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The assignment highlights the CISCO’s organizational and alignment of the same with its philanthropic objectives

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CISCO ORGANIZATIONAL OBJECTIVES AND ALIGNMENT OF THE SAME WITH CISCO’S PHILANTHROPIC OBJECTIVES:

Cisco domain of operations reflects well the organization’s philosophies as indicated in its annual report. Cisco is concerned with networking and networking is all about bringing people together in all aspects of life. The company is committed to transform its networking skills and resources to several powerful possibilities for the community.  By 2002, Cisco has revealed its corporate philanthropic strategy is contained in taking up its unique internet competencies to create a positive global change. One of the philanthropic objective of the organization right from the days of its inception is to support the community and the people. However in the early days of CISCO, there is no any specific strategy employed by CISCO to support the community. It used to do community help through unorganized as well without any specific strategy as well. In 1993, CISCO supported the second Harvest food bank, initiatives to cater the needs of the community at larger scale. Further in 1994, CISCO added city year and Wilcox High school as its interfaces for community help. CISCO used its technical competency to help non-profit organizations like Harvest to reengineer its process plans to increase the efficiency as well as to contribute to the savings to the organization. Through Cisco networking academy there are substantially discounted training programmes made available to several stakeholders in US as well as on global perspective. Through TechSoup the non-profit organization, Cisco worked for the donation of the equipment. Other initiatives included supporting the learning disabled, working for the support of the humanitarian programs as well working for the support of the sports programs and there by working for the contribution to the charity program. Subsequent large scale adoptions of CISCO are all based on the coherence of the organizational objectives with the core philanthropic strategies of CISCO and further there should be an element of strong technical expertise requirements, where CISCO capabilities can be utilized. Example of the successful adoptions includes, NetAid, Acumen Fund, Comic Relief, Habitat for Humanity. Considering the start up from a small scale community services facilitator, CP is now working to create a big impact over the community on a global scale. It is already successful in this endeavour by means of several of its strategies implemented so far. CP is working further in the same direction. By considering all these aspects broadly, it can be said that CISCO’s philanthropy programmes fit well the organizational objectives of community support through networking capabilities(Hyot,2003).

CISCO PHILANTHROPIC PROGRAMME ORGANIZATION AND EFFECTIVENESS

Cisco’s organizational philanthropic programme is effective in few aspects, CISCO is committed to take in the advantage of its higher technical capabilities and leverage the same to support the non-profits or the communities directly in their community support activities. CISCO ideology is very proactive, providing internet to the prebuilt houses in Habitat working model to reduce the digital divide is an exemplary idea to support the communities to progress. CISCO enabled Red nose program to rise extensive funding for all its programs by enabling internet based community access as well. Net Aid worked for educational partnership and Acumen fund worked for improving the health technologies in partnership with CISCO. All these strategies worked well to support the communities and they are well inline with Cisco’s philanthropic objectives of positive global support and impact. Coming to recommendations, there is still much to do for CISCO if thinks beyond its technical expertise and limiting the community benefits to technology and related supports. Since CP is well established and has large corpus funding, it can partner with non-technical and non-profit organizations as well, working for the philanthropic interests in the society and they can broaden their scope of services and can outreach more and more people, who are really in need of help and co-operation from multiple domains(Hero,2001). 

TANGIBLE AND INTANGIBLE BENEFITS OF CISCO:

Tangible benefits of the CISCO programmes are several and varying from programme to programme.  For example, from the Habitat programme, the beneficiaries are getting the right type of support for their habitation in the form of houses with internet support and access. Through Tech-soup the beneficiaries availed networking equipment at very less prices. Acumen Fund program worked to enable better health technologies like drinking water supply systems, sanitation facilities etc in the developing countries. These are all immediate tangible benefits materialized from CISCO philanthropic programmes. Non-Tangible benefits rendered by CP include promoting technical and non technical education, supporting the community health, developing support and thereby increasing the knowledge and capabilities of learning disabled people.  These are some of the several intangible benefits provided by CISCO to its beneficiary.

RECOMMENDATIONS TO CISCO:

CISCO as of now has leveraged its resources of money, technology and employee talent capabilities in rendering the best in class philanthropic benefits to the society. However still there is still much the company can do the society. Company can partner with other technology companies as well as other non-profit organizations to take advantage of their capabilities for better outreach to the society. For example partnership with other philanthropic technology like Dell, Microsoft or Lenovo may enable CISCO to provide more competent technical benefits. Further this association need not be limited to one country or nation; it can continue this strategy for global companies. Also partnership with more non-profit organizations working in the community help domain, will enable CISCO to get in touch with more and more community problems across the world and this will enable the company to meet the objective more effectively. Further CISCO should also focuss on its corpus funds and financial management of its philanthropic division fundings, When compared with the last year, there is fall in the overall funding and CISCO need to consider financial management more seriously to keep itself in safer position.

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