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London’s Lord Mayor Roger Gifford hailed this year’s winners of the annual Dragon Awards for their commitment to providing job prospects to people whose skills would otherwise remain lost to the capital. “There is a wealth of lost talent in London,” he said. “We can be cleverer in engaging that raw talent.”

And winning entries are doing just that, providing training to a total of 619 ‘lost apprentices’ so far in 2013.

Established 26 years ago, the Dragon Awards are the longest running awards that recognise excellence in corporate community engagement programmes. Overall, this year’s Dragon Award nominees have volunteered almost 1 million hours to local communities through their CSR programmes - worth over £17million.

The Economic Regeneration award went to Purdy, a medium sized engineering company which helps disadvantaged young people into careers in the industry, running work placements and apprenticeships to train local people – bucking an industry trend of subcontracting and poor investment in apprentices. The company is also seeking to recruit more women into the construction industry, encouraging girls to become apply to become apprentices.

The Andaz Liverpool Street Hotel was awarded the Social Inclusion award for its partnership with east London charity Providence Row, which has been working with London’s homeless for over 150 years. What began as donations of towels and toiletries in 2009 has now grown to workshops in its hotel kitchens and work placements with a formal recruitment process, providing real-world employment experience for the trainees.
Since November 2011, 24 out of 31 people completed the scheme; five have moved into paid employment; four have moved into accredited training and six have moved into further volunteering.

Read about all this year's winners in the November issue of Ethical Performance

KFC South Africa has given up its famous Colonel Sanders logo and replaced it with the faces of children to mark World Hunger Relief month.

The faces represent the children that benefit from the fast food chain's Corporate Social Responsibility Initiative called Add Hope.

The move reinforces the brand's long-term commitment to child hunger relief in South Africa. Until 9 November, customers will see the children's faces at 114 KFC stores, one in each major city across the country. 

More than 12m South Africans go hungry every day, according to the fast food chain, which accounts for a fifth of the popuation. Through the Add Hope initiative, KFC partners with over 90 beneficiaries across the country, including early childhood development organisations, children’s homes and school feeding programmes.

The Add Hope initiative which runs all year round, lets customers purchase a menu item, “Add Hope”, for just R2 and have it added to their order. KFC franchisees also contribute a percentage of their marketing funds.

Since its launch in 2009, Add Hope has raised over R183m (£11m) towards feeding hungry children

Although the palette of green ingredients has widened in recent years, beauty product manufacturers still face many technical and sustainability issues when using naturals, warns research agency Organic Monitor.

Preservation remains the number one technical hurdle for formulators, it says. This is because while many green materials have become available for preservation, no single material is popular because of variations in product composition. Stability is a major issue, with some green preservative systems leading to discolouration and/or odour changes. Green surfactants are another problematic area, partly because certification agencies cannot agree on permissible green chemistry processes.

The move towards green raw materials and sustainable processing methods is partly driven by leading operators, it maintains. L’Oréal and Natura Brasil, two of the largest cosmetic companies in the world, have made commitments to reduce their environmental footprints by the use of green formulations. L’Oréal has pledged to only use new cosmetic ingredients that have a lower environmental footprint then existing ones.

Whilst cosmetic formulators and product developers maybe slowly getting to grips with the technical issues associated with green materials, Organic Monitor believes the sustainability issues are likely to persist for many years yet.

Green formulations are a focal theme of Organic Monitor’s upcoming forums in Paris (21-23 October) and in Hong Kong (11-13 November).

Click here for more details.

Picture credit: © Andres Rodriguez | Dreamstime Stock Photos
 

With the global population heading towards nine billion and consumption at around three times the planet’s resources, there’s no doubt that action is needed for sustainable growth in the development of low-carbon and environmental goods and services.

One organisation is leading by example. In East Anglia the New Anglia Local Enterprise Partnership (LEP) has made the green economy the heart of its work and is pioneering a way forward that could be followed by the whole of the UK, and even globally.

