By Melissa J. Anderson

Recently Forbes Insights released the results of its latest survey on corporate social responsibility. According to the report, “Corporate Philanthropy – The New Paradigm: Volunteerism. Competence. Results.” companies are relying to corporate responsibility more and more to position themselves for success in new markets and to build the competencies of high performing employees.

For example, the report details MasterCard’s recent partnership with the Grameen Foundation in Colombia, which involved an 8-month leadership program for a select group of talented employees.

Patricia Devereux, group head of Corporate Philanthropy & Citizenship at MasterCard Worldwide, explained, “Corporate social responsibility isn’t just about writing checks anymore; it’s making important ties with what is going on in your community.”

She continued, “The commitment from senior management is strong, our employees worldwide are increasing their volunteer hours, and all of us can see firsthand the impact we are having in our communities.”

Devereaux also discussed another trend revealed in the report – tracking progress and making changes based on that data to achieve results. “Those are long-term metrics, of course, but that’s what we are interested in – long-term, sustainable improvements,” she said.

By Melissa J. Anderson

According to the latest global Corporate Responsibility Best Practices survey, the number of global companies with a lead role overseeing CR increased to 62% last year, compared to 42% in 2010. The survey also revealed that 77% of companies plan to grow their corporate responsibility programs in the next three years.

The report, released by Corporate Responsibility Magazine, the Corporate Responsibility Officer Association and NYSE Euronext, is based on a poll of companies on NYSE Euronex Indices, plus other companies within the magazine’s database, reported Environmental Leader.

The study showed that companies are expanding CR programming and recognizing that it does have an impact on their market competitiveness and employee engagement levels. In fact, the study showed, even corporate leadership is working to drive the CR conversation within their companies.

By Melissa J. Anderson

In a recent Harvard Business Review blog post, leadership expert Frances Hesselbein wrote about the critical importance of corporate responsibility – not just as a means to provide visibility to companies, but as a way to nourish deep pools of talent within the community. She wrote:

For leaders in all three sectors there is a new appreciation that when we build the healthy community, it is for the greater good. And even for a leader with little concern about the greater good, there is the reality that a sick and ailing community cannot produce the healthy, energetic, productive workforce our enterprises demand if indeed they are to be viable and even present at the end of this turbulent decade.

Hesselbein was writing in 2010, when, mired in a recession, companies were cutting the budgets of any corporate program that didn’t seem crucial in the short term. She cautioned against this, explaining that leadership had the ability to instill a dedication to corporate responsibility in a high-performing workplace culture.

She also said that the commitment to corporate responsibility must not be superficial, but rather a deep and earnest effort on behalf of the corporation. She writes:

“Ignoring externalities threatens excellence, ethics, and engagement in organizations, but addressing these externalities can transform challenges into opportunities. When we truly focus on the common good, service is a privilege —not a chore but a remarkable opportunity.”

A new study confirms that notion – and goes further. Not only must corporate leadership truly believe in its corporate responsibility efforts for them to have an impact on stakeholders, but the company has to be respected in the marketplace as a high value company as well.

By Melissa J. Anderson

According to a recent study by Catalyst and Harvard Business School, companies with more female leaders may be considerably more socially responsible than those with without many women at the top.

The study’s authors, Rachel Soares, Senior Associate, Research, Catalyst; Christopher Marquis, Ph.D., Associate Professor, Harvard Business School; and Matthew Lee, Doctoral Candidate, Harvard Business School, say the study showed a connection between gender-inclusive leadership and corporate social responsibility.

Anabel Pérez, Senior Vice President, Development at Catalyst, commented, “Companies are realizing that advancing more women to senior leadership roles has many benefits, including increased financial performance and sustainability.”

She continued, “As this study shows, inclusive leadership has a positive influence on the quantity and quality of an organization’s CSR initiatives. When business leadership includes women, society wins.”

The study shows that Fortune 500 companies with more three or more women directors or 25% or more women corporate officers made considerably larger charitable donations than those with zero women directors or 0% women corporate officers, respectively.

By Melissa J. Anderson

According to Giving in Numbers, the latest report by the Committee Encouraging Corporate Philanthropy, companies are more and more often utilizing corporate giving campaigns in employee engagement efforts.

Report author Alison Poppe Rose, Manager of Standards and Measurement for the CECP explained, “The competition to attract and retain talented employees has encouraged many more [companies] to offer innovative and meaningful employee-volunteer opportunities, including paid-release time and dynamic pro bono service programs.”

In addition to an uptick in employee engagement efforts, corporate giving has changed significantly since 2007, the beginning of the economic crisis. But, according to the report, companies are employing significantly different strategies when it comes to philanthropy. About equal percentages of companies increased and decreased contributions by more than a quarter (25% and 21% respectively). Last year, more than half of the companies on the CECP’s list of matched-set companies gave more than they did in 2007.

The report was is based on a survey of CECP’s membership of 180 global CEOs and chairmen of companies, which, according to the organization, “account for more than 40% of reported corporate giving in the United States.”

