Top community-minded companies are using community engagement and “doing good” as a means to propel their business efforts and success. This was among the key findings of a Points of Light survey to identify its 50 Civic Honorees; those identified as top community-minded companies, based on the companies’ U.S. community engagement efforts.
For example, 88 percent are using it in their employee engagement efforts, 84 percent are using it in both their diversity and inclusion efforts, and marketing, and 72 percent are using it as a component of skill development. Top minded companies are recognizing that their philanthropy and community engagement builds their business, so there is a strong trend of over 60 percent measuring how their community engagement affects marketing, employee engagement and diversity and inclusion. Interestingly they also found that “at nearly 70 percent of Civic 50 companies, executive leaders support community engagement by participating in community activities at least once a month.”
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Four factors of engagement were assessed to identify “top- minded” civic companies, including investment, impact measurement, institutionalization (policies, systems, incentives) and integration.
Integration was looked at from the angle of how the company integrates their U.S. community engagement programs into key business functions, including employee engagement, marketing/PR, diversity and inclusion, recruiting, stakeholder relations and skill-development. We at B:CIVIC think the integration factor offers significant opportunity for up-scaling the impact of CSR in the community, in the scope of outcomes achieved, and in its potential to increase CSR’s relevance and value within companies.
Link to CSRWire for more on the Point’s of Light Civic 50 2017 Honorees, including other key trends and highlights gleaned from their assessment process.