New Anglia is one of 39 LEPs in the country and operates in an economy worth £27bn. At the heart of the New Anglia LEP’s operation is the Green Economy Pathfinder (GEP), a project undertaken at the invitation of government to develop a vision to lead the transition to a green economy, delivering benefits across East Anglia with examples of best practice to be shared with the rest of the UK.

Mark Pendlington, chairman of the GEP and group director of Anglian Water, explains the thinking behind the GEP: “New Anglia is the perfect place to pioneer a project like this. This is the driest, lowest-lying part of the UK, with around 30% of land below sea level. We have an extensive coastline which is vulnerable to rising sea levels and the fastest growing population in the country. We are literally on the front line, and will be among the first to feel the impacts of climate change. So developing a low carbon sustainable economy is essential if we are to live within our resources and continue to make this a great place to live and work.

“Our priorities are low carbon: innovation, resource efficiency and energy; natural capital: that focuses on landscape, farming, tourism, wildlife and quality of life; and social capital: employment skills development and community cohesion. And we have developed a strategy and action plan with five key objectives and 25 goals to fast-track green economy growth.

“To enable this, we have also created the GEP Board, comprising 23 experts in a broad range of fields, who are dedicated to driving the scheme forward.”

Iain Dunnett, operations manager for the LEP said: “Our GEP manifesto showcases local businesses that are demonstrating a cutting edge approach to the green economy.”

One of the businesses featured in the GEP manifesto is Adnams Bio Energy, a partnership between Bio Group and Suffolk-based brewery Adnams plc. It is the first bioenergy plant of its kind in the UK; built to inject green gas to grid, producing biomethane from food and brewery waste.

Bio Group seeks to reduce greenhouse gas emissions through a diverse network of facilities that turn organic waste into renewable energy. It has also been working with some of the UK’s leading energy providers to develop the Green Gas Certification Scheme (GGCS). This tracks commercial transactions of biomethane through the supply chain, reassuring customers that the gas they buy is totally ‘green’ and incentivising gas producers to inject green gas into the grid.

Steve Sharratt OBE, GEP board member and Director of Adnams Bio Energy, said: “This project is a clear example of how a commercial production operation can be linked to a source of energy from local waste. Future developments such as this will be central to sustainable growth.”

At the University of East Anglia (UEA) the Adapt Low Carbon Group has been formed to promote the generation of enterprising low-carbon concerns. The Group incorporates the InCrops Enterprise Hub, the Low Carbon Innovation Fund and the Low Carbon Innovation Centre, which was formed in 2008 as the hub for all the UEA’s low-carbon and climate change innovation activities. This centre seeks to accelerate the uptake of carbon-reducing technologies and stimulate economic growth.

The high quality of Norfolk and Suffolk’s food and drink is also an important feature of the GEP manifesto because the area is the ‘breadbasket’ of the UK. Some 327,000 people work in the region’s food supply chain, with an additional 37,000 in food processing and more than 47,000 on farms. East Anglia’s predominately arable farms produce over a quarter of England’s cereals.

Many small food and drink producers, whose brands are well known outside East Anglia, are creating jobs, attracting tourists and protecting the environment. The East of England Co-operative Society has recently won a BiTC award for sustainable production. It is the largest independent retailer in the New Anglia area. Through its Sourced Locally initiative, 114 local suppliers sell over 2,000 products in its stores; most sourced from within a 30-mile radius.

One of the first tangible outputs from the GEP is Wild Anglia, an independent organisation whose aim is to think differently about nature – how nature can contribute to and at the same time be invested in, by society and our economy. Wild Anglia was awarded Local Nature Partnership status by Defra in 2012, along with a broad remit to find local solutions to strengthening nature – so that it can continue to serve society.

