Designing & Launching Your Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) Program

Corporate social responsibility (CSR) includes the following activities by corporations or businesses:

financial donations, including charitable gifts, grants and sponsorships
in-kind donations
employee volunteering, including executives on loan and virtual volunteering
employees taking on community roles as a representative of a company (members of citizens committees or nonprofit boards)
commitments and demonstrated action regarding responsible or sustainable environmental practices, pay equality, safe working environments, etc., beyond what is required by law

Companies large and small engage in CSR activities. It can be as simple as a small business paying for the uniforms of a local girl's volleyball team or sponsoring a table at the local museum's annual fundraising gala. It can be as grand as a grants program that partially funds dozens, even hundreds, of nonprofit organizations. No matter a company's size, being strategic about the design and launch of CSR activities can help those activities have far greater success and impact, both for the sponsoring company and for those on the receiving end of such philanthropy.

This page, and all the pages in this section of my web site, are based on my philosophy about CSR, which is quite different than the advice of other consultants.

Create an overall purpose statement for your CSR activities

Whether a company is starting from scratch regarding CSR or already engaged in CSR, that company needs to define the purpose of its CSR activities and have an overall philosophy or mission for such. A purpose statement or mission statement sets boundaries on a company's CSR activities. It allows that company to avoid philanthropic missteps (yes, that happens) and to say "no" more easily to requests for donations or participation, something that a company will need to do. Have an overall philosophy also can help a company target CSR activities so that those activities have maximum impact on a particular cause, or set of causes, or community, or set of communities. A company could define an initial mission for its CSR activities that are held on to for only for a year and then revisit it - don't think that a first mission or purpose statement is forever.

What's more important about trying to have a perfect CSR mission statement right from the start is creating something simple, a work-in-progress statement that provides some boundaries for CSR activities for a year or more, as well as deciding who will have input in creating that first mission statement and in future incarnations. At some companies, the human resources department sets the goals, policies and procedures for CSR. At others, it's the marketing department. At others, it's the CEO who decides the purpose of CSR and then directs his administrative assistant to administer the program, at least to start. And at others, a group of employees work together to think about and define a CSR mission, the administration of which is passed on to staff in HR, marketing or the CEO's office. No matter how collaboratively a purpose statement is created, the company CEO and the board of a company must fully approve any statement of purpose, and know the reasons behind it if they weren't a part of its creation.

In addition, when creating an overall purpose statement for CSR activities, a company should be listening to the communities its employees and customers live in and work in to know what causes they are most concerned about. They should also be talking to nonprofits addressing those concerns. This shouldn't be a business telling area nonprofits, "Here's what you should be doing and what we will be supporting." It means going to events by nonprofits, listening to the staff of those nonprofits as they try to address the communities most critical needs, and hearing both their ideas for their solutions and their funding needs. It means nonprofits, including schools, feeling so comfortable with a company because of the relationships that company has built that they can say, "Here are what we would like to see your CSR focusing on..." The end result of a company building relationships with its communities and listening to the mission-based initiatives it might eventually fund is that CSR activities that actually make a difference and goes far beyond charity.

I would love to help your company prepare its CSR mission statement, identify or expand CSR activities, create relationships with nonprofits and other organizations and create effective ways to administer and evaluate your overall CSR program.

If your company is just starting CSR activities, I strongly recommend you start your activities with something simple and local, so your staff can learn how to engage and manage CSR activities, getting a sense after a year or two of what works best at your business and building relationships with nonprofits, schools, etc. Starting simply and locally also allows a company to grow its program more organically, learning lessons locally that can be applied globally, if that's the direction the company takes. It means that, to start, no funding, sponsorship, volunteering or other CSR activity is abstract or remote - staff would be able to go onsite to any organization a company might want to support in some way and see its work first hand. It will get a company early successes as well as help to prevent missteps. That initial mission statement will evolve as CSR activities evolve over time.

Let's say the name of a company is Spottsville Security Systems, and it has two locations in two different states. That company's initial CSR mission statement could be as simple as this:

Spottsville Security Systems' donations and other corporate social responsibility activities support 501 (c)(3) nonprofit organizations based in the counties where our offices and manufacturing plants are located: Audubon County, Kentucky and Chinook County, Oregon.

That mission statement allows this business to concentrate on a specific geographic region to start and allows that business to say "no" more easily to proposals that are outside of its geographic region. It also means staff of this company would be able to go onsite to any organization the company might want to support in some way and see its work first hand, building employee capacities for administering more ambitious philanthropy activities down the road. If they company grows to other locations, it can expand its CSR activities to those locations. It could start off even more narrowly, funding only programs that serve youth in some way, for instance, and then expanding over time to new causes. A company's CSR activities can expand not only in terms of the regions a company focuses on but also include the type of impact a company wants its CSR activities to have.

