Learn More About Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) Software
What is Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) Software?
Corporate social responsibility (CSR) software manages volunteering, philanthropy, and other outreach efforts for businesses. Some platforms handle smaller contributions such as individual employee donations, and others facilitate company-wide initiatives. CSR solutions handle internal or external giving, matching contributions, tracking volunteer hours, and other efforts. At a higher level, these tools help organizations structure long-term, value-driven campaigns and operations for causes that are important to the business or their employees. Companies can use CSR software to organize events, recruit help, find IT assistance or specialized help, and store the necessary liability waivers.
What Does CSR Stand For?
In the enterprise software world, CSR stands for corporate social responsibility. It handles aspects of corporate giving like collecting donations, planning campaigns, and cultivating company culture.
The term CSR first gained traction in the American business world in the 1970s and reached further prominence in the 1990s when companies began to consider the social impact they had on their communities. Now, HR departments are finding ways to incorporate it into business practices. A company’s CSR initiatives can focus on multiple areas, including conservation, sustainability, health care, renewable energy, climate change, diversity and inclusion, disaster relief, human rights, health and wellness, and social welfare. Ultimately, CSR programs' most significant function is cultivating a workplace’s values and guiding its culture, direction, and ethics.
What are the Common Features of Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) Software?
The following core features of the software assist users with organizing and facilitating CSR initiatives.
Donations: At the most basic level, most companies start with letting employees donate to nonprofits and charities. CSR software helps companies offer matching donations and payroll giving.
Volunteering opportunities: These platforms allow employees to participate and work with preestablished volunteering partners. They also give workers the initiative to support a chosen cause. Users may track any aspect of volunteering, such as the number of participants, hours spent, causes pursued, and departments participating.
Campaign management: With CSR software, workplaces can monitor various internal or external donations and campaigns. The software also helps assess the effectiveness of these campaigns and makes the required changes to improve them, if needed. Some push for dedicated causes or make an overall attempt to get people more involved.
Event management: For companies that want to host events, some CSR platforms provide options to organize gatherings, recruit volunteers, advertise the gathering via volunteer networks, and other related activities. Though there are dedicated event management tools, these solutions provide a way to incorporate large charity functions into the overall business strategy more easily.
Tracking, reporting, and analytics: Reporting functionality enables CSR software administrators to monitor various important metrics, including the number of participants, engagement, action items, and even measure efforts against industry standards. Users can access data feeds, advanced analytics, drag-and-drop reports, public reporting for transparency, and customizable dashboards that help with finding actionable insights.
Gamification: Gamification traditionally incorporates points, leaderboards, and other competitive aspects. Showing a visual representation of progress during a fundraiser can motivate people. Companies also offer incentives such as time off or even cash rewards in exchange for philanthropy.
What are the Benefits of Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) Software?
The following are some benefits of CSR software.
Increase employee engagement: When workers get involved, it’s good for the entire company. People who participate in giving and volunteering feel more involved in the community, making them more productive and engaged at work. Workers can track opportunities, see how much they’ve raised, and display achievements. This can lead to a reduction in turnover and even better performance.
Manage social and environmental impact: Conservation and sustainability are top of mind for most workplaces and are the most prevalent benefits of CSR platforms. CSR solutions can manage the company’s carbon footprint or quantify the economic impact of their buildings and processes. It also analyzes how it relates to the business model. Some also allow individual participants to set energy conservation goals.
Build loyalty: When employees participate in charitable ventures, they assume a united sense of purpose. They can connect over the meaningfulness of their work or see how donations improve the lives of others. Coworkers united in a cause are more loyal to the company, causing them to work harder and tackle day-to-day problems with a renewed sense of excitement. This is great for improving retention and overall work satisfaction.
Build brand reputation: Giving back is a good choice for public relations. Most people remember an organization that’s involved in their community. It demonstrates caring and integrity to potential partners or customers. Companies ultimately improve brand reputation and awareness by connecting themselves with charitable organizations.
Who Uses Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) Software?
Corporate giving and cultivating an active community touches everyone within an organization. That means there’s never just one group to consider when thinking about potential users. From those highly involved in the technical minutiae to simple employees looking to get involved, these are the groups to keep in mind while selecting a CSR tool.
Volunteers and individual contributors: Volunteers use the platform to learn more about different initiatives, compare their actions against peers, and download the necessary details for volunteering events.
IT administrators: The IT team needs to integrate the solution with the company’s current tech stack, approve administrators, control permissions, and fix problems in the back end of the site.
Program managers and executives: Obviously, the CSR programs' staff will operate the tool the most. However, there’s a host of leaders and executives that need access. In this case, visualizing a big-picture view is vital.
Marketing staff: Whether it’s for gathering information to advertise the event, posting photos, or tweaking an event copy, the marketing team needs access to the site. They may also want to pull analytics information to demonstrate the company’s accomplishments and campaigns success.
What are the Alternatives to Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) Software?
Some software alternatives that can either partially or entirely replace CSR tools include:
Corporate volunteering platforms: This tool focuses specifically on managing and organizing volunteers. There’s a lot of overlap between the two platforms, but corporate volunteering platforms focus more on specific initiatives by designing programs, measuring their effectiveness, and tracking employee activities.
