Many organizations conduct regular employee surveys to learn more about ethics, compliance, risk and misconduct in the workplace. This is where the ERC program, called "Donate Your Data," comes in.

"While the data from these surveys are useful for understanding the dynamics of an individual organization, it also has tremendous potential to benefit the ethics industry as a whole when merged with data from other organizations," said Dr. Patricia Harned, president of the Ethics Resource Center.

The new program allows organizations to donate ethics- and compliance-related data, from current or past surveys, for use in ongoing research on topics of key concern to business leaders. Data from entire surveys or from individual questions (including ethics questions in HR surveys) are of interest.

Donated data will enrich the overall data set that ERC uses to formulate thoughtful research pieces on topics that are important to business leaders, such as ethical culture and the effectiveness of training programs. Where the data has been collected in a comparable manner, it will also enhance ERC's benchmarks for ethics and compliance program effectiveness.

In addition to expanding ERC archives and improving the value of its research, the data may be used to support the research endeavors of business school faculty and graduate students who are periodically granted limited access to ERC data.

Donations of datasets are considered in-kind, tax-deductible, charitable contributions to ERC. In addition, ERC will enter into a contractual agreement with each donor organization to ensure the confidentiality of donor companies and their survey respondents.

For more information about the Donate Your Data program, contact Nichole Remmert at 202-872-4778, or nichole@ethics.org.