How to Begin a Corporate Social Responsibility Program from Scratch

Nowadays, as customers have become more socially conscious, it’s shifted more important for companies to involve in social efforts that positively impact their communities and environment.

Many companies have committed themselves to the concept of corporate social responsibility, a type of self-regulation that intends to improve responsibility within a company.

If you are an organizational head and looking to begin a corporate social responsibility program, there are a few steps you can take to launch your CSR initiative. In this article, I outline some benefits of Corporate Social Responsibility and how to develop it.

Benefits of Corporate Social Responsibility Program -

Corporate Social Responsibility is profitable for both the community and the company’s bottom line. It helps your brand stand out to consumers as a great investment, especially as a repeat customer. Here are some main benefits -

• Positive Community Impact: Engaging in CSR programs, companies often provide key assistance to their local communities. This can be an incredibly fulfilling effort for all involved, as effective CSR programs can help empower families, communities, and organizations.
• Improved Brand Loyalty: Many customers are attracted to brands that make tangible efforts toward being socially conscious.
• Potential Increase in Profit: Since consumers seek to engage with more socially conscious companies, a CSR program could help maximize a company’s profits.
• Boost Brand Image: When a company engages positively with society through a CSR program, such efforts can result in a boost brand image.

Whether it’s enhanced brand recognition or a bigger bottom line, the many benefits of CSR are becoming more clear to companies looking to make a social impact in their communities.

Here are five steps to get started:

1 Research and Determine the purpose of your CSR Strategy -

First, study your company’s values and your values. Make sure that you have prepared a solid plan to better understand your capacity for performing a Corporate Social Responsibility Program.

Each CSR campaign should be grounded in a solid knowledge and relationship to the community you’re looking to serve. Then, look into what community values or what the priority needs are. Understanding these values will give you a better idea of the kind of activities or causes that will be most essential to all individuals involved.

Once you have defined what makes sense for you to propose, start building a CSR strategy.

2 Build from the Bottom Up

For an effective CSR program, you should be “owned” by employees at all levels. Every employee can participate in his/her way, but each needs to be motivated to do so, both to feel like a member of the program and to feel good about participating.

How to get that upfront investment? Get a combination of employees together with a group leader explain and understand the company’s culture and values, and distinguish what individuals are passionate about. As thoughts develop, research the opportunities and the proposed organizations and have the group review and improve the opportunities.

3 Decide on an Approach

When producing a Corporate Social Responsibility program, it’s important to remember that your company should start with an initiative that is comparatively possible to achieve. Driving too fast toward substantial goals, like large philanthropic endeavors, can make it tough to find momentum with your CSR program. Therefore, it’s suggested to build the base for a sustainable CSR program that you can scale to your company’s requirements over time.

The company approach is an important decision, whether the company as a whole will exclusively support one or more causes, support employees to proceed with their passions, or do a combination of both.

At this step, you will need to look forward to future actions and think through execution, how you will support the program, how you measure its impact and communicate those results.

Plan it out in as much detail as possible, knowing that as facts on the ground will shift, so will your approach.

4 Establish the Relationships

While establishing relationships with the community partners, be sure to define expectations. For instance, in what activities will your organization or its employees join, how frequently and when, and what further contributions will it or they make?

5 Execute a Clear Strategy

Start execute from a small step and let your initiative grow normally. If you want to finish world hunger, start by giving a meal (for a nonprofit organization). If you want to begin climate change, start by encouraging sustainable practices in your company. Every effort counts, no matter the size or amount, as long as your engagement is consistent and sincere.

Check-in with the team daily and with community members, beneficiaries of the CSR project most importantly, so you can understand how the CSR work is landing for them.

6 Sustain Corporate Social Responsibility Program

It is worthy to communicate what you are doing because that will help to sustain and reinforce the CSR program. Make it a priority, just as you would metrics like profitability and operational cost.

Celebrate your work, but aim to do more. It will help to keep the program active and employees interested in proceeding with the good work you are doing.

Set goals for the program and develop a way to assess how you are doing. Create a report of your findings regularly both internally and ideally externally as well, which will help to keep you responsible.

7 Track Your Impact

The most important thing about CSR is measuring the impacts, not just on your company but on the wider community, people and causes you sustain.

Stakeholders will help your organization better understand how CSR efforts are arriving in the communities you are working. Community members can and should be the ultimate judges to say whether a CSR program worked or not.

Also, you must be sure to regularly check in with your team working on the project and your employee to determine how CSR work is impacting company culture and morale.

8 Communicate the Impact

Communicating your impact helps others make an even bigger social impact. However, this does not mean that all companies should trumpet how they carry out their CSR initiative.

Some companies favor keeping details about their company’ giving activities private, which is fine. Other companies prefer to share their happiness and gratitude for being a socially responsible company with their teams and clients.

You don’t need to communicate the impacts to your customers all the time. You can include that in your annual CSR report, or keep it internal and use it as an internal goal. Every company is different, so stick with what works best for your company.

Conclusion

Leading a CSR program is a complicated investment that can take a lot of time and resources. For initiatives like CSR that have a big impact on your brand’s status, reputation in the community, and the company’s bottom line. So it is important to be aware of best practices and use the best CSR consultant to ensure your initiative is run efficiently.

In case, you are looking to build your impact while simplifying the methods that drive your CSR initiatives, look no further and you can contact Wachs Strategies, a Corporate Social Responsibility consulting firm.

They offer social impact consulting to organizations to come up with a cohesive plan that increases both their enterprise and impact bottom lines. They also work to align leaders and energize workforces, while leveraging their expertise with corporate ventures, government affairs, and corporate philanthropy.

Start your Corporate Social Responsibility program today. You will be surprised by how your actions can result in huge impacts!