For corporate social investment (CSI) to be strategic it must have positive developmental impact as well as benefits for the business. Since 2014, the Trialogue Strategic CSI Award has recognised projects that exemplify strategic CSI. Through this award, Trialogue aims to encourage CSI practitioners to think more strategically when planning and implementing their initiatives.
The Strategic CSI Masterclass
Trialogue offers a Strategic CSI Masterclass on the Trialogue Academy for senior leaders and decision-makers working in CSI. The Masterclass provides you with the tools to think strategically about CSI in your organisation and to make choices that optimise the business and development value of your CSI initiatives.
Trialogue’s CSI positioning matrix
Based on years of experience, Trialogue has developed and refined a CSI positioning matrix, with multiple criteria behind each axis, that allows companies to position their projects according to their social and business results, and to allocate CSI funds strategically across the four categories of giving. This award seeks to identify projects that best demonstrate strategic CSI.
Strategic CSI projects deliver a combination of high positive social and business outcomes. While developmental CSI offers beneficial social outcomes, it does not always have significant corporate benefits. Similarly, commercial grantmaking prioritises corporate benefit over social return. Charitable grantmaking is typically more reactive, with social and business benefits not usually measured.
Developmental CSI
Strategic CSI
Charitable grantmaking
Commercial grantmaking
Judging criteria
Companies submit entries for CSI projects that they feel are strategic, using a standard entry form. Each project is judged against its objectives, social benefits and corporate benefits, as set out below.
Objectives
Targets need to be practical and realistic. Projects should have ‘SMART’ (specific, measurable, achievable, relevant and time-bound) objectives.
Social benefits
Visible outputs: Evidence of short-term results that are immediate, visible and concrete (for example, number of houses built, people trained, supplies or pamphlets distributed, community members treated, hours of service delivered).
Beneficial outcomes: Evidence of specific changes in behaviour, knowledge, skills or wellbeing of the project beneficiaries. Medium-term developmental results that are the consequence of achieving a specified combination of short-term outputs (for example, behaviour or attitude change, new knowledge or skills, improved grades, reduced isolation, improved access to health services).
Beneficial impact: Evidence of broader long-term (three years or more) consequences of the project. Community, society or system-level changes that are the logical consequences of a series of medium- and short-term results (for example, improved effectiveness of the education system, reduction in HIV prevalence, new social norms, more educated/healthier population, inclusive decision-making, lack of stigma, increased capacity). Government engagement, lesson sharing and advocacy are also taken into account in judging this element.
Business benefits
Recognition of contribution: Recognition of the project that improves the company’s reputation. This can include recognition of expenditure as socioeconomic development is line with the Broad-Based Black Economic Empowerment (BBBEE) Scorecard, as well as internal and external communication of the project.
Stakeholder benefit: Meaningful engagement with key business stakeholder groups in the funding, design or delivery of the project that improves the company’s relationship with that stakeholder group. Stakeholders can include communities, regulators, government departments, suppliers, customers or employees.
Competitive benefit: Project benefits that enhance the competitiveness of the business. This can be done by securing a licence to operate, opening up new markets for the business, introducing new products, reducing costs by developing local suppliers or leveraging corporate resources, or securing specialised talent.
About the judges
Gugu McLaren-Ushewokunze is the head of economic inclusion at the National Business Initiative (NBI). Her responsibilities include developing and implementing the NBI’s strategy to engage business in driving our most challenging social issues with the aim of addressing inequality, exclusion and inequity. She has more than 15 years’ experience in the field of social and sustainable development across sectors, with the bulk of her career spent within the corporate sector driving the development and implementation of sustainable development strategies. She holds a Masters of Social Science (MSocSc) in Gender and Development from the University of Cape Town.
Bhekinkosi Moyo is an adjunct professor at Wits Business School at the University of the Witwatersrand and director of the Centre on African Philanthropy and Social Investment (CAPSI). He was previously the chief executive officer of the Southern Africa Trust, where he helped the organisation to adopt social enterprise tools and pivot to alternative and innovative high-impact strategies for leadership, sustainability and social change.
Source: The original version of this article was published in the Trialogue Business in Society Handbook 2023 (26th edition)