We measure what matters. When it comes to CSR strategies, why is there so little investment in measuring community impacts?
Many businesses, now actively investing in the health and wholeness of their communities, seem reluctant to measure the effectiveness of their efforts. Bea Boccalandro, a member of the Boston College Center for Corporate Citizenship faculty and president of VeraWorks, has found that most companies are resistant to the idea of measuring the impact of their community programs. In her latest blog post Measurement is more than a good thing to do – it’s the right thing, Bea finds that many companies respond with the following:
“We can’t measure whether our program truly makes a difference without cutting services,” corporate citizenship professionals often say, “so we just can’t afford to prove impact.” Faced with zero-sum funding decisions, we overwhelmingly choose more people served over more knowledge gained. We consider it heartless to favor an evaluation report over a child. Virtually every corporate citizenship program supports services. Precious few know whether such services make an impact.”
Here are some of our thoughts on the matter of community investment and measurement.
Related posts:
- Can You Prove Your Company’s CSR Matters? Probably Not.
- The 3 Basic Steps to Create Trust Through Corporate Social Responsibility
- CSR and Corporate Volunteering Programs: How to Make the Business Case
- Start a Corporate Volunteering Program Where You Work (Part 2 of 2)
Resources mentioned in the above video:
- The Points of Light Institute
- The Corporate Volunteering Council of Canada
- LBG Canada Leading Canadian companies working together to measure corporate community involvement
Also, you may want to check out some incredible new tools from AngelPoints. They create software to track volunteer programs and evaluate their impact.
Be sure to check back with us as we reflect on our recent trip to Boston and the 2010 International Corporate Citizenship Conference. See you soon!
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Email Chris; chrisjarvis@realizedworth.com
Email Angela at angela@realizedworth.com
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