Today is International Corporate Philanthropy Day, and President Obama has written a note in support of the initiative. There’s a significant celebration of the day taking place, both in form and substance.

The fun part: members of the Committee Encouraging Corporate Philanthropy (CECP) rang today’s NYSE Opening Bell (disclosure: NYSE Euronext is a member of this good organization).

I asked my colleague Steven Wheeler, our director of Corporate Giving, Archives and Education, for his take on this morning’s event:

Today’s Opening Bell event was an opportunity to shine a spotlight on the ways in which businesses can make a difference in their communities around the globe.

Corporate-giving officers from eight CECP member companies were present to highlight innovative corporate philanthropy programs and activities that are helping to make the world a better place. For instance,

· ITT Corporation is working to bring clean water and sanitation to communities in emerging countries.

· General Mills has launched a joint venture with CARE to support the education and economic development of women in Malawi.

· The Intel Education Initiative uses technology to improve teaching and learning, and aims to promote mathematics, science, and engineering education.

· Bloomberg enables its employees to double the impact of their own contributions of dollars and volunteer time to charitable through its Employee Matching and Dollars for Your Hours programs.

A fuller description of these initiatives and many more can be found at the CECP website.

Thanks, Steve. There’s more — a part-fun, part-substantive part: CECP members are holding a tweet-up, announced here, in connection with their big conference today. Companies are tweeting what they’re doing to mark the day.

And of course, a substantive part, among other programs taking place today: the CECP is releasing a new report,

“Measuring the Value of Corporate Philanthropy: Social impact, business benefits, and investor returns,” that assesses current practices and measurement trends in corporate philanthropy. This report, which focuses on three primary conversations — between giving practitioners and grantees, between giving practitioners and the CEO, and between the CEO and investor community — clarifies the demands for evidence of the social and business benefits of corporate giving and identifies the most promising steps forward for practitioners.

That sounds like an interesting approach — measurement would go a long way toward informing those conversations and the decisions that result from them.

So props to the CECP for doing a good job of highlighting and advancing this important work today. After all, you’ve really gotta work to get on the public radar, because you’re competing for public mindshare, and at this time of year in particular, the public’s mind tends to wander toward, well, other things.