Here's a hotel title that you don't run into every day: community projects manager. That's the position that Jo Licata holds at the San Francisco Hilton. With overall responsibility for the hotel's charitable and community efforts, she has held this post for 13 years, and, to the best of her knowledge, she was the first — and might still be the only — person at an individual hotel to be so titled. But she is not likely to be the last.

As social responsibility becomes more ingrained in hotel chains and their corporate clients, hotels are increasingly focusing on philanthropic efforts and partnerships. Just about every major hotel chain has a list of charities to which it contributes, and many hotels within the chains add local charities to the mix. For obvious reasons, there's an emphasis on organizations that are well-known nationally and unlikely to be offensive to any customer or group.

“Let's be honest,” says Licata. “We're a business. Our primary concern is taking care of our guests. So what we do has to be in line with our business needs as well as just doing the right thing. People talk about the ‘triple bottom line’: the profits and the employees and the environment. We have to be mindful of all three elements; there's a real connection between the environment at large and the community in which we live.”

Like a Good Neighbor

When Licata started in her position, “the mandate was to be a good neighbor,” she says. “Senior management felt that with our location within the city, it was in our best interest to help promote the economic viability of our neighborhood. I'm very proud of this hotel because we stepped in to create a position for community outreach at a time when nobody else was doing it.”

As part of that community, Licata was instrumental in starting the San Francisco Hotel Non-Profit Collaborative, a group of about 15 hotel partners and others who meet monthly with the goal of lessening the amount of discarded hotel items that end up in landfills. Instead, they donate to charities. “We work with nonprofits, recycling groups, school districts, and others who need what we have,” says Licata. The efforts can be large or small. “What would we do with all the wastebaskets when we change them out in all our guest rooms?” she asks. “We can pay to have them hauled away so they can sit in a landfill, or we can donate them to people who need them.” Likewise with the 2,000 or so coffeemakers the hotel recently replaced, as well as office equipment, suitcases that are never claimed, clothing left behind, and linens that are no longer usable. Even leftover foam core signage from conferences is donated to art students.

Baby Steps

Donations of goods are, of course, only a part of what hotel companies are doing these days. Check out any hotel chain Web site, and it's clear that social responsibility is a priority. InterContinental, for example, supports UNICEF, Kimpton donates to Dress for Success, and Starwood is one of many hotels that partner with Habitat for Humanity. Press releases are put out regularly about programs that allow hotel proceeds to funnel to charities or encourage hotel employees to donate time and/or money. Is it a little self-serving? Sure. But the better question might be whether such efforts make a difference to meeting groups.

“To some groups, it doesn't [matter],” says Nancy J. Wilson, CMP, president of Meeting Strategies Worldwide, a meeting-planning company based in Portland, Ore. For groups that work with her, though, philanthropy often is important. “There's an obvious crossover between being interested in the environment and caring about corporate responsibility,” she says. “Donating items not only keeps things out of landfills but also aids the community, whether it's via homeless shelters, women's shelters, school programs, or other avenues.”

Five years ago, hotels were surprised when Wilson asked where leftover food went; these days, they all have an answer, she says. “The answers to questions like that can play a significant role [when] we're deciding between two comparable hotels. In fact, for some groups, it is the decision.”

Another common question: Where do leftover toiletry amenities go? “The wrong answer is that they're disposed of,” she says. “There is no one right answer. It can be that they're sent to Marines in Iraq or donated to a women's shelter or distributed throughout the community in some other way.”

Wilson also notes that “people can get stuck when they feel that they have to think about it all — it can be overwhelming. This year, ask about the food donation program; next year, look into the amenities. We don't need to take on the world all at once. Every small step is helpful.”

