CARY -- LaToya Montague was delighted to sign up a half-dozen volunteers in a little more than hour at the SAS Education Fair.
"That's really good," said Montague, the volunteer director and lead program coordinator at Communities in Schools of Wake County, a nonprofit that offers tutoring to public school students. "I have gone to events of this size and maybe gotten three volunteers in a three-hour period."
SAS's second Education Fair, a three-hour event the software giant held for employees Tuesday in a five-story atrium at its Cary campus, was anything but typical corporate fare.
Companies don't normally host 20 outside educational organizations -- including Wake Technical Community College, Meredith College, the Wake Education Partnership and the Lucy Daniels Center for Early Childhood -- to discuss their educational programs and, in some instances, solicit volunteers.
"Volunteers are more important than ever because we have a 30 percent dropout rate [in North Carolina] and our kids are not succeeding," said Ann Goodnight, director of community relations and the wife of SAS co-founder and CEO Jim Goodnight.
In addition to promoting volunteerism, the fair was designed to disseminate information valuable to employees who are parents of school-age children, said Goodnight, who serves or has served on a long list of educational boards.
Direct benefits
The fair also put a spotlight on SAS's direct efforts to benefit education, including developing a free Web-based curriculum for high schools and its support for a private-public partnership that provides laptops to rural North Carolina schools.
"I love this whole atmosphere about learning," said Huifang Wang, a SAS manager who toured the fair seeking information that could help her 10-year-old daughter down the road. "I'm so happy to see SAS helping education in so many ways."
SAS, which has more than 4,200 employees in Cary and more than 11,000 worldwide, is renowned for its rich worker benefits. That includes programs to encourage employees to give their time to education groups.
For every 50 hours a year that an employee devotes to an educational organization, SAS's Employee Volunteer Fund will donate $250. (Maximum donation: $1,000 per employee per year.)
Lynne Bresler, a technical writer at SAS, tutors up to five hours a week at the SAS-funded learning center at Kentwood, a public housing project in Raleigh.
"It's very rewarding," said Bresler, whose volunteer time last year generated a $500 SAS donation to the Kentwood center. "It's nice to work with a student population that really needs your assistance."
Since the beginning of 2008, SAS volunteers have generated more than $120,000 in donations through the Employee Volunteer Fund, according to SAS.
Matching contributions
SAS also supports the national Donors Choose program, which enables people to donate money directly to public schools to purchase things they need, from art supplies to digital cameras.
SAS matches employees' donations dollar for dollar. That collaboration, according to the company, produced $35,000 in donations over the past 18 months.
Employees Rick Langston and his wife, Beth, are true believers. In the past three years, they have donated money in each other's name to schools in lieu of Christmas presents. Last year, each gave $500.
"Understand this is all matched," Rick Langston said. "It is double that amount."
In return, they get a packet of thank-you notes from the students they help, many of whom have special needs.
"Tears just well up when you see what it can do," he said.
