What's Driving Change in Our Community Investment Programs?
4 Key Forces Driving the CSR Evolution
- What impact is our program having?
- What difference are we making in the community through our philanthropic efforts?
- Why does our organization give money away?
- How will that help our business?
These oft-asked questions can be daunting to answer, but they’re not going away — especially in light of current world events. In fact, Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) and community investment professionals are hearing these questions more and more, from the C-suite, from staff, and increasingly from customers and shareholders.
So, why do so many in the CSR sector shy away from questions about what their programs are achieving?
Here’s the main reason: The vast majority of companies believe that social impact cannot easily be measured, or that we cannot have common measures for our grant partners to report on. Instead, we focus on individual grant achievement, when we should be measuring our overall CSR portfolio achievement.
The true question that needs to be answered is:
As a sector, how can we evolve to be better positioned to measure and report our social impact and its contribution to our business success?