“This is far more than just being nice about nature. Nature underpins our society and economy,” said Richard Powell, OBE, who chairs Wild Anglia and is also a GEP board member and former director East of England – National Trust. “It is not optional, an add-on, or a ‘nice-to-do’ and it will not support us forever if we fail to invest in it.”
Richard Powell added: “Through the GEP, our aim is to use all our energy and resources, across local and central Government, business and other organisations, to devise new solutions and tap into existing programmes and initiatives, as we continue to fast-track the green economy in our region. We hope that all parties involved will be thinking differently and looking to be a champion for the economic, environmental, and social agenda’s to create new and innovative solutions. Business as usual isn’t really an option.”

Further information: http://www.newanglia.co.uk

Online safety is a big headline grabber at present, in an era when many children are more internet-savvy than their parents.

Issues such as bullying, grooming by paedophiles and online stalking are of concern to parents, along with the ease of access to hardcore pornography on the net.

Consequently, many people in government and the general public (including around 89% of parents[1]) feel that media companies and online providers have a responsibility to do what they can to limit access to images and content that may be disturbing, as well as protect younger internet users, who may be net-savvy but not life-aware.
Government pressure has been mounting. In July, the Department of Education asked ISPs Sky, Virgin and BT to get behind the UK’s fourth big ISP, Talk-Talk and adopt a browser intercept that would force existing customers to choose either to proceed with parental controls (the default setting), choose their own settings, or turn them off completely.

The three responded angrily and in fact it later transpired that Talk-Talk was not, as the DoE had claimed in its letter, planning to install any such intercept.

One reason for anger is that ISPs, in general, do not wish to be placed in the role of censors or of doing the Government’s dirty work. Some civil liberties campaigners are concerned that if ISPs are asked to censor pornography, then other types of sites might follow, such as terrorist, racist or extremist sites, with the ISP perhaps facing the risk of being legally liable if users do manage to access such sites in spite of filters.
UK ISPs prefer the ‘Active Choice’ setting on filters to ‘Default On’, under which users can choose to block access to certain content.

‘Active Choice’, they claim, makes consumers feel involved in the choices they make on internet filters, and they also add that filters can, in any case, give parents a false sense of security. They also claim that UK ISPs are already displaying a strong commitment to corporate social responsibility because of their industry code.
As an example, they cite that all UK ISPs offer free parental control options that can be easily downloaded and installed to prevent children accessing sites without parental consent.

BT, for instance, offers its Family Protection software, developed with security software firm McAfee, available free from its customer services site at http://bt.custhelp.com. This allows parents to restrict which websites their children visit, track their online usage, be alerted if inappropriate content is accessed, and keep an eye on emails and instant messaging.

The offer is part of BT’s general CSR policy and the corporate works in partnership with the UK Council for Child Internet Safety (UKCCIS), the Child Exploitation and Online Protection Centre (CEOP) and the Internet Watch Foundation (IWF) to educate parents on practical ways to protect their children.

In fact, all the UK’s broadband providers and media companies work together on policy. BSkyB’s head of corporate responsibility, Daniella Vega, says: “Everything we do with regard to child safety is intertwined with the benefits for the business. It all stems from what is material to the business - as a broadband provider, child safety is absolutely a material issue: you can’t have one without the other.”

Sky already had a strong track record on child safety because of its background in TV, claims Vega. “We always had parental controls on set-top boxes, which was a free value-add for the customer and it was easy to set up and protect children from post-watershed content, etc.” she says.

“Once we ventured into the broadband market we’ve been active with other ISPs at industry level but also on our own. For example we were the founding members of the IWF, which meant that we co-drafted the UK ISP code of practice on child net safety.”

BSkyB provides both free parental controls and advice and information to customers. “Also, our public Wifi areas – 20,000 hotspots around UK – restrict access to adult content,” says Vega.

“We were the first broadband provider to restrict access to adult content through public wifi.”

However, a recent survey by AdaptiveMobile that found 51% of UK wifi hotspots allowed access to pornographic and violent sites.

At the end of the year, Sky will offer a whole-of-home solution. “This will be one set-up covering every device,” says Vega.

