“Life’s most persistent and urgent question is: ‘What are you doing for others?'” -MLK

My donated TOMS!

Last week, a group of MPA students, myself included, who are recruiting with one of the Big 4, had the opportunity to participate in an activity co-sponsored by TOMS shoes. For those of you who may not know the story behind TOMS, essentially they donate one pair of shoes to someone in need everytime a pair is purchased.

At the recruiting event, the donations were two-fold. First, because of the buy one-give one strategy at TOMS, one pair of shoes was donated to someone in need for every student attending the event. Second, we also donated our decorated TOMS to a local Austin charity.

The community service aspect of public accounting certainly increases my desire to work in the industry. All of the Big 4 have multiple ways of helping to serve and improve the community. Midcaps and regional firms definitely participate in community service as well- I am just focusing on the Big 4 for the sake of this blog.

Here are some of my favorite community service efforts by the Big 4:

Deloitte’s big community service event is called IMPACT day. On IMPACT day, Deloitte professionals across the country all set aside their work and work for a nonprofit in their community. Just to put this in perspective, there are OVER 50,000 Deloitte employees nationwide and almost all of them will participate in this special day- that’s a lot of community service!

A great community service effort was done by KPMG last September, on the 10th anniversary of the tragic events of September 11th, 2001. KPMG called this campaign, “Service in Remembrance.” For this campaign, KPMG professionals teamed up with the rest of the nation and over 200 nonprofits in honor the victims and the heroes of September 11th.

PwC  does one of my favorite community service activities by pairing up with DonorsChoose.org. Donor’s Choose is an awesome organization that lets individuals read all about educational needs across the country and choose which educator or classroom they want to donate to. I remember the first time I participated with this organization was when PwC gave me a Donor’s Choose gift-card at the very first recruiting event this year. The card was pre-loaded with $5 that each student could use to donate.

Lastly, Ernst&Young definitely has a huge impact on the community. At their last recruiting event, we were all split into teams based on our line of service and location preference for our Spring internships. Then, within these groups, we played a variety of carnival-style games in order to win tickets. The winning team selected their nonprofit and in their honor, EY donated $1,000 to the organization. Even though my team didn’t win, it was great to be a part of this at the event.

I love that the public accounting industry is so involved in community service and I hope that you all take some time to volunteer sometime this year!

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