A Day Spent In Good Company

This post also appeared on the Good Purpose Blog.

I recently had the opportunity to present Edelman Canada’s Little Give program at ORENDA’s In Good Company CSR conference, which took place in Toronto last week.  The conference brought together thought leaders in the corporate, not-for-profit and academic sectors to explore the evolution of community investment and to share strategies for creating meaningful corporate community partnerships.   I was thrilled to be able to showcase our program as a best-case example of a truly meaningful initiative in the company of other impressive CSR programs from Microsoft Canada, Corel Corporation, L’Oreal Canada and others.

For those who aren’t familiar with The Little Give, it’s our highly successful and much-anticipated yearly CSR program that’s become an important part of Edelman Canada’s employee engagement program.  In a nutshell, employees from all three of our Canadian offices gather to do what we do best – develop innovative solutions for a group of charitable organizations focused on children and youth using our public relations prowess.  And, we give ourselves just 48 hours to do it!

There were a lot of great takeaways from the conference, and it was interesting to see how much Edelman’s goodpurpose findings were echoed in a number of the presentations. In fact, shades of Carol Cone’s now infamous quote “Cause-related marketing, as we know it, is dead” came forward in Steve Croft’s presentation from Better the World when he said, “CSR is unsustainable as we know it.” Microsoft Canada’s Director of Corporate Citizenship Gavin Thompson too pronounced, “the new deal breaker: what is the company doing for society?”

Overall, there were a number of common themes among the CSR programs presented, each of which followed ORENDA’s FRAMEwork approach:

Focused:   Random cheque writing does not create social impact – or measurable results. Focusing on a specific charity, program or theme is a much more effective approach.  For example, Edelman Toronto is constantly solicited for donations by a wide variety of charitable organizations.  Now that we have implemented The Little Give program, we have a specific set of criteria that we use as a benchmark when choosing our yearly charity partners.

Relevant:  In order for a CSR program to be effective, it must be relevant to your business. For us, we lend our PR skills.  Microsoft Canada, through its CLICK program, provides children who are enduring extended hospital stays with bedside connectivity, access to Tablet PCs, Xbox games and software to help them maintain communication with friends, family and school.

Authentic: CSR programs need to be authentic and clear and they need to be woven into the fabric of your corporate culture. To do that requires a long-term commitment to build something that truly resonates for your company.  Remember, Rome wasn’t built in a day!

Measurable – Just like a good PR program, a company’s CSR program should be measureable too.  Take a look at productivity, profits and overall business impact.   Figure out what you’d ultimately like to achieve by setting clearly defined objectives – and don’t be afraid to take risks!

Engaging – Inspiring workplaces offer CSR programs that start from the inside out.  Your employees are powerful brand advocates – if you engage and delight them, they’ll engage and delight others, too.  So it’s important to start with them in order to build brand equity and inspire change.   For The Little Give, our employees run the entire program – from selecting the charity partners to engaging others with fun challenges in the weeks leading up to the event.  Work to go beyond a ‘voluntold’ approach to truly connect employees with their community!

And finally….I’ll leave you with a few tweets that came out of the conference about The Little Give! Be sure to check out our website in the months to come.  Year two of the national program launches in June – and we can’t wait!

brittskelly: @lisakimmel Your lecture at #orendaigc this morning was so inspiring. I never knew that employee engagement programs could be so exciting!

brittskelly: Impressed with @EdelmanTO partnership with KUPE and Sketch. Little Give program succeeds in uniting employees and helping youth #orendaigc

JesseBruce10: RT @MaggieBurzawa: #thelittlegive by #edelman is a great CSR strategy. Engages employees and the community for maximum success. So inspired @ #orendaigc

melisadranfield: Seek inspiration from what already exists and adapt it to meet your purpose. Lisa Kimmel from @Edelman at #orendaigc

orenda: Great talk by @EdelmanTO Lisa Kimmel on how employee engagement programs create brand advocacy. #orendaigc #csr