A new report titled ‘Measuring the Impact of Corporate Social Investments’ has been released by The Conference Board today. The report set out to examine the challenges related to measuring the impact of corporate social investments, and to offer promising practices and recommendations that would meet organisational needs and advance the field overall.
Importantly for Corporate Citizenship, the report acknowledges and highlights LBG as one of the key measurement frameworks used by organisations to measure and report on their corporate community investment. Corporate Citizenship founded and continue to manage LBG, which continues to gain recognition globally.
The Report
This report is part of the findings from The Conference Board Research Working Group on Measuring the Impact of Corporate Social Investments.
Social change is inherently difficult to capture, and, as a default, many companies rely on reporting simple output metrics and anecdotal stories to share their social commitments and activities. However, there is growing interest among corporate social investors to understand and demonstrate the actual deeper impact of the programs they support—to show how their investments are creating long-lasting and meaningful social value.
Several barriers to effective and efficient measurement exist and are a source of frustration for corporate social investors. These challenges range from the lack of industry standards and benchmarks in the field, resource or skill deficits on the part of non-profit partners or corporations themselves, the high expense of formal impact evaluations, as well as recognition that, while there is a prevalence of existing measurement models and theories, it is not always clear which approaches are the best fit for the needs of corporations.
The Research Working Group (RWG) on Measuring the Impact of Corporate Social Investments set out to examine these and other challenges related to measuring the impact of corporate social investments, and to offer promising practices and recommendations that would meet their needs and advance the field overall.
You can read the full report here or on The Conference Board website. Turn to pages 35 and 36 to see how LBG is used successfully by organisations to measure the inputs, outputs, and impacts of their community investments.
LBG
LBG is both a measurement model – designed to measure the inputs, outputs, and impacts of community investments – and a network of more than 300 companies that use LBG to benchmark and quantify the value of their community programs. To find out more about the LBG measurement model, or becoming a member of LBG, please visit the LBG website.
Corporate Citizenship’s Megan DeYoung, presented the LBG model to the research working group and shared how companies use this LBG model to think through the planned community and business inputs, outputs and impacts of their community investments.
The Conference Board
The Conference Board creates and disseminates knowledge about management and the marketplace to help businesses strengthen their performance and better serve society. Working as a global, independent membership organization in the public interest, we conduct research, convene conferences, make forecasts, assess trends, publish information and analysis, and bring executives together to learn from one another.