Chicago Charity Challenge Kicks Off Second Year
CHICAGO (CBS) -- Businesses go head-to-head all the time, and many of them will soon begin competing to see which can raise the most charity dollars and provide charity volunteer time from among their employees.
It's called the Chicago Charity Challenge, and this year is its second year.
Executive director Stacey Rago said there were 20 teams last year that raised more than $6.2 million for charities, as well as volunteered over 20-thousand service hours.
Rago said "a team" is a company partnered with a charity. There are 100 charities waiting for partners.
"People want to work for and do business with companies that give back," Rago said. "Studies have shown this, our experience has shown this, and millennials are driving that movement."
This year, the contest starts May 1st and ends December 31st.
Last year's winning team was the Paul Hastings Law Firm which teamed with Christopher House charity to "build a new school in the Belmont-Cragin neighborhood", according to Rago. She says the firm negotiated the purchase, created the lending structure and got the right permits.
The 63 employees in the Paul Hastings' Chicago offices contributed nearly 3,400 volunteer hours and nearly $2 million worth of legal services.
Groupon employees, collectively, volunteered more hours than any other team – 8,700. That's more than twice as many as the next placed team.
So teams know how they're doing throughout the year, they can follow the contest online on the GiveTrak program.
"We actually have a tracking system that is pretty simple to use; a computer program that allows people to see in real time, on our website, how the teams are doing," Rago said. "So they go there, and they check, and they say 'Oh, we've fallen to second place, let's do another project."
Companies with at least 50 employees can register their team with Chicago Charity Challenge at www.chicagochacha.org.