How Community Investment Fits into Your CSR Strategy

Too often, when corporate leaders think about community investment, they frame the program around the money or time going out without taking into consideration the return on those investments. 

But if you don’t take into account the broader benefits of your program, you’ll never quite understand the value. And likely, you’ll underfund or underprirotize it.  

With that in mind, let’s drill down a little deeper into why community investment is also a smart investment.

Consumers want to support companies that invest in their communities. It’s no longer acceptable to focus only on the bottom line. Businesses need to step up and use their resources to help address complex social and environmental issues. 

Building a community investment program helps your company become a trusted brand. You’re showing that you’re willing to prioritize the broader social good. Not only will this improve your customer loyalty, but the public will begin to associate your business with these values. And a strong reputation is always good for business.

There is a tendency sometimes for people to approach corporate philanthropy by thinking of the community as distinct and separate from the business. But that’s not accurate—they are inextricably interconnected. 

Your community likely includes your customers and employees. Plus as we’ve all had to confront recently—it’s also every person or resource along the supply chain. So what benefits the community as a whole often benefits your business too. You’re improving the very conditions that allow your business to thrive. In that sense, your community investment efforts are also a long-term investment in your own future.

With a clear mission, a skilled team, and dedicated resources, your business is uniquely poised to help meet community needs. Plus, your community work can also help you build stronger partnerships with other organizations and with government entities—whether local, state, or federal.

To be effective, your community investment program needs to be supported by people at every level of your organization. This buy-in is critical. It ensures that as your business grows and evolves, you’ll continue to make community investment part of your mission. 

Start with your leadership. Even if they won’t be directly involved in building your program, you need their support. They are the ones setting the course for the whole company, and you want them to be wholeheartedly behind the mission. If they aren’t, you risk having your efforts undercut over time. Plus, employees that don’t see buy-in from leadership may be less likely to get behind your strategy—which will make it hard to get your program off the ground.  

Your company leaders should understand the value of the program in terms of what it provides for the community, but also in terms of the benefits to the business itself. Do the work on the front end to articulate what community investment means to your organization. Get inspiration from others as you build the business case for your work. 

Though support from leadership is key, you want employees across the organization to be invested in the program’s success. Consider letting employees help shape your CSR priorities. Depending on the size and shape of your company, you can use a survey or open forum to let employees share their thoughts about what community issues they care about most. 

Including employees not only ensures broader support for your program, but it helps foster a culture of collaboration and openness. Employees want to know that the company values their feedback.

It may sound straightforward, but setting a budget for your program requires some strategy. Incorporating the return on investment can be tricky, but if you don’t account for the benefits to your business, you’ll undervalue and underfund your efforts.

You also want your budget to be sustainable for the long term. Of course, you don’t always know what the future will hold, but don’t plan your program one year at a time. You want to create something that makes a lasting impact and that means investing for the long term. 

Budgeting for any CSR program often requires a reorientation of values. When businesses focus exclusively on profit, they are often making financial decisions based on what’s cheapest and fastest. But of course that leaves out so much. If you haven’t already, you and your team need to start thinking about how other valuations come into play such as equity and sustainability and how those values are weighted as you make business decisions.

This shift will help drive your decision making around your community investment program, and it will likely shape how you think about your business practices on a broader scale.

No matter what causes you frame your community investment program around, there’s likely someone else already at work on addressing those issues. Don’t see them as competition. In making a social impact, collaboration is key. 

Seek out the organizations whose missions align with yours. They likely have helpful insights and a deeper understanding of community needs and values. Also, they’ve probably done the work to build trust with community members. 

Partnerships with these organizations—whether nonprofits or social enterprises—can help you run a more effective program. They know what works and they’ve had practice putting their programs into action. Rather than starting from scratch, you can leverage the work they’ve already done to make your resources go further. 

Connect with their teams to determine what your company and their organization bring to the table, whether missions overlap, and how you can work together to make a bigger impact.

For example MiiR—a company that makes stainless steel water bottles, coffee mugs, and more—uses community grants to build partnerships with grassroots organizations. MiiR has provided support to nonprofits like Kula, Black Girl Ventures, Bike Works, and others. This allows them to have a deep impact around the world without having to build from the ground up in each community.  

Invest in these relationships for the long term. Sustained partnerships can be the backbone to making lasting social change. So stay in communication, respect the team’s time and opinions, and look for ways to deepen the connection over time.

Once you have your program up and running, you want to know whether it is indeed moving the needle. Are you making the impact you hoped to make? 

The key is choosing a framework that will help you understand both the outputs (direct, short-term measurements) and outcomes (broader impacts) of your program. 

For example, if you create a community investment program to address childhood hunger, you can likely measure how many meals you’re able to provide to children in need. But it’s also important to think beyond those hard numbers too. Perhaps providing meals might help improve the quality of life for children or boost their academic performance over time. Of course these outcomes can be trickier to trace, but it’s worth thinking broadly to take into account the full potential of your program. 

Not only do you want to know how your investment has made a difference for the community, but you want to know how it’s impacted your business. You could look at metrics such as sales or retention. You could also send out a survey to customers and employees. 

Of course, the effects of your program will fit into a larger context for both your business and the community. For instance, you’re probably doing more than just this one thing to boost sales and hang onto good employees. But this is an important piece of the puzzle.  

Measuring your impact also helps you improve your program. Perhaps you realize that you’re not having the impact you hoped you would. Or maybe you see an opportunity to expand what’s working well. Either way, it’s important to put time and effort into understanding the effects of your investment for both the long- and short-term.