SmartSimple Blog

When reflecting on the events of 2020, the word that leaps to many of our minds is “unprecedented.” From the crippling COVID-19 pandemic to the calls for justice and equity heard across the United States, companies have had to absorb a number of unprecedented shocks to the way they do business, and the way they carry out their mandate of corporate citizenship. Many organizations have shifted their missions to respond to the ongoing crises – for example, by directing funds toward addressing employee hardship, improving digital education, or advancing advocacy work.

The United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) have become a widely adopted blueprint for organisations to map and track their progress in addressing global challenges like poverty, clean energy, and climate change.

For many however, effectively tracking and measuring their overall impact remains elusive, especially when many have different philanthropic program types (i.e. employee volunteering, donations, fundraising, etc.). How for instance, do you track overall impact if your volunteer programs use volunteer hours as a base metric, while your donation program uses Euros raised to track progress?

Successfully implementing a corporate social responsibility (CSR) strategy is both challenging and complex. That's why SmartSimple is happy to offer practical workshops on five CSR topics to help solve some of the most common challenges when building out or improving your responsibility strategy, such as integrating with the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). 

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Everything starts with the voice of your crowd. CSR has gone through many shifts since its inception, and how it's addressed the societal needs of the time. We speak about the evolution of CSR leadership in our Brief History of CSR blog. According to the book All In, CSR has transformed through three eras of leadership: the “Harm Reduction” era where companies reactively tried to offset some past mishaps to better their brand in the public eye, to the “Strategic Integration” era where companies saw the value in brand building into their marketing strategy. Today, CSR follows a  more purpose-led model where companies implement a purpose as a critical element in the fabric of every aspect in their operations. This model is more holistic in its approach that makes your business ready for the modern era of purpose-driven CSR.