Giving Thoughts

Data in the Driver’s Seat for More Effective Global Giving Strategies

By Carmen Perez, Manager, Measurement and Standards, CECP

What happens when your company merges with another firm, growing your international employee base from 20 percent to 50 percent overnight? What corporate societal investment programs can you launch to most effectively support your company’s growth plans into East Asia? These answers and more can be found in Giving Around the Globe, a report from CECP released on November 18 that provides trends and analysis to inform international corporate giving strategies and navigate differences across regions.

CECP knows corporate social responsibility (CSR) professionals strive to ensure that their global programs drive as much value as the ones built in their home markets. As the globalization of business continues, companies face increasing challenges regarding how to invest globally to deliver high-impact societal improvements through initiatives that align with their corporate strategy.

Data supports your strategy decisions

Like Giving in Numbers, a report by CECP in association with The Conference Board, Giving Around the Globe uses data and benchmarking to help CSR professionals make the case for strategy improvements.

For example, we know from our research that in Asia median total giving per employee is US$680, and that in Europe only 27 percent of companies offer a pro bono program. Armed with this information, companies can better predict budget needs, or make a decision to introduce an employee engagement program that might differentiate it from other firms in the market.

Through the use of the Global Guide, this study meets one major need for effective measurement and evaluation of corporate giving: common standards for company benchmarking. The English adage “apples to apples” may not have an exact translation everywhere, but the principle is clear: using a common definition allows us to make accurate and usable comparisons and assessments across borders.

Lessons from the report

This approach helped us identify a number of lessons to help practitioners drive more strategic and successful global programs. These include:

• Learn from locals CECP has found that the best way to advise our 200+ network of large, predominantly U.S.-based companies on global giving is to learn from local companies headquartered in major global economies. Giving Around the Globe includes two-page regional profiles, including information on local companies, trends and benchmarking data, and the unique qualities of societal engagement in Africa, Asia, Europe, and Latin America. Fifty-four companies from these regions provided information on their programs. In 2013, their combined societal investment totaled US$3.6 billion.

• Stay up to date with mandates CSR professionals at companies with a current or growing multinational footprint need to understand the evolving landscape for CSR and social investment mandates around the world, in particular to help compliance teams stay abreast of developments. Many emerging markets other than India, which has a well-known “2 percent” requirement, have introduced CSR regulations that determine a certain level or type of corporate societal investment in the country. Two such examples are Brazil (requires societal investment to access certain licenses) and Indonesia (has required societal investment for industries affecting natural resources), and in Europe the regulatory focus is on non-financial disclosure and reporting. Giving Around the Globe addresses all these examples in greater depth.
• Some regions need to focus on domestic issues Among our research pool, the number of companies that gave internationally varied widely by region, as shown below. International giving expansion is linked closely to the globalization of businesses, and growth goals and employee populations in foreign markets tend to impact companies’ international giving strategies. However, companies in Latin America and Africa reported that national pressures to address important local issues and societal needs drove investment priorities. In addition, multiple stakeholders, including employees, set expectations that company giving programs in these regions focus on domestic issues—such as development—first.

What’s next?

We will continue to closely watch the development of CSR regulations around the world so that companies can respond accordingly and factor them into their planning and strategy development, but we believe the best defense is a good offense. Companies that are creating giving programs linked strongly to their business offering are leading with responsibility and values (take, for example, Pepsi’s Performance with Purpose strategy).

While philanthropy may have been a marginalized part of business in decades past, those companies with CSR programs integrated into their core business values are among the highest-performing. There is evidence of this in Giving in Numbers: 2014 Edition, which found that between 2010 and 2013 “community investors” (companies that increased donations by more than 10 percent between) also increased profits by 11 percent.

The future promises more local and international community investment from companies as their work becomes more strategic, more measurable (with data in the driver’s seat), and more focused.

About the author:

As part of CECP’s measurement team, Carmen leads the organization’s global research, including implementing the Global Guide reporting standard and authoring the publication Giving Around the Globe. Carmen was instrumental in the creation of the new standard published in the Global Guide to What Counts, released in June 2011. She also manages CECP’s engagement with international stakeholders and leads CECP’s customized benchmarking services, an exclusive benefit to CECP companies.