“People are now accessing the internet via smart TVs, mobiles, tablets etc, not just computers, and this will have just one switch, so you can know as a parent that if you’re downstairs watching TV, your children can’t be upstairs accessing something you don’t want them to. And it will be free to our customers.”

However, says Vega, more interesting than the filters and content issue that comes in for so much debate is the educational side of online safety that ISPs can provide – teaching children and young people how to stay safe online so that they can confidently surf the net. This is where a firm’s real CSR credentials come in.

“Ultimately, young people need to be empowered to understand how they can get the most from the internet,” she says.

Sky works closely with NGOs such as Childnet International, which tasks itself with educating young people about online safety, and it has built the Sky Skills Studio, based in the firm’s main studios in Osterley, west London, specifically to cater to children and young people.

“Up to 60 kids a day come in,” says Vega, “to have a tour of the studios to understand how TV is made and then go straight into the studio and write, shoot and edit their own short reports.”

The reports are linked to core curriculum subjects, including maths, english, sports and PCHE (Personal, Citizenship, social, Health and Economic education), and are chosen by teachers via the Sky Skills Studio website.
“The studio has been open a year and the most popular topic chosen by teachers has been social media and child safety,” says Vega.

“After the kids make the film, they are given it on a USB stick and they can go back to their school and share it, which they often do in assembly.”

This kind of peer-to-peer articulation around the issue of child safety is more effective than them being told something by adults, she says.

BSkyB is also involved with Safer Internet Day, which is organised by The UK Safer Internet Centre (co-funded by the European Commission and co-ordinated by Childnet, the South West Grid for Learning and the IWF) and which takes place each year in early February.

Childnet is the hub for online child safety in the UK but it draws a lot of corporate support together, says Vega, including BSkyB and other providers such as BT and Virgin.

The NGO’s mission statement is to make the internet a safe place via education and empowerment, says Lucinda Hasell, Childnet’s policy and communications director, and it works closely with all the UK ISPs to co-ordinate its activities.

The organisation goes into schools at the rate of least four a week, speaking to children aged 3-18, alongside their parents, teachers and carers, about risks and how to stay safe online.

It helps parents and teachers to understand what children are doing online and what services they are accessing, but also crucially informs them about the tools that many of those services provide, such as the fact that you can make reports on Club Penguin (the trainer for massively multiplayer online role-playing game Club Penguin) for the younger audience and also on Facebook.

Childnet also has a corporate side, working with companies of all sizes to hold ‘lunch and learn’ sessions for firms to think about internet safety and about the fact that their employees are also parents.

Following the Bailey review on the commercialisation and sexualisation of childhood, there has been much debate about the Active Choice issue, says Hasell. But whether or not the default-on setting that the government wants (and which is supported by Labour but not by the Liberal Democrats) becomes law, Childnet’s aim right now is that: “If the tools exist now, we want parents to have that choice now.”

When it comes to companies that are handling the issue of online safety badly, as has been recently seen with Twitter’s lack of response after death threats were made against prominent feminists using the service, Sky’s Vega believes this may be due to a gap between action and awareness seen in the US but not in the UK. “I don’t think you see those gaps with UK companies,” she says.

“Internet safety isn’t a legal requirement in the UK, but it is an expectation from our customers. I think that the action from industry on this issue has gone further as a sector-led body than it would have if it was a legal requirement. If you’re working for an ISP you really need to understand these issues.

“And the wider impact of the internet – if you can get staff thinking about that more strategically you’ll get more buy-in. There needs to be an understanding built by ISPs that this could make or break their business – it’s an opportunity to demonstrate leadership and to reap reputation from it.”  

[1] Parents, Schools and the Digital Divide. Developing Online Safety Knowledge in Partnership with Parents and Schools. Professor Andy Phippen, Professor of Social Responsibility in IT, Plymouth University.

