Getting started with CSR: a guide for powering purpose from the ground up

Based on 13+ years of helping clients develop and launch CSR programs, we know that building a CSR program from the ground up can seem challenging, overwhelming, and maybe a little intimidating. But you’re here — and we’re here to help.

We’ve prepared this blueprint to help you design a CSR program that works for you and your company. Along the way, we’ll share examples and tips from some of the 700+ clients we’ve helped do the same. You don’t have to be a big brand — or have a big budget — to be the good you want to see in the world.

Setting the foundation: a new approach to CSR

Building a CSR program is like building a house: you need to start with a strong foundation. And that foundation begins with infusing purpose across every part of your business. Investing in purpose fosters compelling and meaningful workplace cultures that engage employees — and it creates long-term social and business impact, too.

Consumers, employees, and investors are looking for more from the brands they choose to align with. That’s why more companies are taking a holistic view of their programs, empowering their people to do good in many ways — whether it’s donating to a cause, joining an employee resource group (ERG), or engaging in small acts of kindness. CSR is no longer a side-desk obligation, but rather the means of infusing purpose throughout an entire organization — and something that should have the attention of executives, including the CEO and board of directors.

CSR and business outcomes

At Benevity, we believe the best way to engage employees is through investing in purpose. According to a study we conducted, employees who both give and volunteer are 57% less likely to leave than those who do not.

Investing in purpose drives gains across all aspects of your business — from strengthening your corporate reputation and building culture to attracting top talent and building a strong environmental, social and governance (ESG) profile. Employee and consumer loyalty flows from an authentic commitment to making a positive impact on the world.

Corporate purpose is a team sport

Since corporate purpose is becoming a strategic differentiator and one of the very few levers for companies to drive authentic, empowered brands and cultures, it’s no longer solely the domain of CSR and HR professionals. Increasingly, embedding purpose requires an unprecedented level of collaboration across your organization. Here’s why each team has a stake in getting it right:

Marketing: Goodness authentically builds your brand, deepens community connections, unearths compelling stories with supporting data, and generates new themes and trends across your business.

Corporate social responsibility: Goodness increases focus on positioning your company as a CSR leader, provides opportunity to gather robust impact data, and strategically aligns your programs with your people’s passions.

Talent and recruitment: Goodness drives engagement and reduces employee turnover, connects people across locations and business units, and attracts purpose-driven employees while rewarding prosocial behavior.

Start with a compelling mission

Starting a new program is no easy feat — often it begins with just a few people, or even one person. With that in mind, every moment, action, and goal must drive results and impact. That’s where tangible, easy-to-understand, and inspiring mission statements become critical.

This means ensuring all team members feel included and empowered, while still laddering up to collective key business objectives and goals. Many Benevity clients identify 3–4 key pillars of strategic focus at a collective level and use a corporate purpose program to support a larger, open-choice model.

Recruit champions

Call them Ambassadors, Champions, or Catalysts — but building a team of employees across your locations who can help implement, scale, and grow your program is one of the most impactful steps you can take. These dedicated individuals are passionate about making a difference in their local communities and will cheerl, rally, and inspire their co-workers to get excited about prosocial activities like giving and volunteering.

You may be surprised to find there are already people in all your locations willing to support purpose initiatives. Our recommendation: start by finding out who’s already involved in their community and who can speak passionately about why they support the causes they do.

To find your Champions, here are some folks worth reaching out to:

• Passionate participants — people already active in their communities will know other employees passionate about doing good.
• Executive admins — those connected to your executive team will have a pulse on leadership’s cause support and commitment.
• ERG and affinity group leaders — often actively involved with causes that resonate with their group and likely already volunteering together.
• All-hands coordinators and internal communications teams — they can quickly get you on the all-hands meeting schedule.
• HR team — with broad organizational knowledge, they’ll know which high-potential employees are looking for professional development opportunities like leading a Social Impact Community.
• Leadership and intern programs — powerful recruitment pools for motivated Champions.
• Field and deskless workers — don’t overlook employees who work outside the office; ensuring your programs are inclusive for all your people matters.

For more guidance, see our resource: Build an Ambassador Network.

Building a volunteer champion program: Illumina’s story

Illumina, a biotech company with several international offices, rolled out their global volunteer program assuming they knew what all employees would connect with — based on preferences of their U.S.-based employees. When their program administrator visited offices in China, Singapore, and Japan, she discovered the global volunteer program was getting very little pickup: no volunteer events, no program ownership, and very little guidance.

In response, Illumina appointed Volunteer Champions in each region, gave them a budget, set goals, and scheduled regular check-ins to discuss progress. Linking local Champions with the larger global network added an additional layer of support and connection.

Illumina now holds four annual global volunteering events, with everything else left to Champions to create and communicate locally. The initiative has led to impactful local volunteer event creation with a measurable positive impact on participation and morale.