Partner Up

Another thing that groups can do is look for hotels that are making efforts in areas in which their organization is particularly interested or has its own affiliations. If a company is interested in helping young people with disabilities, for example, check out the Marriott Foundation for People with Disabilities, which has placed more than 9,000 young people with more than 1,500 employers in seven metropolitan areas since 1990. A group concerned with economic opportunities for women and minorities might be interested in learning about the Minority Business Enterprise Program, in which small minority- or women-owned businesses are encouraged to bid to become a Loews Hotel vendor. If domestic violence is on your group's radar, be aware that all Fairmont Hotels are part of the company's Adopt-A-Shelter program, in which each hotel donates used household items to local women's shelters.

Time is another invaluable commodity when it comes to helping local communities. At the San Francisco Hilton, Licata will help groups to do local community service if they desire. “I've helped to arrange beach cleanups, park cleanups, sending attendees to shelters to serve meals, and more.” She also arranges for hotel employees to do community service. One example: “A group of our employees goes to a women's shelter each month, prepares and serves the women dinner, and then spends time with them afterward,” she says.

On the flip side, Licata, who reports to the director of sales, also helps meeting groups if they need temporary employees. “If they need bags stuffed, for example, I can put them together with an organization that has people who are looking for work. Everyone benefits — the meeting group gets its bags filled, and people who need work are employed for a time.”

Omni Hotels of California offers a package designed for groups that want to help the local community. Its “Groups for Giving” charity package at the Omni San Diego, Omni Los Angeles, and Omni San Francisco hotels was created for meeting groups and can be customized; the program facilitates attendees spending a day working on an area Habitat for Humanity project and provides hard hats with the Habitat and Omni logos, boxed lunches, and bottled water.

The program was a natural for Omni after a fam trip in which meeting planners had very positive experiences participating in something similar when the Omni San Diego opened in 2004.

But for Jennifer Cunningham, director of sales and marketing at Circus Circus in Reno, choosing which programs to partner with is always a challenge. “There have been times when we've received a hundred requests a month for support,” she says. “There is so much need out there, and there's never enough money to help everyone.” To help make the choices, Cunningham says the hotel focuses most on “what impacts our employees and what we can do to help make their local community better for them.”

To that end, many of her property's projects focus on literacy and education, which hit close to home for many of the casino hotel's employees who are parents. A sampling of projects includes monetary donations to the Children's Cabinet, the Food Bank of Northern Nevada, the After School Literacy Tutoring Program of the Washoe County Education Foundation, and the Fourth Annual Future Artists Competition. This spring, the hotel, with support from parent company MGM Mirage, will completely remodel two local school libraries.

As with many hotel programs, the money comes from several sources: hotel profits, matching funds from the parent company, and employees. “MGM Mirage has a program called the Voice Foundation,” says Cunningham, “which allows employees to contribute however much they designate each paycheck to any charity of their choice.”

Literally hundreds, if not thousands, of charitable organizations benefit, directly and indirectly, from the dollars, time, and hard work of meeting attendees. “We're all taking a new look at how we do things,” says Wilson. “We're learning to take care of our own, and our planet, and each other.”

Food For Thought

Theoretically, one way that a group can work with a hotel to make a difference is by ensuring that any of the group'sleftover food is donated rather than discarded.

In reality, some hotelsmake this more complicated than it needs to be.

“We get pushback all the time from hotels that tell us we can't donate food,” says Nancy J. Wilson, CMP, president of Meeting Strategies Worldwide, a meeting-planning company that is based in Portland, Ore. “Our response: Show us the law that says you can't. Of course they can't, because no such thing exists.”

Hotels often cite worries about liability issues, so be aware of the Bill Emerson Good Samaritan Food Donation Act, which protects good-faith donors from liability in the event that the product donated causes harm to the recipient. Of course, sometimes food really can't be donated, including food that has left a temperature-controlled setting.

If your meeting hotel doesn't have a program in place, contact America's Second Harvest (www.secondharvest.org), a nationwide network of more than 200 food banks and food-rescue organizations, for help in making appropriate arrangements.

For more on how companies can make a difference through meetings, check out PCMA's Network for the Needy at www.pcma.org/source/community/network. The network promotes volunteerism within the convention and hospitality industry in the United States and Canada.