, the company provides its employees four hours paid time off each month to work with children. Employees have done everything from fighting Nerf gun wars with foster children to “baking” Play-Doh cakes for Adoption Rhode Island’s 25th anniversary.
GenerationON marks the company’s latest initiative and a significant investment of time and resources by the world’s second-largest toy company, as ranked by revenue. The Hasbro gift comprises one-third of GenerationON’s entire budget. The company also stands as the only Rhode Island-based, corporate backer of GenerationON.
GenerationON comes as the merger of a multitude of nonprofits. The national Points of Light Institute, looking to expand its community service efforts to youth, acquired Children for Children in July. The latter New York City-based organization that arranged youth-service projects was seeking to expand its presence nationally.
Points of Light also merged with Kids Care Clubs, an organization that supported ad hoc groups of youth engaged in service projects. Points of Light also added The League, a curriculum for teaching service-based learning.
Together the organizations formed Points of Light’s youth-service division, known as GenerationON.
“The organizations were going to merge but the opportunity that Hasbro provided was the ability to kind of define the work,” Caruso said.
Hasbro fits well as a partner because by its very nature the toy company knows children, Caruso said. Company executives can – and have – advised GenerationON about how to reach children and structure programs so they prove both fun and meaningful.
“For us it was a natural fit,” Davis said.
In Providence, GenerationON supported a project at Roger Williams Middle School that included landscaping work and painting undertaken by parents. Now, the organization is working with school administrators to find a project that the school’s students can complete.
Davis and Caruso said GenerationON aims to show children that they can tackle the world’s problems and provide a platform for children, especially those from poor areas, to give back.
To encourage community-service lessons in the classroom, GenerationON posted more than 1,200 lesson plans on its website. One lesson teaches the importance of tutoring younger students, another addresses poverty and homelessness and ends with students creating awareness posters.
Back at Hasbro in Pawtucket, Davis said a team of employees is lending a hand in getting GenerationOn off the ground by assisting with marketing and branding. And together with GenerationON leaders, they assembled a team of 10 children to serve on a youth advisory panel.
“It’s the youth voice that we desperately need to hear from,” Davis said.
That voice also represents Hasbro’s customers. The company is the parent of storied toy lines like Mr. Potato Head and My Little Pony. Davis said Hasbro feels a responsibility to serve as a good role model for children buying its products. It also wants to keep their parents, typically the ones holding the wallets, thinking positively about Hasbro.
“It matters to our consumers,” Davis said. “I think they should understand that when they buy a Hasbro product they’re helping to do something really good for kids.”
Partnerships such as GenerationON also help boost the morale of employees as they take pride in working for a multimillion-dollar company that supports community projects.
“They get it, because it’s part of who we are,” Davis said. •
