NEW YORK (AP) — Michelle Barbin's job does not always fill her bucket. Yes, she likes her nine-to-five helping improve consumer experiences at Blue Cross Blue Shield of Massachusetts. She emphasizes she wouldn't have spent nearly 19 years working for the health insurance provider otherwise.
But her “empathetic heart” gets true satisfaction from the company's opportunities to apply professional skills toward resource-strapped nonprofits. Routine work — managing projects or organizing slideshows — feels more fulfilling when it involves, say, a new marketing campaign for a Pittsburgh children's health group.
She's reaped developmental benefits, too; she credits her leadership on a day of service for helping convince her current boss to hire her onto a new team.
“This is a huge part of why I stay,” Barbin said.
Employees increasingly find that robust workplace volunteer programs meet their desires for in-person connections, professional growth and altruistically inclined employers — career objectives that might be missing in conventional corporate atmospheres. The surge in interest coming out of the pandemic-era shutdowns that forced many Americans to reevaluate their commitments to their communities led to more corporate partners, volunteer hours and active participants in 2023 than ever before, according to Benevity, a platform that helps companies manage such programs.
More than 60% of respondents reported increased participation last year in employee volunteer activities, according to an Association of Corporate Citizenship Professionals survey of 149 companies.
Even employees who don't volunteer themselves feel better about working somewhere with strong public-spirited cultures. Regardless of their own individual volunteer commitments, they feel proud about their affiliation with a socially conscious company, according to Jessica Rodell, a University of Georgia management professor who studies worker psychology.
Companies with robust volunteer programs tend to also have lower turnover rates, she said.
“Volunteering can be one tool in a company’s toolbox to help employees invest of themselves enough in the company to perform well, and then want to stay there instead of go somewhere else," Rodell said.
It can be an especially good tool for instilling social purpose among frontline employees who tend to derive a sense of meaning from work but report detachment from their company’s mission.
But flexibility is key. Business management experts note that employees must have the freedom to choose their volunteer activities, nonprofit partners and time commitments for fruitful bonds to actually develop.
Workplace volunteering was not something that Jesse Weissman knew he wanted from employers when joined Microsoft in May 2021. Three years later, it's an aspect of professional life that he said would warrant serious consideration if he ever pursued a new job.
Searching for a deeper connection to the Seattle community, Weissman began mentoring students of color through Microsoft's partnership with the Boys and Girls Clubs of America and a local nonprofit. Since September 2022, he's worked with Microsoft's Black employee affinity group in the Seattle area to arrange speaking and mentorship opportunities for his colleagues.
“It filled a hole that I didn't realize,” Weissman said.
Not just any slapdash activity will do, experts say. These service days are not necessarily circled on office-wide calendars as afternoons of matching tees and on-site photo opportunities. Some companies set aside regular work hours for months at a time so employees can build websites or develop business strategies for local charities.
Executives might think that a lighthearted, social effort — filling backpacks at a happy hour, for example — is necessary to turn out their fun-loving employees. But Rodell, the management professor, said that more time-intensive, meaningful programs have greater resonance with volunteers.
Best practices include following employees' leads and meeting them where they're at. Skills-based opportunities at Blue Cross Blue Shield range from one-day, "flash" projects to monthslong partnerships. The company sets aside 15 days annually for associates to spend volunteering, much like vacation and sick time. Affinity groups can co-create service projects.
Integrating giving into the volunteer programs is another way to engage busier, seasoned employees with less time to serve but deeper pocketbooks. Liberty Mutual matches employee gifts to more than 11,000 eligible charities. The insurance company's volunteers are further incentivized by the chance to earn miniature grants for the charity of their choice. Totals reach $2,500 for those who have completed 100 service hours.
Some employees recently spent parts of more than six months consulting with More Than Words, a Boston nonprofit that provides work for youth ages 16 to 24 who have cycled through foster care, courts, homeless shelters or other systems. After surveying participants, Liberty Mutual employees identified a lack of front-end support, according to Naomi Parker, the nonprofit's chief advancement officer. Youth needed help obtaining transportation and food before they could hold down a job.
