I was quoted recently as saying that, in the world of social innovation and social entrepreneurship, there was a "tendency towards convergence"....by which I meant that charities were moving in the direction of earned income (to achieve sustainability) and that companies were heading in the direction (to achieve various goals) of social and environmental responsibility. And the middle ground contains things like charitable trading arms, social enterprises (as a narrowly-defined legal structure) and corporate social responsibility schemes...
CSR has generally got a pretty bad rep, and with some justification. Either charities put up charities for nomination (favourite charity of the year and so forth) or just gave money/stuff to charities they liked. Nothing wrong with that, of course, but it achieves far more when it is relevant to the organisation, either because there is buy-in from the employees (i.e. they have a sense of ownership of it, perhaps havng generated it themselves (rather than it being chosen)) or because it is relevant to the company's overall objectives.
It's an area I'm very interested in: the more forward thinking companies don't just see this as a section for their annual report, but are placing it at the heart of their activities, in the knowledge that the world is moving in that direction. Any company which isn't seen to be GENUINELY committed to such work will increasingly have trouble recruiting (particularly given the increasing pressure on graduates / twentysomethings to have a job that is rewarding/they enjoy etc), and be more likely to be targeted by campaigners or be behind the game and miss out on competitive advantage.
There's an interesting aside in the social innovation survey (see previous entry) I mentioned yesterday about the gold-plating attitude: companies funding a project, then pulling out and expecting charities to continue with it without any such ongoing support....which is both unrealistic and unfair. Increasingly, long-term relationships and, increasingly, genuine partnerships will be the way forward: a combined forces approach, rather than the altruistic, philanthropic "here's what business can do for you". It works both ways...
More on this in the future, but I'd be interested to hear of people's a) ideas for new CSR schemes and b) great CSR stuff they've heard of....
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