Effective reporting of corporate community investment should be a key component of any company’s CSR programme. Jon Lloyd guides us through some of the complexities of CCI reporting and highlights some of today’s best reporters.
Communicating corporate community investment is a core component in building trust and being recognised as a valuable company in the community. Here we highlight the questions that effective reports should answer and some of the reporters that stand out from the crowd.
Why report?
A summary of why a company gets involved in the community and what it hopes to achieve is, surprisingly, absent from much community reporting. It is in this key area where some of the strongest reporters set out their stall. BSkyB says in its Corporate Responsibility Review 2004-05: “Our community activities focus on entertainment, sport and media. These are the areas we are known for, and the ones we know interest our customers.” At once we understand what BSkyB supports and why, as well as how it aims to go about it. It’s a solid base upon which an effective report can be built.
What do we spend?
Reporting CCI spending has undoubtedly strengthened in recent years. Many companies include the value of goods donated in-kind and the cost of the time contributed by employees as well as cash. The challenge is to relate the amount spent to the overall strategy in order to show the extent to which the money spent has been targeted. Abbey’s CSR Report 2004 provides three charts summarising how its contribution is spent, while O2’s Corporate Responsibility Report 2005 provides four.
How do we help?
The benefits of a CCI programme come in a variety of forms, from donations of school textbooks to drilling water wells. Quantifying overall benefits is therefore difficult, and as a result reporting is largely confined to case studies of ‘big’ projects. Strong reporters set objectives against achievements, outlining why they are involved in a project and what they think success should look like, before enumerating what the project has bought to the community and, increasingly, the business. Both Diageo and BG Group provide case studies in their latest CSR reports that outline why they support a project, what they have contributed and how they and the community have benefited as a result.
How has the world changed as a result?
Data on benefits tells us what a community programme has done, but doesn’t explain how the world has become a better place as a result. A strong community report will address this issue. Impacts are harder to quantify than outputs and can often only be assessed in the long term. As such, impact reporting is rare. BSkyB reports on its Living for Sport project that “aims to re-engage [at risk] young people and get them back into school life”. As well as reporting how the project reaches over 2,000 participants it explains what has changed for those involved, including data showing improved levels of self-confidence, social skills and attitude to learning.
Integrating CCI
The ‘professionalisation’ of CCI management and its integration with business needs has yet to be widely reflected in community reporting. The strongest reports stand out by conveying that CCI is not just a nice-to-have, but also an integral business function subject to the same rigour in assessing achievement as others. Answering these key questions enables companies to reflect this growing sophistication and will allow them to communicate a thorough understanding of their investment and what it has accomplished.
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