Ethical Corporation’s new special report on community investment starts by asking whether the practice has fallen off the list of priorities for corporate responsibility planners.
The article, by Good Business CEO Giles Gibbons, tracks the evolution of corporate responsibility from feel-good window dressing projects meant to offset negative impressions to highly sophisticated programs directly linked and closely integrated with a company’s core business objectives. But with so much emphasis now being placed on the bigger picture, have smaller, single focus community projects been left behind?
If community investment has become the victim of corporate responsibility’s success, it could be because the shift of focus toward longer-term strategies that address wider societal needs, doesn’t always include ad hoc response to individual community issues. While planners discuss how the very core of its business can be carried out in a socially responsible way, having employees volunteer in a local school may seem like on add-on that falls outside the box of key priorities.
Gibbons suggests that the reluctance on the part of companies to go back to basics in support of community investment is in many ways connected to this bigger picture thinking. He calls for a clearer vision of the strengths and value of community investment that will motivate strategists to incorporate these programs back into corporate responsibility policies in a meaningful way. Whether or not this is the right approach could be the basis for an interesting conversation