Employee giving and volunteering: activating your people with purpose

Employees are more likely to participate in a CSR program that values their experience and passions. The employee experience should be at the center of all participation opportunities. Every aspect of the program should answer one question: how are we making it easier for our people to have an impact?

Key elements of an easy-to-use program include:

• Open-choice giving so employees can choose the nonprofits they want to support based on their passions and interests.
• Company incentives like matching, seeding, and volunteer rewards to show employees you care and actively encourage participation.
• Payroll giving to make it easy for employees to donate directly from their paychecks.
• User-generated giving and volunteer opportunities to enable your people to co-create the program from the ground up.
• Geographically specific opportunities to engage employees in their local communities.
• Flexible volunteering options — including skills-based and virtual — so people can participate in big and small ways.
• Quick and efficient nonprofit vetting and funds disbursement to ensure every donation gets to the intended organization (no more manual checks).

“Employee engagement levels in our Commitment to Communities program increased from 39% to 49% since moving to open-choice giving.” — Lauren Fitzgerald, Community Investment Specialist, Meridian

Opening the door to participation

Want to get as many employees as possible engaged? Leverage gamification, open-choice giving, and volunteer rewards that incentivize them and give them a stake in your program’s success.

Volunteer rewards (sometimes called dollars for doers) provide additional funds to employees based on volunteer hours. For example, if an employee participates in an 8-hour house build, they’d earn $160 (at $20/hour) to direct to the nonprofit of their choice. You’ve amplified their impact by enabling both volunteerism and giving — and volunteer rewards are most powerful when they’re open choice, too.

Challenges encourage small positive actions that anyone can participate in, regardless of time, money, location, or job type. Benevity clients can use the Challenges module to motivate employees through gamified, easy-to-complete activities — whether it’s taking shorter showers, educating themselves on racial inequity, or registering to vote. It’s the great engagement equalizer and a powerful team builder.

Open-choice giving is the biggest driver of participation. In open-choice programs, employees are five times more likely to participate. The most successful programs find a balance between company pillars and employee passions. To understand which causes your employees care about most, consider conducting an internal survey — you might be surprised with what you find.

Success story: Vancouver International Airport

In 2016, Vancouver International Airport (YVR) had only 4 causes available for employee giving. In 2017, they added 100+ charities to their annual campaign, set a goal of 40% participation, and offered a $75K matching budget — plus the promise of unveiling a mystery briefcase if the goal was hit.

The results: employees gave $67,491.50 to 60 causes and surpassed the 40% participation goal. The YVR communications team opened the briefcase and gave a custom pair of YVR socks to every participant. Watch the campaign finale video here.

Shout it from the rooftops

Your program can have the best incentives and design in the world, but if employees don’t know about it, they can’t participate. These communication tweaks are easy to implement and can quickly build awareness and trust:

• Scale your communications. Request five minutes from management to have Champions (or leadership) speak at team meetings.
• Raise awareness gradually. Start with small campaigns (like Denim Fridays!) and promote recurring payroll donations.
• Visually demonstrate progress. Set a giving goal and track its progress visually in a common area. The total donations thermometer is very powerful.
• Celebrate milestones. Acknowledge participation from day one. Include CSR training and micro-volunteering in new-hire orientation.
• Go social. Encourage employees to post on their feeds and mention your CSR hashtag.
• Leverage global events. Be strategic with budget and create a “wow” effect at key calendar moments. Many Benevity clients offer 2:1 or 3:1 matching on special dates like GivingTuesday — and one even offered 5:1 matching in response to COVID-19.

Assess your impact

Demonstrating value to your company, colleagues, customers, and communities requires tracking the right metrics. Here are two key categories to measure:

Transactional metrics include program participation rate (employees who give or volunteer divided by total employees), total volunteer hours, number of nonprofits supported, dollars invested, platform login conversion rates, skills-based volunteer hours, SDG-aligned campaign results, and conversion rates after seeding.

Engagement metrics include number of employee-generated opportunities (a strong signal of true engagement), actions per user in the platform, voice of the employee (surveys and qualitative data), voice of nonprofits (stories employees bring back from causes they support), and social media mentions using your program hashtag.

Pro tip: Create a hashtag for your program so employees can spread a culture of goodness across the company. It also makes it easy to measure impressions and mentions across your social media platforms.

Choose a technology partner

All of the ideas in this guide, paired with the right technology platform, can help you bring everything together and scale across multiple locations, time zones, and functions. Enabling purpose, engaging employees, and creating social and business impact can be a lot easier when you have technology to help streamline, automate, organize, and manage it for you.

Whether you’re building your program from the ground up or investing in CSR software for the first time, having a partner that can grow with you sets you up for success now and in the future. Benevity has worked with its clients to develop the Guide for Choosing an Employee Engagement Partner to help you find the best fit for your program needs.