The United Nations Global Compact (UNGC) has long been criticised for promoting a loose definition of corporate sustainability, keeping it simple by asking compact signatories to “embrace, support and enact, within their sphere of influence, a set of core values” by agreeing to uphold ten principles and submit an annual statement on progress.

But the performance of the organisation’s new stock index appears to indicate that adherence to the UNGC is correlated with positive financial performance, bucking the trend of many existing socially responsible indices that historically show market under-performance.

At its mid-September tri-annual gathering in New York the UNGC launched the Global Compact 100 (GC 100) – a non-investable stock index of companies committed to the ten principles. The GC 100 showed a total investment return of 26.4% during the past year, surpassing the overall stock market (The FTSE World All Share index) by over 4 percentage points. The index also outperforms mainstream indices over both two- and three-year horizons.

The GC 100, released in partnership with financial research and analytics firm Sustainalytics, is composed of a representative group of GC companies selected on their adherence to the ten principles as well as evidence of executive leadership commitment and consistent base-line profitability.
“The good news is that the business case for integrating what we call non-traditional financial issues into corporate strategy and operations is very strong now”, says Georg Kell, who runs the Global Compact.

Call for fossil free investments
Ecumenical pressure group Operation Noah wants to address the gap between official church policy on climate change and church investments in fossil fuel companies.

“Church leaders are living in a fool’s paradise if they think they can meet their policy commitments to preventing catastrophic changes to the climate system whilst investing in companies seeking expansion in fossil fuel reserves,” says Mark Letcher, head of Operation Noah’s new disinvestment campaign Bright Now.

Two of the Church of England’s top five corporate investments are in BP (£22.4m) and Shell (£37.8m), companies seeking massive expansion in fossil fuel reserves.

“We believe Christians should start debating climate change with the same intensity and scrutiny they give to issues such as freedom of speech or same-sex marriage,” said Operation Noah chair Isabel Carter.

Operation Noah doesn’t quite have the support of the congregations. Almost two-thirds of Anglicans believe the Church of England should take a lead role in addressing anthropogenic climate change, but only a quarter believes the Church should divest in companies seeking expansion in fossil fuel reserves, according to Operation Noah.

Guinness Alternative Energy C, a £2.8m fund, came top amongst UK Registered funds over the past one year to 31 August with a cumulative +64.51% return – versus -21.51%/149th peer group rank over the past 3 years and -48.36% over the past five.

KBI Institutional Alternative Energy A EUR fund scooped the runners-up spot on the past one-year view (+38.35%) but came 145th (-4.61%) over 3 years and 129th (-48.36%) over five. Jupiter JGF China Sustainable L USD fund took fourth spot with +36.36% over the past year (-1.40%/140th over three years). SUNARES again ranked bottom in the sector for the past year posting -28.08%.

The $18.24m Guinness Atkinson Alternative fund continued its top ranking among the US Mutual funds universe for the 12 months past with a robust +50.17% performance. However, it ranked a lowly 200th over the past three years (-27.35%) and 185th (-68.90%) over the previous five. The $120.21m Eventide Gilead N fund came second top for the last 12 months (+47.09%) and top ranked spectacularly over three and five years at +112.20% and +122.28%, respectively. Firsthand Alternative Energy, a $6.70m fund, came third for the past year (+45.86%) but stood 183rd (-42.61%) over five years and muddied the waters.

LSF Asian Solar & Wind A1 fund took the spoils amongst European funds over the past year with a massive +101.84% return, but contrasted with a -38.33% (1,022nd ranking) three-year performance. MAP Clean Technology Fund I came second over the past one year (+97.74%), followed by Guinness Alternative Energy A fund’s +53.96% (-22.69%/1,012th over three years).

Triodos Vastgoedfunds bottom ranked again here for the past year (-55.80%), mirroring similar poor three- and five-year performances. Overall this sector posted the lowest past one-year peer group average performance at +8.23%.

