Community Engagement
Improving lives through community service
Volunteerism
Supported and encouraged by SAS through various incentive and awareness programs, employees have given generously of their time and talents. These efforts are making their communities better places to live and work. In 2009, US SAS employees reported volunteering a total of 14,900 hours through the Employee Volunteer Fund, a program in which SAS provides cash contributions to education-based nonprofit organizations where employees volunteer their time.
SAS employees also contribute thousands of hours per year of volunteer time and financial support to other community organizations and charities.
An active internal mailing list connects interested employees with volunteer activities and resources. In 2009, SAS also held a week-long education fair to showcase SAS contributions to education and to inform employees about opportunities to volunteer in their own communities.
Most notably, SAS employees volunteered in large numbers for the following organizations:
- Communities In Schools, a nonprofit organization that coordinates mentoring and tutoring of school children, to help keep them in school and prepare them for life. SAS supports the SAS Kentwood Learning Center both financially and with volunteers. The center has approximately 37 volunteers each week who work with 50-75 students. Support is provided at other Communities In Schools centers, as well.
- SAS EcoAdvocates Volunteer Program, launched in 2009, coordinates grassroots initiatives to increase recycling efforts, over and above the corporate program, in every office building at SAS world headquarters. Last year, 135 employees participated.
- North Carolina Division of Parks and Recreation, particularly the 5,579-acre Umstead Park next door to the SAS campus, where SAS employees participated in volunteer workdays.
- DonorsChoose.org, a website where public school teachers submit their wish lists for materials, employees can choose specific education areas to support, and SAS matches those contributions up to $500 per year per employee.
Citizenship
In support of SAS' commitment to education, the top executives in the SAS Education division serve on a number of boards. Here is a partial list:
- National Board for Professional Teaching Standards, Center for International Understanding Council, e-Learning Commission, University of North Carolina Board of Governors.
- North Carolina Public School Forum, North Carolina News Schools Project, North Carolina Museum of Art, North Carolina Business Committee for Education, Joining Our Business and Schools (JOBS) Commission.
- Data Mining Advisory Board, College of Arts and Sciences, University of Central Florida.
- Central Michigan University Research Corp., Center for Applied Research and Technology.
- Center for the Management of Information Systems, Department of Information and Operations Management, Mays Business School, Texas A&M University.
- Master of Marketing Research Program, Coca-Cola Center for Marketing Studies, Terry College of Business, University of Georgia.
- Institute of Business Intelligence, Department of Information Systems, Statistics, and Management Science, Culverhouse College of Commerce and Business Administration, University of Alabama.
- Department of Statistics and Operations Technology, Daniels College of Business, University of Denver.
- Industry Advisory Committee, North Carolina Community College System.
- Information Technology Advisory Committee, Pennsylvania College of Technology.
- Computer Information Systems Division Advisory Board, Wake Technical Community College.
- Decision Sciences and Center for Quality and Productivity Advisory Board, Business Computer Information System, College of Business Administration, University of North Texas.
Empowering Others
Customers are using SAS software solutions to improve lives and learning in profound and far-reaching ways. For example, in 2009 the Clinton HIV/AIDS Initiative (CHAI) used SAS to:
- Create updated forecasts of anti-retroviral medicine demand for generic suppliers, successfully encouraging them to enter new markets for pediatric AIDS treatment.
- Develop updated combination therapy forecasts to streamline the malaria drug market.
- Generate a new TB drug forecast that contributed to a recent price-reduction agreement with a major manufacturer.
- Create a global HIV treatment cost-driver analysis published in a major medical journal.
- Share forecasts and models with the United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS and the World Health Organization.
- Develop treatment models in partnership with health ministries to best allocate limited resources.
- Build simulations to investigate how to best treat TB and HIV simultaneously, providing system-level cost savings protections to help government planners make decisions about program integration.
Under an innovative program managed by Statistics Norway, Norway's central agency for official statistics, underdeveloped nations receive software from SAS to analyze poverty statistics and 2010 world census data. The software also generates fact-based documentation to support aid requests from agencies such as the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund, the United Nations and others.
Other customers are using SAS to establish programs and policies that directly improve living conditions, health, human rights, environmental quality and agricultural productivity.
