Corporate Social Responsibility

An innovative Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) project has taken place in rural Tanzania, involving UK-based project management company Buro Four and international development specialist MondoChallenge. In this feature article for e-Volunteerism, representatives from both organizations write about the special challenges and unique rewards of this project, which for the first time brought individual water harvesting systems and a community Internet center to residents of a rural Tanzanian Maasai village in 2008. 

In this Keyboard Roundtable, we’re casting a wide net to explore a number of volunteerism issues from the diverse perspectives of people involved in volunteering.  “From Whose Perspective?” will include a discussion of such important issues as:

• Employer-supported volunteering: Is it volunteering if people are paid to volunteer with time off from work? From whose perspective?
• Pro bono service: Is this volunteering?  From whose perspective?
• Do we draw the line on rewards/incentives in volunteering? From whose perspective?

We’ll engage a few corporate and community sector volunteer managers, a public sector volunteer manager and a volunteer to help us gain multiple perspectives in this next Keyboard Roundtable.

In June 1979, Pennsylvania’s “First Annual Symposium on Volunteerism and Education” was convened in Harrisburg.  The keynote address was delivered by Gordon Manser, co-author of the 1976 book, Voluntarism at the Crossroads.  We dust off and republish his speech here, allowing us to look back through the prism of 31 years at the issues he predicted would affect our field in the coming decades.  Some – such as the impact of the gasoline shortage at that time or Proposition 13 in California – have evolved into somewhat different challenges.  Other themes continue to be very pertinent today.

The nonprofit sector has long been the domain of organizations and individuals interested in philanthropic activities and charitable work.  However, this is changing, as Corporate America discovers that nonprofits and employee-volunteering programs can be legitimate and useful business tools to promote their brand value.

The latest trend for companies is to create corporate nonprofit foundations and employee-volunteer programs to demonstrate corporate social responsibility (CSR).  Although having noble missions, the real intention of these corporate nonprofit foundations and inspired employee-volunteer efforts is to enhance brand value, increase overall company profitability, grow customer loyalty, and reflect company values in tangible ways. 

Two for-profit corporations, Bank of America and Toyota, are both enhancing their brand name through their respective nonprofit foundations and employee-volunteer programs, each of which helps Bank of America and Toyota to build stronger relations with their communities and stakeholders.

In this article, Kevin Kalra, himself a 2004 Toyota “Community Scholar,” explores what “brand value” is and how CSR furthers it.

In the post-Enron (or Tyco, WorldCom, IGA, etc) accounting-scandal era, corporate citizenship has taken on new meaning and relevance.  Boards of directors are suddenly on the hook as much for their company’s ethical performance as their financial results (as well they should be). Shareowners and regulators are newly vigilant.  And companies large and small are looking to polish the good-guy gloss on their activities in the marketplace.

Among the weapons at hand for many corporations is an expanding emphasis on workplace volunteering – the direct support of their employees’ community activity.  The workplace volunteer movement isn’t new.  Some large companies have been in the game for twenty years or more.  But with companies wanting to do more in the community, many nonprofits – the vehicle through which companies reach out to those in need – may be wary, concerned that the taint of profit-making motives could rub off on their mission-focused endeavors.

It needn’t be so. Nonprofits and companies can work (indeed, are working) productively together to the betterment of our communities.  All it takes is some understanding, and maybe even some TLC.  It also takes context.  What is motivating companies to enter the community arena? How might corporate citizenship imperatives help nonprofits gain from the resources available in the business sector?

David Warshaw, who toiled close to 30 years in the public relations/corporate citizenship arena for a huge company, has some decided opinions to share.

This article examines a research report done at Wilfrid Laurier University in Waterloo, Ontario, Canada by Evelina J. Rog, S. Mark Pancer, and Mark C. Baetz: “Corporate Volunteer Programs: Maximising Employee Motivation and Minimizing Barriers to Program Participation.” The research was done on the Ford Motor Company’s employee volunteer programme and is based on in-depth interviews with over 100 staff. It outlines six key points to increase employee volunteering. The Research-to-Practice article highlights where the findings resonate with other volunteering research, but also notes some areas where convincing companies to have an employee volunteering programme might encounter barriers not addressed in this research.

Although South Africa has a long history of volunteering, employee volunteer programmes are a relatively new trend. Charities Aid Foundation Southern Africa (CAFSA) has been actively encouraging and facilitating employee giving for a number of years. They have recently embarked on a new campaign designed to raise the awareness of employee volunteering and to increase the number of companies offering employee volunteering programmes to their staff.

This article describes the context and tradition of South African volunteering in general and employee volunteering in particular. Then there is a detailed account of the first-ever Employee Volunteer Week run by CAFSA in early 2005, with a thoughtful discussion of the effort’s successes, challenges, and plans for 2006. Also included are a PDF of the how-to toolkit developed for employers and nonprofits, several photographs, and a brief video clip of the public service announcement filmed for promotion.