To make our commitment as effective as possible, the global strategies for donations and sponsorship have been updated. The new rules apply from the 2013 business year and define the application of the IOOI (input, output, outcome, impact) method for measuring effectiveness.

The IOOI method

We also encourage our employees to get involved in volunteer projects and work with nonprofit organizations to initiate projects that give our local employees an opportunity to provide assistance (corporate volunteering). The completion of a social project is also an integral part of a number of our advanced training measures and support programs.

Volunteer projects carried out with colleagues strengthen team spirit and promote social skills. The company thus benefits not only from its employees’ involvement, but also from the skills they acquire in the process.

A good example of the voluntary social involvement of our employees is the I-Green initiative in China. More details can be found on our reference page.

The Siemens values of being responsible, excellent and innovative also apply to our social engagement. They are the foundation for our high quality standards when choosing projects to support, carrying them out and measuring their effectiveness.

Since fiscal 2010, we have been using the “SpoDoM" (Sponsoring, Donations and Memberships) tool we developed to combine our sponsoring, donation and membership activities strategically and improve how we direct and oversee them. The tool is mandatory for all Siemens units, and governs the entire approval process worldwide. We use it to gather all the important information, such as strategically oriented use, achievement of goals or compliance with pertinent requirements of law for our corporate citizenship activities.

Our strategic approach – in addition to our donation analyses and external assessments – helps us choose projects and initiatives carefully and allows us to better evaluate the impact of our initiatives on society, employees and business.

By improving the measurability and transparency of our activities, we aim to bring projects and initiatives more closely in line with our company's core competencies and take a more structured approach to defining, developing, implementing and measuring them. That will allow us to guide a continuous process of improvement, focusing on the goals we want to achieve. We will also be intensifying our dialogue with external and internal stakeholders, so that we can determine local needs even more precisely, and coordinate our activities accordingly. Only in that way will we be able to achieve the greatest possible impact.

Examples of our corporate citizenship projects and their results are available on our reference page.