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To: ms.smartest.person who wrote (185)	8/27/2000 10:49:40 AM
From: Uncle Frank	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 405

Counselor to help Cisco workers donate a piece of their prosperity Advice on sharing wealth BY JOHN BOUDREAU Mercury News You've heard all the Silicon Valley perks: The chef serving up a three-course lunch, the 4 p.m. yoga class, the office ``retreat'' in Hawaii. Now, there's the on-site philanthropy counselor. Getting in touch with one's inner philanthropist isn't as easy as you'd think. Cisco Systems Inc., which has helped many employees become millionaires, wants to help them give that overnight wealth away. Starting next month, a full-time counselor will have an office cube at Cisco to advise workers about how to shed some of their gold-like company stock. The position is yet another example of Silicon Valley's 24/7 corporate culture: People fall in love at work, exercise at work, sleep at work. Now they can work out their giving issues on the company clock. ``It's better than picking up the dry cleaning,'' says Stacy Palmer, editor of the Chronicle of Philanthropy. Cisco is already a leader in corporate philanthropy. The idea for the in-house counselor is the brainchild of Peter Hero, president of Community Foundation Silicon Valley, a San Jose-based non-profit fund that specializes in helping donors pick charities. In a 1998 survey, the foundation learned that office attitudes toward giving greatly influenced workers. ``This is a Silicon Valley way to bring philanthropy to the employees as opposed to hoping they find this information on their own,'' Hero says. ``Just as some companies provide counseling on financial planning, this will be an opportunity to provide advice on sound philanthropic strategies.'' After all, if employees can play volleyball at work, why not give? At Cisco's headquarters in San Jose, the counselor will set up an in-house Web site listing charities and allowing co-workers to ``leverage'' donations by joining others interested in the same organizations. ``We are not going into Cisco promoting any cause or agency,'' Hero adds. ``We are simply providing a resource to people on what is available.'' The counselor will technically be an employee of the Community Foundation and will hold one-on-one sessions with Cisco employees. Hero is now looking for someone to fill the job. Cisco will pay the foundation a fee, which is still being negotiated, says Tae Yoo, the company's director of corporate philanthropy. But the counselor will be held to a Cisco standard. ``We are going to give this person a goal to sign up people,'' she says of the philanthropy adviser. ``Just like a sales quota.'' Those in the philanthropic field say they've never heard of such an effort. Other companies could do the same, they add. Providing meaning in the workplace could help retain talented employees. ``It is so wise,'' says Dorothy Ridings, president of the Council on Foundations in Washington, D.C. ``We think of employee benefits as being a very static set of things. This is the sort of thing that has enormous appeal to exactly the kind of employees that Cisco has.'' Indeed, Cisco employees are in a separate class: More than 2,000 of Cisco's 19,000 workers are millionaires from their Cisco stock. Extreme success comes with its own issues. ``People think it's so easy to give money away,'' says Palmer, the Chronicle of Philanthropy editor. ``But you can fizzle it away very easily. You do need some counseling.''