Redmond Doin' Good
Five years ago I started going through Microsoft Research projects. Most of them I couldn't make heads or tails of. Some of the ones I did understand had a common theme: helping the world. It turns out that Redmond connects with top researchers and academics on everything from fighting to disease to mapping the universe, agriculture and global warming.
The United Way gets this and recently gave Microsoft two awards for its good deeds in support of education.
While Microsoft Research does hands-on work, Microsoft corporate gave out over $600 million last year to various charities. The United Way cashed in on over $14 million of Microsoft's offering, which was used to build tools to reduce school drop-out rates and increase math scores.
It wasn't all just cash. Microsoft employees spent over 360,000 hours volunteering. It that makes a few products a bit late, then so be it.
Is Microsoft as good a corporate citizen as I make it out to be or is it just making up for past misdeeds? You tell me at [email protected].
Posted by Doug Barney on 07/18/2011 at 1:18 PM