Can You Prove Your Company's CSR Matters? Probably Not.

The following blog entry is a cross-post from my blog Realizing Your Worth.

We measure what matters. When it comes to CSR strategies, why is there so little investment in measuring community impacts?

Non-profits are required to produce, in many cases, exacting data and complicated
measurements in order to qualify for foundation grants and public
money. While these requirements can be a bit onerous, they’ve proven to
be a helpful development within the world of philanthropy.

Many businesses, now actively investing in the health and wholeness of
their communities, seem to be crying 'foul' as the same requirements
are being asked of them. Bea Boccalandro, a member of the Boston College Center for Corporate Citizenship faculty and president of VeraWorks,
has found that most companies are resistant to the idea of measuring
the impact of their community programs. In her latest blog post Measurement is more than a good thing to do - it's the right thing, Bea finds that many companies respond with the following:

“We can’t measure whether our program truly makes a difference without cutting services,” corporate citizenship professionals often say, “so we just can’t afford to prove impact.”
Faced with zero-sum funding decisions, we overwhelmingly choose more
people served over more knowledge gained. We consider it heartless to
favor an evaluation report over a child. Virtually every corporate
citizenship program supports services. Precious few know whether such
services make an impact."

But here’s the thing, non-profits almost always have fewer resources and capacities for
measurement-related processes. While many of the businesses who posit
this dichotomy of ‘doing good’ or ‘measuring good’ have tremendous
resources and capacity for measurement.

To my way of thinking, it is a bit suspect to spend the appropriate
amount of money on evaluating all areas of the business while
relegating ‘doing good’ to the category of ‘good enough’. Bea sums it
up well:

The cost-effectiveness of our decision is also suspect. Based on the body of impact evaluations done in the past five years, it appears no more than half of nonprofit services generate the purported
change – be it reducing high school dropouts, improving mental health
or reducing crime – to a meaningful degree. By eschewing impact
evaluation, we tacitly accept that half of our social sector
investments are unproductive and that it’s acceptable to remain in the
dark as to which half. Forgoing impact evaluation in favor of
delivering services is shortsighted. It’s a commitment to activity, not
to change.

True Corporate Citizenship and CSR treats community engagement as an integral and necessary part of the overall
business. Let’s take a moment and see if we’re doing as much good as we
believe we are.

What do you think? Leave us a comment, we'd love to hear from you.


Read Bea Boccalandro's full article here: Measurement is more than a good thing to do - it's the right thing
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Bea Boccalandro is a member of the Boston College Center faculty and is
president of VeraWorks, a global consulting firm that helps companies
with their community involvement. She has helped Aetna, Bank of
America, Levi Strauss & Company, The Walt Disney Company and others
develop and enhance their community involvement through research,
strategy design, program development and evaluation. She is the lead
author behind the Drivers of Excellence for Employee Giving and
Volunteering Programs and related Fortune 500 research. In addition to
serving as faculty for the Boston College Center, she teaches
cross-sector partnerships at Georgetown University’s Center for Public
and Nonprofit Leadership and consults and teaches for the Points of
Light & Hands On Network and for the Council on Foundations.
Contact Bea: bea@veraworks.com


Email Chris; chrisjarvis@realizedworth.com
Email Angela at angela@realizedworth.com

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