For UK Insurance funds Skandia/Premier Ethical Life come top over the past year with +30.89% (+50.55%/16th over three years). Canlife/Allianz Global Eco Trends 4 Life closely followed with +29.53% (+25.83%/76th over three years), while L&G/Life Neptune Green Planet fund picked up the wooden spoon (-8.87%/111th).

The UK Individual Pension funds sector displayed similar behaviour to analysis one month earlier with top and bottom spots over the past year being FL/Premier Ethical EP Pension fund (+37.05%) and ReAssure NM Deposit Pension fund (+0.24%/123rd). 

Senior leadership is the most critical driver of sustainability within a business and nearly half of businesses (44%) believe engagement with business leaders will be the most important factor in successfully implementing a sustainability strategy over the next three years, finds a new report.

Additionally, at board level, 28% have periodic meetings addressing sustainability, but only 18% of companies have directors who assess the success of sustainability initiatives.

These are the findings of Sustainability Insights: Learning from Business Leaders, a study commissioned by Coca-Cola Enterprises) and developed by the Economist Intelligence Unit (EIU).

The research identifies the need to build a stronger business case to convince the wider European business community of the value of putting sustainability at the heart of its operations. While 52% of companies have been able to maintain their sustainability agenda despite the economic downturn, almost half (44%) of respondents report that the biggest barrier to implementing a sustainability strategy is perceived high costs, coupled with a lack of belief in rates of return.

For those companies that recognize the value of sustainability, the benefits they cite include differentiation from competitors (32%) and enhanced stakeholder engagement (29%). While only one in five (21%) cite boosted profits as a key benefit of their sustainability endeavours.

Picture credit: © Troscha | Dreamstime.com

Positive discrimination towards women at board level fails to improve bottom-line business performance, maintains an expert in business ethics.

Professor Nada Kakabadse, a global authority on policy and governance, addressed The University of Strathclyde Business School UAE's 'Research Squared' event recently, and presented research indicating that positive discrimination makes no significant impact on business performance.

Nada explained: "Our study of boards at 50 top companies across the UK, US, Ghana and Nigeria, found that policies designed to increase the number of women in executive positions have delivered no significant impact on a board's performance.

"This challenges widely held perceptions that gender diversity by itself in the workplace improves effectiveness, or increases the motivation and loyalty of employees.

"We found that the presence of women on a board on its own adds little or no value. Rather, it is other factors such as having an effective Chairperson, quality of dialogue, boardroom dynamics and the diversity of directors' skills which determine board effectiveness."

On the flipside, Kakabadse found that successful female directors were more adept than males at understanding how boards work. "Women, on the whole, are better at perceiving invisible power relationships, detecting hidden meaning and the significance of silence, and are also more familiar with boardroom etiquette.

"The female directors in our study felt strongly that women should gain board positions on merit, not through the use of quotas."

Picture credit: © Bobby Flowers | Dreamstime Stock Photos
 

Submitted by Guest Contributor

By Sarah Cahan

Part of the Consumer Perspectives: Turning Insights into Action series

Ever since cause marketing broke onto the scene in the early 1980s, corporations have realized and embraced the brand-building power of supporting social and environmental issues, from breast cancer research to recycling.

When companies rally behind causes, consumers respond with increased trust, loyalty and purchase likelihood. With this passion also come increasing consumer expectations for brands to become driving forces in helping solve myriad issues. As marketing messages of a higher purpose and commitment abound, consumers today are taking a closer look at the plethora of corporate efforts, wondering, “Where’s the impact?”

According to the Chronicle of Philanthropy, companies donated $5 billion to charities in 2012. Overall corporate giving – including cash and in-kind – totaled nearly $19 billion. That’s roughly $52 million every day. Despite such staggeringly high contributions, consumers are skeptical about their efficacy. According to the 2013 Cone Communications/Echo Global CSR Study, less than a quarter (22 percent) of global consumers feel companies have made a significant constructive impact on social and environmental issues.

And the uncertainty isn’t limited to corporations.

