Fidelity case questions

Discussion Case: Fidelity Investments’ Partnership with Citizen Schools
1. The evidence that I see in this case of the three kinds of corporate philanthropy discussed in this chapter is in contributions of cash, Fidelity contributed money to many Citizen Schools since 1998 and by 2012 they were contributing to about 22 different middle schools. With in-kind products and services, Fidelity offered 70 different apprenticeships to the schools in topics such as robotics, law, and financial literacy. And lastly with employee time, 95 percent of Fidelity’s employees that took part in the program and went to these schools reported improved team-building skills and 3/4 of the employees reported that they felt more connected to their colleagues and had improved communication, public speaking, and presentation skills.
2. The benefits to Fidelity Investments of its partnership with Citizen Schools are, 71% of CS alumni completed high school in 4 years, compared with 59% of matched peers. Also, 63% of students who had participated had enrolled into college, compared to the 41% of low income students nationally. Fidelity and CS had active partnerships with 31 schools with low-income communities in seven different states and served more than 4,000 students. The risk with Fidelity partnering with Citizen Schools could be that if the program fails, it would give Fidelity a bad name and could negatively effect Fidelity’s business and brand name.
3. Fidelity Investment’s partnership with Citizen Schools is an example of strategic philanthropy because the corporation of Fidelity gave business knowledge and ethics to students in middle school so they would be more prepared for higher education and for the real world, which would be linked to their business goals and objectives because eventually they would have these students that they spent time with, coming up into the corporation and could be using these skills in the future and possibly with the Fidelity Investment Corporation.
4. If I was a community relations manager for Fidelity Investments, I would evaluate the impact of the partnership as to how many students graduate high school and college, and move on to the business world successfully. The kinds of impacts that I would attempt to measure would be the rate of students that finish all of their education and then survey the salaries that are being made by them and by students who did not go through the program and higher education, to compare to see if the program actually helped and was successful.