The volunteer commitments are now part of extensive ties that have seen a Liberty Mutual employee join the More Than Words board and more than $3.4 million committed to the nonprofit since 2013. Employees have given more than $85,000 including matches and other incentives.
“It doesn't turn into a LinkedIn post, right?" Parker said. "It's not a quick hit. It's real. It's deep. And it's not for show.”
Volunteering can be a gateway to relationships beyond the otherwise costly, behind-the-scenes help provided by employees. The long-term partnerships in turn introduce budget-constrained nonprofits to new pools of donors.
Now is an especially good time to forge those connections given that Gen Z is forecast to overtake Baby Boomers in the workforce this year, said Blackbaud Giving Fund Executive Director Matt Nash. Over three-fifths of charitable donors recently volunteered with the organization they supported, according to a Fidelity Charitable report. As younger employees increase their earnings, Nash said, well-formed bonds can become especially lucrative for nonprofits.
Legendary Legacies Executive Director Ron Waddell had no expectations that Blue Cross Blue Shield employees would stay engaged with his nonprofit’s work rehabilitating young gang members. Several IT specialists and data analysts had helped them better capture metrics on the success of their programs — important for both feedback and grant applications. But many months later, one volunteer made a $200 donation in what Waddell considered a testament to their honest motives.
It wasn't "a performative measure to look good,” he said. “You could tell folks were really invested.”
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Associated Press coverage of philanthropy and nonprofits receives support through the AP’s collaboration with The Conversation US, with funding from Lilly Endowment Inc. The AP is solely responsible for this content. For all of AP’s philanthropy coverage, visit https://apnews.com/hub/philanthropy.
Michelle Barbin, a Blue Cross Blue Shield employee volunteer, poses, Friday, April 19, 2024, in Worcester, Mass. Barbin says Blue Cross Blue Shield's robust employee volunteer programs provide fulfillment and development opportunities – benefits that are driving companies nationwide to implement more robust workplace service programs.(AP Photo/Charles Krupa)
Ron Waddell, Founder and Executive Director of Legendary Legacies, right, talks with Gary Goyette at the nonprofit organization, Friday, April 19, 2024, in Worcester, Mass. Waddell credits Blue Cross Blue Shield volunteers for truly investing in their employee service opportunities, which are increasing across the corporate realm. (AP Photo/Charles Krupa)
Ron Waddell, Founder and Executive Director of Legendary Legacies, left, talks with Jesus Pizarro, right, who is cutting the hair of Abrain Mendez, at his nonprofit organization, Friday, April 19, 2024, in Worcester, Mass. Waddell credits Blue Cross Blue Shield volunteers for truly investing in their employee service opportunities, which are increasing across the corporate realm. (AP Photo/Charles Krupa)
Ron Waddell, Founder and Executive Director of Legendary Legacies, second from left, poses with men benefitting from his nonprofit organization, Friday, April 19, 2024, in Worcester, Mass. Waddell credits Blue Cross Blue Shield volunteers for truly investing in their employee service opportunities, which are increasing across the corporate realm. From left are Antoine Williams, Waddell, Jonathan Maldonado and Gary Goyette. (AP Photo/Charles Krupa)
NEW YORK (AP) — Donald Trump's fixer-turned-foe Michael Cohen awaits a bruising round of questioning from the former president's lawyers on Tuesday after testimony linked their celebrity client to all aspects of a hush money scheme that prosecutors say was aimed at stifling stories that threatened his 2016 campaign.
Trump, the first former U.S. president to go on trial, was joined in the Manhattan courtroom by an entourage that included House Speaker Mike Johnson, who claimed the case was politically motivated by Democrats. It was a remarkable moment in American politics as the second in line to the presidency used the office's powerful pulpit to attack the U.S. judicial system, and sought to turn his political party against the rule of law by declaring the trial illegitimate.
Trump was also joined by North Dakota Gov. Doug Burgum, Florida Reps. Byron Donalds and Cory Mills and his former GOP rival Vivek Ramaswamy. Burgum and Donalds are considered potential vice presidential contenders.
“I do have a lot of surrogates, and they’re speaking very beautifully," Trump said outside the courtroom as they stood in the background.
