CSRwire Member Spotlight: Western Union

Western Union decided to launch a new CSR platform in September of 2007. The company spent a year engaging in intensive self-evaluation and market analysis in their quest to make a serious CSR contribution. Though their carbon footprint is small, their geographical footprint is enormous. Luella Chavez D'Angelo believes “there is no larger geographical footprint than Western Union’s in the corporate world”. The company decided that global migration should be its CSR focus.

In turn, the company compiled a list of migrant experts around the globe. The resultant Migrant Advisory Expert Panel turned its eye to, among other things, the following migrant-related issues: family separation; access to education; and, what Ms. D'Angelo calls, “acculturation to the country in which one has landed”.

Ms. D'Angelo says about the new CSR platform: “Our goal is to make migration a choice, not a necessity. We need to be a voice for migrants. Migration,” she adds, “is increasing, not decreasing”. Ms. D'Angelo reports that Western Union “didn’t find any other corporation speaking up for migrants”.

A host of concerns accompanied the organization’s decision to make migration its top CSR priority.

“It was not without some internal trepidation and struggle,” says Ms. D'Angelo, that Western Union “decided to be a voice for migrant populations across the globe”.

The subject of migration is often a touchy one. In the United States, especially, Western Union had reason to fear some prevailing misunderstandings about it, most notably that the phenomenon is particular to this part of the world. Ms. D'Angelo says a central challenge in formulating the new CSR initiative was “helping people in the US understand that migrants are not just coming here from Latin America”. Western Union, she observes, must improve Americans’ “global migration awareness”. People are leaving home for countries all over the globe. As Ms. D'Angelo remarks, “these are the dynamics that make our world rich”.

In the two years since their development of a new CSR initiative, Western Union has produced an impressive array of platforms. Take, for instance, their new scholarship program, which Ms. D'Angelo observes was “very similar to other corporations’ [scholarship programs] until September, 07”. The new program aspires to lift up multiple members of a household. Two siblings might benefit from the scholarship instead of one, or it may be a parent and child who mutually receive the scholarship benefits. Recipients of these include two brothers from Kenya who will pursue their dreams to promote sustainable development in rural Kenya, with one brother working toward a degree in New York and the other brother attending university in Njoro, Kenya. Two Filipina sisters will also pursue university degrees, one in Korea and the other in Leyte, Philippines.

Another particularly impressive aspect of Western Union’s CSR practice is their abundant employee participation. The corporation has 6000 employees worldwide and 51,000 agent contracts. Western Union agents aren’t bound by one business model, however, which posed a potential challenge to Western Union’s CSR innovators. But the challenge has been overcome. More than 150 agents have raised over $11 million since 2007. This is the outcome of a lengthy process of encouraging agents and all Western Union employees to match donations by the Foundation.

Ms. D'Angelo explains that Western Union decided, in ‘07, to exceed the standard corporate match in CSR investments. In addition to employee-directed donations which are matched one for one, the Foundation encourages employees to support its grantmaking by matching unrestricted donations 2:1 in the United States and 3:1 outside the U.S. (owing to foreign tax laws).

This year Western Union was honored by the Committee Encouraging Corporate Philanthropy. The prestigious CECP Award was given to Western Union for their Our World, Our Family program “for fostering global economic opportunity for migrants and their families”.