Health, environmental groups hope Emory Gives

By Michael Terrazas mterraz@emory.edu

Editor’s note: This is the second in a three-part series profiling the six charity organizations included in Emory Gives, the new name for the University’s workplace giving program.

At an institution so closely associated with the healing arts, be they through nurses, doctors or public health professionals, it only makes sense that Community Health Charities of Georgia (CHCG) be included in said institution’s philanthropic efforts.

CHCG is the 14-year-old state chapter of the nationwide Community Health Charities, which raises some $58 million annually for an array of health-related organizations and associations. In addition to 64 national organizations such as the American Cancer Society and the American Lung Association, the Georgia arm also represents local entities such as AID Atlanta and Hughes-Spalding Children’s Hospital, according to CHCG Executive Director Al Specht.

“We are elated,” Specht said of CHCG’s inclusion in Emory Gives. “People should have choices, and I think this is a great step forward. I am hoping we’ll be able to show both the business community and the community [as a whole] that Emory has done the right thing.”

Specht said CHCG does not yet have a website of its own, but information is available at the national Community Health Charities site, located at www.healthcharities.org, that lists all the member organizations. Other corporate partners who include the national CHC in their workplace giving programs include American Airlines, Sears & Roebuck and United Health Group, as well as federal, state and local governmental agencies.

Also appropriate for Emory, which has grappled with its own environmental issues during recent years, is the inclusion of the nonprofit Earth Share of Georgia (ESG) in the Emory Gives campaign. Formerly the Environmental Fund for Georgia, ESG affiliated itself with the national Earth Share organization in June and now represents 64 environmental agencies, 23 in Georgia and 41 throughout the nation and abroad.

“Now you can support everything from the Chattahoochee River to the Amazon River,” said ESG Executive Director Alice Rolls. “Given that environmental issues don’t necessarily realize state or county lines, and some of these issues are critical nationwide, the scope of the issues we now represent is wider.”

In Georgia, ESG represents such groups as the Georgia Conservancy, Georgia Wildlife Federation and the Upper Chattahoochee Riverkeeper, while nationally Earth Share raises money for the National Audubon Society, the Wildlife Conservation Society (now headed by former Emory College dean Steve Sanderson) and the National Wildlife Federation, among others.

“We’ve worked for years trying to make inroads and connections at Emory, so to finally see this come to fruition is extremely exciting,” Rolls said. “The message it sends to the community at large is how important it is to include issues like the environment in workplace giving
campaigns.”