Their presence Tuesday as Cohen, the prosecution's star witness, returns to the stand was a not-so-subtle show of support meant not just for Trump but also for voters tuning in from home and for the jurors who are deciding Trump's fate.
On Monday, Cohen delivered matter-of-fact testimony that went to the heart of the former president’s trial.
“Everything required Mr. Trump’s sign-off,” Cohen said.
He placed Trump at the center of the hush money scheme, saying he had promised to reimburse money the lawyer had fronted for the payments and was constantly apprised of the behind-the-scenes efforts to bury stories feared to be harmful to the campaign.
“We need to stop this from getting out,” Cohen quoted Trump as telling him in reference to porn actor Stormy Daniels’ account of a sexual encounter with Trump a decade earlier. The then-candidate was especially anxious about how the story would affect his standing with female voters.
A similar episode occurred when Cohen alerted Trump that a Playboy model was alleging that she and Trump had an extramarital affair. “Make sure it doesn’t get released,” was Cohen’s message to Trump, the lawyer said. The woman, Karen McDougal, was paid $150,000 in an arrangement that was made after Trump received a “complete and total update on everything that transpired.”
“What I was doing, I was doing at the direction of and benefit of Mr. Trump,” Cohen testified.
Trump has pleaded not guilty and has denied both sexual encounters.
Cohen is by far the prosecution's most important witness, and though his testimony lacked the electricity that defined Daniels' turn on the stand, he nonetheless linked Trump directly to the payments and helped illuminate some of the drier evidence such as text messages and phone logs that jurors had already seen.
The testimony of a witness with such intimate knowledge of Trump’s activities could heighten the legal exposure of the presumptive Republican presidential nominee if jurors deem him sufficiently credible. But prosecutors’ reliance on a witness with such a checkered past — Cohen pleaded guilty to federal charges related to the payments — also carries sizable risks with a jury and could be a boon to Trump politically as he fundraises off his legal woes and paints the case as the product of a tainted criminal justice system.
The men, once so close that Cohen boasted that he would “take a bullet” for Trump, had no visible interaction inside the courtroom. The sedate atmosphere was a marked contrast from their last courtroom faceoff in October, when Trump walked out of the courtroom after his lawyer finished questioning Cohen during his civil fraud trial.
This time around, Trump sat at the defense table with his eyes closed for long stretches of testimony as Cohen recounted his decade-long career as a senior Trump Organization executive, doing work that by his own admission sometimes involved lying and bullying others on his boss's behalf.
Trump's lawyers will get their chance to begin questioning Cohen as early as Tuesday, where they're expected to attack his credibility — he was disbarred, went to prison and separately pleaded guilty to lying about a Moscow real estate project on Trump's behalf — and cast him as a vindictive, agenda-driven witness. The defense told jurors during opening statements that he’s an “admitted liar” with an “obsession to get President Trump.”
Prosecutors aim to blunt those attacks by acknowledging Cohen’s past crimes to jurors and by relying on other witnesses whose accounts, they hope, will buttress his testimony.
Jurors had previously heard from others about the tabloid industry practice of “catch-and-kill,” in which rights to a story are purchased so that it can then be quashed. But Cohen's testimony is crucial to prosecutors because of his direct communication with the then-candidate about embarrassing stories he was scrambling to suppress.
Cohen also matters because the reimbursements he received from a $130,000 hush money payment to Daniels, which prosecutors say was meant to buy her silence in advance of the election, form the basis of 34 felony counts charging Trump with falsifying business records. Prosecutors say the reimbursements were logged, falsely, as legal expenses to conceal the payments’ true purpose.
To establish Trump's intimate familiarity with the payments, Cohen told jurors under questioning that Trump had promised to reimburse him. The two men even discussed with Allen Weisselberg, a former Trump Organization chief financial officer, how the reimbursements would be paid as legal services over monthly installments, Cohen testified.
He said Trump even sought to delay finalizing the Daniels transaction until after Election Day so he wouldn’t have to pay her.
“Because,” Cohen testified, “after the election it wouldn’t matter” to Trump.
