Microsoft Giving Campaign 2004

The Microsoft Giving Campaign 2004 kicks off Monday, October 4th.

I
love the Giving Campaign (and Microsoft's matching-gift policy), but it has
the potential to become the inadvertent victim to the meandering
accomplishments of Microsoft as of late due to employee ill will. Perhaps it
is our canary in the coalmine when taking the true pulse of Microsofties:
lots of giving when things are going well and we're sharing our abundance.
Flat giving and missed goals when things aren't going so great at One
Microsoft Way.

We missed last year's goal even after the deadline was
pushed out and we endured direct cajoling from BillG.

Did upper
management bother to take something away from that? From what I've heard,
what they've taken away is that this year's giving isn't going to have a
real big deal made about. Maybe some banners. An email.

It's too bad
that there's potential for all of us fortunate people not to be, well,
giving of ourselves as we observe farces of cost-cutting around us
(I guess they dropped Dilbert from MicroNews because it was becoming
relevant). God awful wastes of money from misdirection and the lack of
accountability does make you seriously wonder about whether you need to
start playing the ant and
build up some cash reserves of your own to weather the future vs. sharing
with the greater community.

I hope I'm wrong about ill feelings
towards Microsoft impairing our Giving Campaign. I hope we hit the top of
the bell for this year's goal. But until we slim down and re-energize our
company, I think we'll see mediocre giving to match mediocre leadership
results.