5 Key Takeaways for CSR Professionals in 2022

CSR stands for Corporate Social Responsibility. It is an automated business model that is helpful for a company to be socially accountable to itself, stakeholders, and the public. By following CSR, companies can be aware of their impacts on all aspects of society, including social, economic, and environmental.

With the help of CSR, a company operates in a way that helps to contribute positively to improve society and the environment.

Here are 5 key takeaways for CSR professionals:

1. Community Investments are the Backbone of CSR

Community investments play an important role in CSR. Community investment is one of the growing CSR strategies. Community investment can be direct cash, non-cash contributions, or grants from the foundation. These contributions are on the rise for a majority of corporations:

68% Increase in Foundation Cash
63% Increase in Direct Cash
65% Increase in Non-Cash

Grants to communities in any form are a top and growing priority for businesses.

2. Make Sustainability a Central Goal

The complex relationship between sustainability and CSR is quite clear. Sustainability is no longer a standalone CSR objective. It should be part of a consistent approach for CSR that aims for the sustainable development of an organization. More than 90% of CEOs insist that sustainability is important for success, and 70% of them think that sharing CSR is important for the profitability of organizations.

Sustainability can be a filter with the help of which all of your bigger corporate initiatives pass.

3. Implementation with Fidelity

The most important part of CSR is undoubtedly when the work starts on the ground. Employees can get a lot of satisfaction by connecting with communities and putting core values into practice. At this stage, those early goals and organizational priorities are critical.

Balance is vital. You need to be flexible enough to respond to all the changing realities in communities and stick to what your organizations and CSR want to achieve. It can be challenging but keeping a long-term commitment to the work will be helpful to pave the roads of growth for you.

4. Use External and Internal Benchmarking

No organization wants to stay behind when it comes to social impact and sustainability. This is the reason why benchmarks are helpful for the organization to measure the progress of CSR projects.

Encourage sharing internal data among different divisions of an organization. Internal benchmarks can be helpful for different divisions of an organization to understand the progress towards specific goals, for instance, reducing emissions within the supply chain. It can be helpful for organizations to promote healthy competition and achieve sustainability goals.

External benchmarks can be helpful for an organization to measure the progress of CSR work against the peer organizations. Take a good idea about how other organizations are performing their CSR work that helps to enrich the existing and future initiatives.

Sharing results from other organizations working similarly can be helpful to motivate your employees around CSR performance.

5. Celebrate Achievements and Share the Knowledge

You need to show your work. It is especially important when we are talking about highly-effective CSR projects. Showing how your organization builds sustainability principles into the CSR works can be helpful for peer organizations to do similar work. Sharing knowledge for the entire CSR sector is an excellent way to expand the impact of your CSR initiatives beyond just the projects led by your organization.

SoulAce helps thousands of CSR professionals in launching, managing, and measuring effective social impact programs. We make it easier and efficient for your company and guarantees by providing tools to measure the impact. We are your partner in community investment that helps to make a difference. Contact us today to learn more.