Cohen also gave jurors an insider account of his negotiations with David Pecker, the then-publisher of the National Enquirer, who was such a close Trump ally that Pecker told Cohen his publication maintained a “file drawer or a locked drawer" where files related to Trump were kept. That effort took on added urgency following the October 2016 disclosure of an “Access Hollywood” recording in which Trump was heard boasting about grabbing women sexually.
The Daniels payment was finalized several weeks after that revelation, but Monday's testimony also centered on a deal earlier that fall with McDougal.
To lay the foundation that the deals were done with Trump's endorsement, prosecutors elicited testimony from Cohen designed to show Trump as a hands-on manager. Acting on Trump's behalf, Cohen said, he sometimes lied and bullied others, including reporters.
“When he would task you with something, he would then say, ‘Keep me informed. Let me know what’s going on,’” Cohen testified. He said that was especially true “if there was a matter that was troubling to him.”
Long reported from Washington. Associated Press writers Jill Colvin in New York and Lisa Mascaro in Washington contributed to this report.
Michael Cohen, right, leaves his apartment building in New York, Tuesday, May 14, 2024. Cohen, former President Donald Trump’s fixer-turned-foe is returning to the witness stand for a bruising round of questioning from the former president’s lawyers. (AP Photo/Seth Wenig)
Michael Cohen leaves his apartment building in New York, Tuesday, May 14, 2024. Cohen, former President Donald Trump’s fixer-turned-foe is returning to the witness stand for a bruising round of questioning from the former president’s lawyers. (AP Photo/Seth Wenig)
Michael Cohen leaves his apartment building in New York, Tuesday, May 14, 2024. Cohen, former President Donald Trump’s fixer-turned-foe is returning to the witness stand for a bruising round of questioning from the former president’s lawyers. (AP Photo/Seth Wenig)
Michael Cohen leaves his apartment building on his way to Manhattan criminal court in New York, Tuesday, May 14, 2024. (AP Photo/Seth Wenig)
Michael Cohen leaves his apartment building on his way to Manhattan criminal court in New York, Tuesday, May 14, 2024. (AP Photo/Seth Wenig)
Michael Cohen leaves his apartment building on his way to Manhattan criminal court in New York, Tuesday, May 14, 2024. (AP Photo/Seth Wenig)
Michael Cohen leaves his apartment building on his way to Manhattan criminal court in New York, Tuesday, May 14, 2024. (AP Photo/Seth Wenig)
Former President Donald Trump sits in Manhattan criminal court, Monday, May 13, 2024, in New York. (Mark Peterson/New York Magazine via AP, Pool)
Former President Donald Trump and lawyer Todd Blanche return to his criminal trial after a short break at Manhattan criminal court, Monday, May 13, 2024, in New York. (Sarah Yenesel/Pool Photo via AP)
FILE - Michael Cohen, former attorney to Donald Trump, leaves the District Attorney's office in New York, March 13, 2023. Cohen is prosecutors' most central witness in former President Donald Trump's hush money trial. But Trump's fixer-turned-foe is also as challenging a star witness as they come. The now-disbarred lawyer has a tortured history with Trump. (AP Photo/Yuki Iwamura, File)
Former President Donald Trump reacts as Michael Cohen testified that he told Trump that the Stormy Daniels story was not contained. in Manhattan criminal court, Monday, May 13, 2024, in New York. (Elizabeth Williams via AP)
Michael Cohen, left, testifies on the witness stand in Manhattan criminal court, Monday, May 13, 2024, in New York. (Elizabeth Williams via AP)
Assistant district attorney Susan Hoffinger, center, questions witness Michael Cohen, far right, as Donald Trump, far left, looks on in Manhattan criminal court, Monday, May 13, 2024, in New York. (Elizabeth Williams via AP)
Michael Cohen testifies on the witness stand with a National Enquirer cover story about Donald Trump displayed on a screen in Manhattan criminal court, Monday, May 13, 2024, in New York. (Elizabeth Williams via AP)
Michael Cohen leaves his apartment building on his way to Manhattan criminal court, Monday, May 13, 2024, in New York. (AP Photo/Julia Nikhinson)
