The culture of giving has been around for a while at Systems Evolution Inc. During the beginning of the consulting firm’s history, each year during the holidays, the consultants would present a gift to founder and CEO Dan Pierce and his wife to acknowledge their generosity to the employees and their families.
After a few years of this tradition, they decided to forego it and instead fund a charitable project that they knew the Pierces would appreciate. The Pierces loved the idea so much that they decided to do the same with the annual gift to the employees. Now, instead of giving the employees an annual gift, the company makes a donation to each office’s charity of choice during the holiday season. Some of the organizations that have benefited are the Ronald McDonald House, Cincinnati Children’s Hospital, Cincinnati Works — Next Steps Program, Family Cancer Care and others.
But this is just the foundation for the giving culture at Systems Evolution. The company has become the largest contributor to the Children’s Hospital Adopt-A-Family program, and this program has grown within the company every year since its inception in 2002. The company works with social workers at the hospital to identify families who have a chronically or terminally ill child and are having trouble providing Christmas to their children. They then set out to make sure the family can have a wonderful holiday. Last year, employees at the company sponsored 14 families, purchasing not only gifts for the children but also needed household items, beds and appliances that the families could not otherwise afford. But still, their generosity did not stop. Employees also provided each family with gift cards to local grocery stores so that the family could purchase food. The impact is deeply felt according to Dianne Schawe-Kraus, a neurology social worker at Cincinnati Children’s Hospital.
“The generosity is truly overwhelming both to us as social workers and to the families who receive the gifts,” she says. “I know the joy of giving, and I’m guessing the spirit is strong in each of you. … Our families are blessed to have someone care so much to take the time you all do to make each family have the best Christmas celebration ever. I know that some of them ‘pay it forward’ when they can. This is how it should be.”
How to reach: Systems Evolution Inc., (513) 459-1992 or www.sysev.com
