Quality Partnerships Over Quantity
How Mission Edge helped USD and Monarch School create an experience for the community, with a year-long project.
Have you ever participated in a donation drive or program that felt entirely impersonal?
Perhaps a past employer asked you to bring non-perishable food items to work, and you weren’t even sure where your donations were going. Maybe your gym collected holiday gifts to donate to families in need, but it was unclear which organization was giving out the gifts, and where the families live.
These initiatives aren’t necessarily bad. But when we fail to create an experience that connects those willing to help to an organization’s values, it can create a significant disconnect.
As the University of San Diego celebrates its 75th anniversary this year, the school wanted to find ways to celebrate its commitment to the community by giving back responsibly. One of its initiatives was to provide volunteering opportunities for its community members. From alumni to students, parents, and faculty, USD had a vision, but needed the people to make it happen.
That’s where Mission Edge came in.
With decades of collective experience curating volunteering and community engagement opportunities, we curated a four-part event schedule throughout the year so USD could engage each community responsibly, and in different ways.
More than Donations
USD has partnered with the Monarch School, a local nonprofit that serves unhoused students and families in San Diego, for several years. Together, they have used their collective resources to put on events like on-site health stations provided by nursing students from the USD Hahn School of Nursing and Health Science, collaborating on research on unhoused students’ education (K-12 Dive), and had the President of USD serve on Monarch’s board of directors. By engaging a variety of resources within USD’s community, both Monarch and USD have provided assistance to very real needs in the San Diego community.
But USD wanted to do more by offering its students, parents, alumni, and faculty an opportunity to impact Monarch School through direct experiences.
Our Corporate Social Responsibility program is partnering with USD this year. Our goal is to help the university give back in a way that directly engages those who want to help.
We are helping USD and Monarch accomplish this through:
A collection donation drive with USD employees.
A collection donation drive with USD students and parents during Move In Day.
Packing kits during USD’s Homecoming weekend with students, faculty, parents, and alumni.
Coordinating a volunteer day at Monarch’s Farmer Market and donating packed kits to Monarch families, with the help of students and faculty.
While it may seem like a simple project, Mission Edge created and developed a full project and communications plan, coordinated all events, and delivered a seamless experience for USD’s 75th Anniversary that spanned an entire year.
At every step of the way, Mission Edge prioritized Monarch School’s needs to ensure the project was helpful and not burdensome.
Partnerships that Align
Effective partnerships start with a shared vision. If your business is interested in finding partnerships that engage your employees, make a true difference, and align with your values, we’d encourage you to start by matching your organization’s values with nonprofit organizations that share them.
When selecting nonprofits, it’s best to keep two things in mind:
Don’t try to solve all the world’s problems. Select ones that best align with your organization.
Don’t over-commit. By stretching yourself too thin, your business and the nonprofit organization will feel burdened instead of assisted by the partnership.
Let our CSR Programming Help You Help Others
USD is a great example of what it looks like to find a partnership that readily aligns with their work. If, like the University of San Diego, you’re interested in learning more about how you can engage your employees in a volunteering experience – without tokenizing the people you’re benefiting – our CSR programming can help.
Let’s be more thoughtful in how we’re collaborating with the organizations that help make our communities a better place – together.
