More sharing means more giving
When it comes to corporate giving, it seems many professionals are searching for the optimal route to measuring engagement and impact with their programmes. Whilst corporations have their own approaches to Corporate Social Responsibility and giving, we were surprised to discover there is still a lack of opportunity to share what has been learnt amongst each other. Although competition inevitably remains in any corporate setting, more opportunities to share best practice could be our best route to more giving.
Last month GivingForce held their first GivingForum, a new platform for pioneers in Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) to explore best practices and contribute ideas to the sector. The gathering was an exclusive and interactive opportunity to discuss important topics in-depth. The event was kindly hosted by The Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS) and their sustainability team at 250 Bishopsgate. Almost 40 CSR professionals came along from corporations in sectors such as finance, utilities, aviation, fashion, media and retail. This cross-industry mix provided an interesting setting for our discussions around Engagement, Measurement and Impact. We tackled some tough questions such as ‘Which community campaigns have got the highest level of internal engagement and how are you monitoring it?’ or ‘How can you create a resilient community programme which withstands company change?’. Whilst we surprised and challenged each other with our answers, we found it most surprising how many common themes arose. For example, it was found that after experimenting with different charitable causes, linking programmes back to the core strategy and industry of your organisations produced higher engagement and aligned programmes for buy-in and impact over the long term.
We were able to reflect on measuring engagement and impact from a corporate and charity perspective with our guest speaker Alison Braybrooks, Head of Fundraising and Impact at ReachOut. Alison joined mentoring charity ReachOut after a career spanning fundraising at Macmillan and Shelter, corporate responsibility at EDF and UBS, and consultancy as Director of the London Benchmarking Group and Head of Community Consulting at Corporate Citizenship. It was insightful to bring her corporate and charity insights to our discussions when sharing our experiences on partnering with charities.
We were really happy with the response to the first GivingForum, demonstrating the value CSR professionals hold in the opportunity to share and listen with each other. As a result we hope this opportunity to share and future opportunities to share can have an impact on the future of giving. We wonder if more places reserved for sharing could be central to achieving our goals around giving at this point in time, where we’re all learning many new things which others in the sector may have experienced or learnt from. We could accelerate our learning and our giving by having more opportunities to share.
As you can tell we thought the GivingForum was really useful, but don’t let us tell you as we’re obviously a bit biased. Take a look at some feedback we got from attendees below and click here to sign up to be notified of our next GivingForum event.
“The GivingForum was a great opportunity to share and learn from others doing similar roles. It was particularly good to have so many industries represented which provided a wide variety of insights into the innovative ways that corporates support our communities.”
Michael Duncan, Senior Assurance and Delivery Manager, RBS Sustainability