“You are a force for good in our society too. You have the power, the creativity and the enterprise to tackle some of the most pressing social challenges we face.”

So said David Cameron during a launch of the Big Society to business leaders. Many people nodded and agreed.

If you are responsible for running a multi million pound business then you are probably already used to the language of Corporate Social Responsibility. Many large firms have whole departments to consider, ponder, action and report on what the business does for the community and the environment.

And some seem to make a decent fist of it too! Look at the turnaround in perceptions in McDonald?s: demonstrating their commitment to sourcing British produce, their more positive environmental approach and their take on providing career development for young people willing to work. Banks like NatWest have made a great PR from their Customer Charter.

There are amazing programmes such as Connect from Wavelength to encourage business and social enterprise leaders to “change the world for better through business.” But they are not cheap…certainly not aimed at the small business!

There?s even an UN Global Compact which sets out 10 principles through which companies all over the world should tackle such issues as human rights, labour, the environment and corruption.

But all this CSR stuff, whilst fantastic, seems to be for the “big boys”. Large corporations who can afford to channel a lot of money into measuring and reporting. For example, Janet Blake, Head of CSR at BT, has said, “Good CSR is about maximising a company’s positive impact on society while at the same time maximising returns.” She went on to say that the sustainability agenda has helped it win billions in business.

Most Local Authorities are concerned with the same things: the local economy and employment. They want strong communities that are able to positively influence family life and the health and well-being of their citizens. And they want to reduce the impact of their citizens and businesses on the environment. These key themes are common across the UK. Yes, I know there will be extras (for example, Nottingham has also got World Class Nottingham) but those 6 themes are the core of most Sustainable Communities Strategies formulated by local authorities across the land.

So… is there any room for small businesses in this agenda?

Absolutely! Wherever you sit on the Big Society debate, it is clear that as soon as you set up a business you will contribute (whether badly or brilliantly) to those themes beloved of local authorities.

The Federation of Small Businesses has established that for every £100 you spend in a national retailer £13 is retained in the local economy. But make that an independent local retailer and that figure goes to £43. That?s a significant difference.

Small businesses tend to employ locally. And spend locally. They are often able to be more flexible with their workforce, enabling parents to balance their family life more healthily. Small businesses also contribute hugely to the work of local community groups. Whilst they may not sponsor the Premier League, how many Under 10?s teams have local businesses buying their kit?

Small businesses, local charities and social enterprises should stand tall and start shouting about their contribution to localism! It?s real.

Excitedly, in a recent research project we undertook (economic impact of the Third Sector in Nottingham), we discovered that 100% of the groups we spoke to, believed they contributed to the Nottingham Plan (our Sustainable Communities Strategy). Fantastic.

Yet only 12% had any evidence. And none of them ever used the evidence, other than to send back monitoring to their funders! (Usually with a groan)

This is such a waste. The information we need to evidence this is close at hand.

We set to work to develop a tool that will quickly and simply provide evidence of how your organisation contributes to the local economy, employment, the community and the environment. You can find it at www.limtool.com.

It?s just such a shame that we small businesses don?t shout very loudly. The danger for the business world is that the Big Society agenda is going to be dominated by the large corporations. And that?s a real distortion of the reality.

Graham Gardiner FRSA Aspiren Ltd

To find out more about the Local Impact Measurement Tool go to www.limtool.com or email Graham, graham@aspiren.org

Employee volunteering – for the inner & outer bottom lines

I came across this blog today from www.thenewpioneers.biz 

Interesting stuff. You can use the Local Impact Measurement Tool to put a value on your employee vounteering. Just one of the many indicators used in the tool. 

In a day and age where most of us dedicate a major part of our time to our jobs, we are beginning to look for more than financial compensation. As citizens and employees many of us are on the hunt for a greater purpose with our daily efforts. It’s a quest for meaning – and a quest for a meaningful work-life.

Everywhere there are signs of this quest, which coexists with a growing collective interest in handing over a better world to new generations.

Privately, some citizens follow in the footsteps of philanthro-celebs like Bono, Angelina Jolie and Bill Gates and engage actively in good causes and charitable organizations. Others donate money through websites such as DonorsChoose, GlobalGiving orSmallCanBeBig, which enable direct, personal and specific donations. And yet others volunteer their time – some even volunteer their holidays.

‘The 1960s were all about relaxing vacations; in the 80s vacations were all about being active or seeking adventure. Now people are seeking meaningful vacations. People have a very quiet but desperate need to find meaning in their lives,’ explains managing director Ross Wehner from Volunteer Adventures.

But volunteer work is not only for the private citizen. Corporate volunteering programmes that involve employees in community work (employee volunteering) are gaining ground in companies around the world.

Companies typically offer two explanations for engaging their employees in voluntary work: They offer employee volunteer programmes as an immaterial fringe benefit to strengthen their employer branding. Alternatively, the program is part of an overall CSR-strategy, aimed at boosting the corporate brand.

But as IBM, among others, has discovered, employee volunteering has an even greater strategic and financial potential: When integrated into a company’s core business strategy it can boost innovation and benefit the bottom line.