Despite a near-universal feeling of responsibility to buy with a conscience, global consumers are also unsure of their own ability to make traction toward issues. Nearly nine in 10 shoppers (88 percent) feel a responsibility to purchase products they think are environmentally and socially responsible, but just over a quarter of global consumers (27 percent) think they have any kind of significant impact through those purchases.

For marketers, this signals a massive red flag – consumers’ hearts appear to be in the right place, but if they’re unsure of their potential to effect change, they may well move on to brands that help them understand how and why their purchases matter.

Certainly progress toward solving societal ills has been made, and in large part thanks to the contributions of corporations and consumer activations that fund critical activities such as research, logistics and education. But the glaring gap between what companies and individual consumers are actually doing, and how consumers perceive the value of those efforts raises the flag on a tremendous miss – and opportunity – for CSR practitioners.

It’s like the proverbial tree falling in the forest. If consumers don’t grasp the impact of CSR efforts, are they really valuable?

Turning Insights into Action: Closing the Impact Perception Gap

Closing the impact perception gap is a must-do, both critical and urgent to the success of corporate social responsibility efforts and the very issues they strive to remedy. The risk of losing consumer engagement merely scratches the surface. Longer-term reputational damage – including loss of trust and affinity – may result if consumers feel companies fail to live up to their promises. And on the highest order, what progress has been made toward solving those pressing issues will slow or even come to a halt.

Designing CSR programs to go beyond purpose and focus on proof of progress is essential. Here are some guidelines around constructing and communicating CSR for greatest impact:

1. Focus on an issue material to your business.

If your company is in the process of creating a CSR program, focus on an issue that is material to your business or industry. Doing so will allow you to best leverage the full suite of your assets, from operations and intellectual capital, to contributions and philanthropy.

2. Choose your partners wisely.

Seek out activation partners, including NGOs and nonprofits, that can not only deliver the services you’ve identified as your contribution to the solution, but can and will consistently report back on progress. Their on-the-ground services and abilities to report in real-time are the backbone of your credibility.

3. Track your progress every step of the way.

Establish key performance indicators and measurements at the outset to ensure your activations are tracking toward your objectives. Set your bold goal, but also flag important milestones along the journey as evidence of making headway. Constantly check your CSR program against these measurements – and reconsider your approach if progress isn’t being made.

4. Ensure your stakeholders have a job to do.

Consider your stakeholders, from employees to consumers, as partners, not constituents to engage at the tail end of your program. Give them an opportunity to meaningfully work with you, contributing not only their time and dollars but also ideas, passion and personal networks.

5. Communicate your program and progress in relevant terms.

Things like zero-emissions factories are undeniably good but what do they mean for consumers? Make issues digestible and specific, as well as personally relevant to your stakeholders to strengthen their resolve to support your efforts.

Looking for inspiration?

U.K. retailer Marks & Spencer is working hard to ensure its consumers understand the individual and collective impacts of its CSR program Plan A. With smart partnerships, dynamic stakeholder engagement, and ongoing proof of progress, Marks & Spencer is not only taking real steps toward its goal to become the world’s most sustainable retailer – it is helping its consumers understand how they and the company can work together to address real and urgent issues, from climate change to public health.

Next in the 'Consumer Perspectives' series: In the U.S., cause marketing remains a powerful business strategy to foster brand affinity. We’ll take a look at the new issue-driven approaches and audiences companies need to consider as part of their CSR initiatives.

About the Author:
As Cone Communications’ Research & Insights senior insights supervisor, Sarah Cahan drives the creation and execution of industry-leading corporate social responsibility research and analysis, including the 2013 Cone Communications/Echo Global CSR Study and the 2012 Cone Communications Corporate Social Return Trend Tracker. Her team produces the award-winning Prove Your Purpose CSR newsletter and blog, which offer cutting-edge trends and real-world best practices to hundreds of Fortune 500 and nonprofit executives every week. With nearly a decade of communications and CSR experience, Sarah brings forward-thinking consumer insights and corporate implications to life for clients and thought leaders alike.