ACCP Releases 2020-21 Making the Case for CSR Toolkit

Carolyn Berkowitz, President and CEO

ACCP

Image: Cover image of Making the Case for CSR Toolkit

    The Association of Corporate Citizenship Professionals (ACCP) is pleased to announce the release of our 2020-2021 Making the Case for CSR toolkit, and I’m excited to share it with you. Aimed for professionals in corporate responsibility, the toolkit is an easy-to-use resource that identifies the most relevant statistics around corporate social responsibility from 25 recent studies and presents them as practical, organized data points and infographics. You can download this toolkit for free from the ACCP website.

    Making the Case provides users with the ability to communicate a compelling and data-driven case more easily for corporate social responsibility (CSR), an essential ingredient for securing support from your internal and external stakeholders. To help users tailor their messages, the toolkit presents the trends and perspectives of multiple stakeholders, including customers and consumers, employees and future employees, CEOs and boards, and investors. It also looks at some relevant benchmarking data among companies.

    In 2020, the CSR function leapt to the forefront of business considerations, as companies faced a pandemic, the racial justice movement, and an economic downturn. Never have stakeholder expectations of business to support and drive social change been higher than they are today. For example:

    • Consumers became more aware of the role of business in society, and experts anticipate they will continue to hold businesses accountable going forward. Customers want to spend with companies who not only issue statements but follow through with actions, especially as generations transition.
    • As employers recruit and retain talent, it’s important to know the stats behind the growing sentiment that employees want to work for good corporate citizens. For example, research shows that 88% of employees believe companies must focus on purpose and not just profit.
    • Having c-suite support for CSR efforts can determine whether the strategy thrives or fails, and this year CSR professionals reported having more interaction with their c-suites than ever before. It’s important to note companies that target material social and environmental issues in social impact efforts outperform the rest of the market by 3-5% annually.
    • Investors are weighing in with their money. ESG investing (Environmental, Social, and Governance) now accounts for more than one third of all U.S. investments under professional management, a growth of 10X over 10 years.

    This kind of reinforcing data not only helps the CSR field build support for the function as a necessary and strategic business priority, but it also provides important insights for practitioners to consider when shaping and executing programs. 

    Good data drives great decisions. As the context in which our companies do business changes exponentially, we must be armed with data to capitalize on this unprecedented opportunity – whenever the moment to influence arises.

    Providing practical data and insights on trends affecting corporate citizenship is central to ACCP’s mission. To that end, we anticipate Making the Case for CSR will be a resource you will turn to time and again throughout the year to advance your company’s purpose. 

    I’ll be talking about the toolkit and how you can make the most of this resource in a webcast Making the Case for CSR in 2021 on February 24 from 2:30 – 3:15 pm ET. I hope you’ll join me by registering here today!