Win-win-win

IBM uses its volunteer program – Corporate Service Corps – to realize the company’s vision of creating a “globally integrated enterprise”. Since 2008, IBM has dedicated 1,000 of its top management prospects from over 50 countries to bring professional and social competences to development projects in Africa, Asia, Eastern Europe and Latin America.

Through their voluntary work, IBM’s high performers are exposed to essential learning in fields crucial to any global corporation: markets under development, cultural diversity, global teams, beyond-the-office thinking and public expectations to responsible and sustainable business practices.

There is, in other words, a “triple benefit”: leadership development for the IBMers, a philanthropic contribution to the communities, and greater knowledge and enhanced reputation in the growth markets for IBM.

As IBM’s Vice President of Corporate Citizenship and Corporate Affairs, Stanley Litow puts it: “It’s not just philanthropy, it’s leadership development and business development, and it helps build economic development in the emerging world.”

More links on corporate/employee volunteering:
www.deloitte.com/us/community
www.ibm.com/ibm/responsibility/corporateservicecorps/
www.handsonnetwork.org
www.volunteering.org.uk
www.worldvolunteerweb.org

A blog today from the NPC made me think . They have a service that analyses Charities. How are they performing? What impact do they have? What makes them tick? 

The blog considers why such analysis is important. Now, whilst they are focused on charities, their thoughts are true about any organisation. The report they have just published summarises the benefits of their analysis on the charities. 

The main 3 points they concluded are 

• Analysis informs, challenges and reassures. By identifying strengths and areas for improvement, analysis can both challenge and encourage charities in their work, and be used by the management and trustees as a tool for internal reflection and assessment. Charities told us that the process of being analysed by NPC was useful in itself, and our understanding of the context in which they work put the analysis in a helpful wider framework. Charities highlighted the value of receiving an independent view of their organisation from a ‘critical friend’.

• Analysis prompts change. The internal reflection and assessment that analysis enables can prompt charities to make changes and improve their work. They can address weaknesses or gaps that are highlighted, and make informed decisions about resources and services. Ten of the charities we spoke to had made changes in their organisation as a result of our analysis, primarily in three areas: management, measurement, and strategy and planning.

• Analysis creates opportunities. Analysis can create good opportunities for charities, particularly when shared. Analysis had created opportunities for our 16 examples in three ways: attracting funding, improving communication and prompting collaboration. Its independence helped audiences, funders and potential partners to have confidence in the charity.

This is good stuff. And makes lots of sense. Our Local Impact Measurement Tool  allows organisations: businesses, charities and social enterprises not only to produce a local impact report or indeed one of our nice Infographics but also to consider where they are in relation to local strategic priorities. 

LIMtool is split into 6 sections: Economy, Employment, Health & Well being, Community, Family and the Environment. For each section there is a detail page for those who want to explore your organisation in light of that theme. You can consider your performance and find out more about what you can do to improve it. you can use LIMtool as the basis for your CSR report or a social audit. 

LIMtool: For Money: For Marketing: For Management 

A guest blog from Kevin Moss, BT’s CSR guru in the US

See more at www.csrperspective.com 

Now retired, my dad ran a small business for many years, tailoring and selling coats and dresses. He had a retail store with a small workshop behind it in Esher, a small village Southwest of London. Dad employed perhaps a total of a dozen people at any one time.  Half in the store and workshop and the other half who worked from home. I learned about corporate responsibility from Dad as I was growing up in the 1970s, before I knew there was a term for it.  Perhaps before there even was a term for it?

Everyone knew everyone in the village and many customers were also people you came across at your place of worship or social events. Looking after customers on even the most subtle levels was critical to your place in the community as well as to business. So was looking after suppliers. The trade was a small one. It didn’t help anyone for suppliers to go out of business.

Guest blog from Third Sector Magazine….. www.thirdsector.co.uk

Beware evolving corporate responsibility programmes, warns Deloitte

By Mark Wilding, Third Sector Online, 5 July 2011

Deloitte’s More Than Just Giving report

More Than Just Giving report says many firms now focus not on giving money, but on improving their strategic relations with government and suppliers

Charities have been urged to beware the risks associated with corporate partnerships in the light of a report that says companies are approaching them with “a more sophisticated commercial focus”.

More Than Just Giving, published this week by professional services firmDeloitte, says that corporate responsibility programmes have evolved in recent years.

It says that many companies used to give cash to improve their marketing and brand images. But now they were more likely to give charity partners free expertise or facilities, or allow their staff to volunteer as part of a more strategic approach that they hope will help them to develop relationships with government and suppliers and attract more ethically-minded staff.

The report says corporate partnerships still provide many opportunities for charities but they need to think carefully before getting involved.

Bob Thust, head of corporate responsibility at Deloitte, stressed the importance of agreeing shared objectives early on. “If the corporate is interested only in PR or if the charity is focused only on what it can take out of the partner organisation, they don’t leverage the full value,” he said.