A good example of a purpose statements for a corporate philanthropy program is by the McGraw-Hill Companies in 1998. They renamed their office Corporate Contributions and Community Relations. Here are their statements from that time:

The McGraw-Hill Companies will support innovative programs that increase the abilities of people around the world to learn, to grow intellectually, to master new skills and to maximize their individual talents for school, work and community.

That mission statement allowed this company to target very specific initiatives to fund and makes it clear why they would say no to a funding proposal. It also allowed them to have a lot of freedom in choosing what kinds of projects and organizations to fund.

I would love to help your company prepare a mission statement and focus for its CSR activities.

What cause should your CSR activities support?

There are so many, many causes a company could target. A company could think about a cause that somehow relates to its core business:

a high-tech company's CSR program could be focused on nonprofits or school programs with activities that address the digital divide or STEM education for children, especially girls
a company that manufactures athletic shoes could have a CSR program focused on nonprofits with activities that get people outside or encourage all people to be more healthy
a publishing company's CSR program could be focused on a nonprofit program that promotes literacy
a security company could be focused on nonprofits that promote the arts, because it feels that arts create a greater sense of community and feeling of security

But a company could focus instead on something entirely different than its core business:

a high-tech company could be focused programs that empower children with disabilities
a mattress company's CSR program could be focused on nonprofits with activities that support foster children and those aging out of foster care
a producer of quartz glassware for the semiconductor industry could have a CSR program focused on nonprofits with activities that promote women's health and empowerment (everything from domestic violence shelters to nonprofit roller derby leagues)
a car dealership could be focused on supporting programs that encourage children to be involved in the performing arts

A company could also focus on philanthropic activities that might counter a particular public image of the company:

a high-tech company could focus on environmental programs, including projects that encourage responsible recycling
a company with a lot of manufacturing in developing countries that employ women in those countries could focus on nonprofits and NGOs engaged in promoting women's rights, pay equity, preventing domestic violence, women's entrepreneurship, etc.
a company related to cars, trucks, transportation, etc., could focus on environmental projects, like wetlands preservation

A company also doesn't have to pick just one cause to support - a company can support the arts AND school-based STEM activities, for instance. What causes the company supports can be determined by the board, the CEO, a select group of staff, staff conversations with and research about their local communities, or any combination of this.

A company also needs to consider CSR activities during disasters - in the aftermath of a flood, fire, earthquake, hurricane, tornado or any widespread disaster, especially one that affects the communities your employees and customers live and work. It's important to plan for how your company will cope with community disasters / emergency appeals - otherwise, you will scramble for how to respond and, potentially, create more wasted than helpful effort.

Aren't sure how to define your CSR purpose, or to expand that definition? I would love to help your company prepare a mission statement and focus for its CSR activities.

Policies and administration

No matter your CSR purpose or mission, you need to have policies and procedures for different activities within your CSR program. You need a process for making financial gifts and in-kind donations. You need policies and procedures around employee volunteering, including executives on loan. You will have to decide if your employee volunteering will be under the auspices of the company, with employees reporting volunteering hours to the company's human resources office or whichever company department is in charge of employee volunteering, or if it will be a promotion of volunteering activities that employees will do entirely on their own, outside of work hours, without any reporting back to the company about activities. You will have to decide who will review all funding proposals and who will make decisions about financial gifts. You will have to create administrative procedures for making gifts and in-kind donations. You will have to decide which employee will be in charge of tracking CSR activities and reporting on them - and to whom they should report.

I would love to help your company prepare its policies and administrative structure for its CSR activities.

Launching your CSR program

Once you have defined your CSR program and the policies and procedures for the different activities (just financial gifts, for instance, or a program that includes in-kind donations, employee volunteering, etc.), you will need to communicate the launch of the CSR program internally, to all employees, and externally, particularly to nonprofits, schools and other entities that might benefit from your CSR activities. You will also need to communicate regularly after the launch, to make the messages reach all employees, to make sure new employees understand the program, to clarify changes to your program, to highlight successes, to announce changes, etc. For instance, many companies struggle with getting employees to take advantage of a policy that allows them to volunteer during work hours, even if the launch of such a program comes with a great deal of fanfare - it takes more than a press releases and an internal memo to get employee buy-in for your CSR activities. I would love to help your company launch its CSR activities and create appropriate, effective messaging about its CSR activities.

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