By Melissa J. Anderson

Before she became CEO of Pepsico in 2007, Indra Nooyi was CFO of the company for 7 years. Even then, Nooyi’s commitment to diversity was well known. The company implemented clear and measurable diversity targets, with development programs for women and ethnic minorities as well as a push to hire local talent in the countries where Pepsico operates. The diversity efforts paid off: the company more than doubled profits in that time, and Nooyi attributed that success at least in part to the diverse workforce.

Today, the Pepsico’s Performance with Purpose mantra is often repeated when discussing the success of the company’s diversity and inclusion work.

In fact, as the business case for diversity and other so-called soft issues like sustainability are gaining recognition, these issues are increasingly falling under the purview of the CFO.

By Laura C. Steele

Times have been tough for non-profits during the recession, with at least 40% of nonprofits reporting a drop in donations during 2010. In this environment, corporations can be a vitally important source of funding for many well-established nonprofits. A workplace giving campaign can raise significant amounts of money towards a worthy cause, while increasing employee morale and encouraging team building.

Experts in charitable giving realize that simplicity, or ease of use, is the best way to ensure participation. Digital technologies are helping corporations in a variety of way, to reach both their employees, and their customers, while supporting a wide range of charitable organizations. Increasingly, donors want to be engaged digitally, and are used to multi-tasking while at work and at play. So, forward-thinking companies work to incorporate new technologies into their capital giving campaigns, to maximize participation.

Below are three ways that corporations and organizations are giving digitally.

By Melissa J. Anderson

Last week marked the Foundation for Social Change’s second annual conference, kicking off the event with a day-long Women and Girls Education Summit. For an audience composed largely of corporate responsibility professionals and other individuals in the sector, the Summit detailed the ways that corporations are contributing to and creating education and professional development initiatives for females.

Louise Guide, founder and CEO of the Foundation for Social Change opened the conference explaining that she hoped attendees took away concrete ideas for their own companies or organizations. She explained, “The reason we’re here is that we ant to show how people are taking action – they’re not thought leaders, they’re do-leaders.”

One of the key ideas that speakers discussed repeatedly was the importance of funding programs that create sustainable development. Here’s why.

By Tina Vasquez

According to the 2010 Points of Light Institute’s Employee Volunteer Program Reporting Standards, an Employee Volunteer Program (EVP) is effective in developing employees, improving public perception of the company, and enhancing business operations. Research even suggests that volunteering is good for your health [PDF] and the Institute also reports that EVPs are a sensible, efficient method of achieving general HR objectives for recruiting, retaining, and developing employees. It wasn’t until very recently, however, that corporations began to take a more focused approach to their volunteer programs.

Employee volunteer programs have come a long way in a short amount of time. In a History of Americans as Volunteers, authors Susan Ellis and Katherine Noyes trace employee volunteer programs back to the 1970’s when corporate social responsibility programs began to emerge. At the time, most programs were grassroots efforts and were small in scope, but as of 2006, over 80 percent of corporations report having or sponsoring EVPs. According to Chris Jarvis, co-founder and senior consultant for Realized Worth, a leading employee volunteering and CSR consulting firm, despite their progress over the past 40 years, having a successful employee volunteer program is still something that eludes companies large and small.

“There are many challenges in getting these programs off the ground, but the biggest is usually figuring out who to talk to,” Jarvis said. “All major companies are fragmented – there’s HR, there’s communications, there’s marketing, etc. Each department has a different stake in the company and they’re like islands; they rarely interact with each other, so figuring out who to talk to and how to get everyone on board can be difficult.”

As another challenge, Jarvis cites a common mistake made by a company’s executive leadership: the failure to make volunteering a company mandate. “It’s one thing for a company’s leadership to say it supports employee volunteering, but it’s quite another to give a managers a mandate to make them understand that volunteering is part of their corporate culture,” Jarvis said. “Sometimes there’s interpersonal reasons why this isn’t done, but often it’s that very intentional volunteer programs that go beyond philanthropy are just too new and unfamiliar for them to know how to navigate.”

By Andrea Newell

As part of its sixth annual Summer of Community Service initiative, PwC announced a new strategic relationship with classroom savior DonorsChoose, a philanthropy that connects individual donors with specific school needs using a microfinance model. PwC is offering $5 gift cards to all of its 30,000 U.S. employees, and $20 gift cards to any employee who volunteers in a firm-sponsored project during the summer program to put toward the classroom project of their choice.

In the past three years, PwC has sharpened its focus on youth education. In a speech to the MIND Research Institute, another PwC education partner, Shannon Schuyler, Corporate Responsibility Leader at PwC, talked about the firm’s migration toward education as their chosen cause area. As the world’s largest professional services firm, PwC saw youth education as a global issue that resonated with employees everywhere. It was a cause that each employee could be involved with on a local level.

“We’re focusing really on financial services, we’re focusing a lot on math, a lot on analytical thinking, and the notion that we really want to see how we can drive forward science, and math and financial literacy in our next generation of leaders is absolutely critical and is something that we take very seriously. And we believe that’s part of who we are and what we need to do as a responsible organization.”