“There ought to be a much more in-depth discussion at the start to really understand what the reasons for getting involved are.”

Heather Hancock, managing partner for talent and brand at Deloitte, said: “Increasingly, corporate responsibility programmes involve a more sophisticated commercial focus where companies seek to open up new markets, attract the best staff, acquire new customers and develop strategic relationships.”

Dax Lovegrove, head of business and industry at WWF-UK, which has a number of corporate partners, told Third Sector that NGOs should draw up business engagement policies and consider setting up internal groups to discuss partnership opportunities.

“Every NGO needs to be very robust in its business engagement practices,” said Lovegrove.

“At WWF we have a very clear policy about which businesses and under what conditions we will enter partnerships. We take this very seriously.”

Some charities limit the extent to which they engage with private companies.Greenpeace UK does not accept any funding from business. Amnesty International UK’s policy is that no more than 10 per cent of its income can come from the corporate sector.

Andrew Caffery, transparency and accountability manager at Amnesty, said: “Corporate relationships are a limited part of what we do because we want to maintain our independence and our ability to campaign on any issues.

“We take approaches from the corporate sector seriously because they can always cause considerable risk to our reputation.”

The report is based on a study of partnerships in six business sectors and analyses of annual reports.

Here´s a post from Adrian Ashton ……

What’s not really clear is the part that businesses can play in it. The general drift in the media is that it is all about all us citizens volunteering to run services that used to be paid for! A tad cynical perhaps…and a shame..because I believe the basic premises behind the BIg Society are honourable ones. And indeed ones that those of us in the charitable social enterprise sectors have been espousing for years.

That we should all take more responsibility for those who share our space… whether that be in the family, the neighbourhood, the community or the world.

Indeed, in the social enterprise world we have been using entrepreneurial approaches to do just that for some time now.

Sadly, announcements about how the business world can connect with the Big Society have been slim. The one speech Cameron made was overshadowed by the World Cup announcement.

The Big Society for businesses needs to go way beyond the setting up of the Big Society Bank.

He suggested that following ways that businesses could engage with the Big Society:

• improving skills and creating jobs, for example by increasing the number of apprenticeships
• supporting small and medium sized enterprises, such as by mentoring a start-up business
• reducing carbon and protecting the environment
• improving quality of life and wellbeing though measures such as introducing flexible working
• supporting your community, for example by encouraging staff to volunteer

What then becomes important is that businesses can provide some evidence of that commtiement to those Big Society ideals.

And for that..our Local Impact Tool is ideal. You can use the tool to provide evidence of all those things …and much more besides.

The tool provides- simply and inexpensively- provides a 2 page Local Impact Report, that contains over 50 indicators of your business’  local impact, set out against 6 themes common to local authorities strategic priorities.

Aligning yourself with those strategic themes and providing evidence of them will become really important in the world of public procurement. Using the Local Impact Tool will do that for you..simply and inexpensively.

We haven’t kept the blog up to date. Does that mean we haven’t been doing anything?? Far from it… we’ve been really busy….

Since the last blog we’ve been ……

• Helping a local charity write all their policies and procedures for taking on a member of staff for the first time.
• Supporting the Nottingham Contemporary in developing a new learning strategy
• Facilitating the Nottingham Social Enterprise Hub
• Preparing to launch our new online tool, the Local Impact Measurement Tool

We have loved doing the SE Hub. We’re having an absolute blast. Nottingham has a number of new social entrepreneurs coming through with some fantastic ideas.  We’ve met some of the most creative and committed people who want to use business means  to achieve social change.

Have a look at the Hub website. We want it become the place to go for social entrepreneurs in Nottingham. We want it to be a great starting place to find out about support, funding and a whole host of opportunities to grow and develop your social enterprise.

And, as for the Local Impact Measurement Tool…. watch this space!!

The problem of definition seems to be getting in the way. We have struggled to get a consistent understanding from organisations, including many who identify themselves as social enterprises and their support organisations. V. worrying.

So, after a bit of thinking, and looking at some models (none of which did it for us), we have developed a mixing desk.

If you have a look at the mixer illustration (nicely done by Toni we think!) attached, then we think that mainstream private companies would generally find themselves at the top of each slider. Philanthropic groups would find themselves at the bottom. Social Enterprises , we think, would find themselves regularly in the middle or top half.

Have a look. See what you think? Let us know. Have we missed anything out? Are we barking up the wrong tree?

We look forward to hearing from you.

Graham

We’ve just included the value of volunteering in our Nottingham economic impact research.

We looked at the model Adrian posted as one of the contenders. We ended up using more of a Canadian model which is much more comprehensive- it splits it into 6 main roles and uses a salary comparison.

It sounds a bit complicated but actually it isn’t. We developed a simple spreadsheet and explanation as part of our new Proving Your Worth online training package.

We’ve attached a page for our end notes describing the process. We’d love to show you more but the report has been embargoed for a couple of weeks.

Value of volunteering

So…how do you value your volunteers? Do you think it’s a good thing or bad thing to assign some economic value to people who offer their services free of charge?

Cheers

Graham