Volunteer management software: For anyone who relies heavily on volunteers, this platform helps locate, engage, and retain them. It stores detailed information on each person, including their schedules, skills, emergency contacts, and causes they’ve shown interest in. The application matches people with relevant activities, measures efficiency, and provides resources for participants.
Environmental health and safety (EHS) software: EHS solutions are handy while screening possible investments. The program collects, manages, breaks down, and analyses data related to social, environmental, and other issues which are top of mind for organizations.
Software Related to Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) Software
Related solutions that can be used together with CSR software include:
Grant management software: For organizations serious about seeking, facilitating, or offering grants, this software often goes hand in hand with CSR activities. Some platforms already incorporate grant management, especially product suites. Other times, users turn to dedicated grant software to find, propose, manage, and award grants.
Energy management software: Vendors serious about saving energy use this tool to plan and execute business-wide conservation efforts. It can handle smaller goals from individual employees, like unplugging machines at night or constitute a more serious mandate to the association’s entire ecosystem. Either way, it tracks, measures, and reports energy usage.
Sustainability management software: Team members who want to get deeper into monitoring non-renewable energy sources, tracking and reducing emissions, and keeping energy costs low, may find sustainability software a solid choice.
Supply chain visibility software: With environmental sustainability and accountability at the forefront of many minds, more workplaces are searching for supply chain management options that prioritize transparency in every link in the chain. The added traceability makes answering questions about partnerships, suppliers, and vendors easy.
Challenges with Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) Software
CSR software comes with its own set of challenges. Here’s what to consider.
Measuring return on investment (ROI): In addition to measuring potential savings or new business, corporations must communicate their outreach's monetary and intangible value. Sometimes it’s straightforward. Energy conservation, in particular, reports solid evidence to back up claims. However, with more charitable and outward-facing activities, it’s essential to evaluate brand recognition, engagement, and retention.
Scope creep: A clearly-defined vision is the key to success. Organizations that chase too many philanthropic opportunities can end up with a program that’s stretched too thin and a platform that can’t support it.
Implementation costs: Calculating staff training costs is essential. Without it, the implementation is bound to be full of mismatched expectations. Think about the scope of CSR strategy to account for other up-front costs. If sustainability is the goal, what’s the true cost of implementing changes everywhere? Will it hurt the bottom line? Be realistic about what a fledgling program can or can’t do.
How to Buy Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) Software
Requirements Gathering (RFI/RFP) for Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) Software
Before anything else, define the CSR effort’s goal and strategy. Align company values by promoting the mission internally. Next, identify options that support the type of outreach, whether it addresses food scarcity, environmental conservation, housing crises, or others. Ensure all programs are available in the common languages of team members and potential volunteers or donors alike. Consider any geographical limitations. Last, identify any assurances, SLAs, or other potential compliance requirements.
Compare Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) Products
Create a long list
Discuss what CSR features users need for success and prioritize them. What is a must have? What can users live without? Evaluate regulatory issues, safety, and data security. Then pick out a few significant metrics for success (users can tweak them later, but having a general idea helps). Next, focus on the integration of the existing tech stack. Interoperability can make or break any solution. Last, look at the size and abilities of the potential user base to guide decision making. Make a note of the geographical area and language requirements as well.
Create a short list
Budget is the name of the game. As solutions add more functionality, expenses rise exponentially. Don’t get distracted by shiny nonessentials, and weed out anything too robust or pricy. If a business needs something particularly specialized, robust, or customized, prepare for a significant financial investment.
Conduct demos
Extensively demo multiple options with different stakeholders. Many things may differ from concept to execution. Identify potential problems and quiz the CSR software vendor. Companies should examine common integrations. To get quotes and set up meetings, visit product pages on G2 and hit the “Get a quote” button for more information. Questions to consider include: How well does this program scale? What kind of training and implementation support does the vendor offer? What assurances do they provide for compliance and the safety of customer data? Can the platform support the company if it branches out into another area of interest?
Selection of Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) Software
Choose a selection team
To gauge baseline useability, invite an uninitiated user to the team. Then, determine the essential stakeholders and find a representative to speak for them. Be sure to invite program managers or executives in charge of corporate giving, partners, and someone from the IT, development, or operations management department. Someone with a thorough understanding of the technical side can give frank feedback about the possibilities and limitations of the current tech stack.
Negotiation
Organizations need to keep their outreach goals in mind during the negotiation process. Find a solution that fits the chosen types of philanthropy. Don’t deviate from the budget. If multiple employees need access, companies must ensure the vendor offers comprehensive implementation support and training. Given the importance and often emotional nature of this kind of work, entrepreneurs may want live, immediately accessible support in case the website goes down in the middle of a charity drive.
Final decision
The final decision depends on the scope of the project. Companies supporting a single charity with matching donations could decide a department head could be the most obvious decision maker, with the buy-in of the chief executives, of course. The enthusiasm from the entire team is necessary for an organization dedicated to a cause. Thorough research should uncover an option that’s useable, reliable, well vetted, and within budget.
What Does Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) Software Cost?
Many follow the SaaS model, but some require on-premises installation. CSR solutions have tiered pricing ranges depending on the features, add-ons, business size, or user number. Users need to pay a startup fee or a minimum price. Some vendors use licenses with a one- to three-year subscription. Others charge monthly on a per-user or per-brand basis. While some offer free trials, it’s not commonly shown on pricing pages.
More expensive options may include specific capabilities for managing volunteers, CSR initiatives, advanced reporting, and extra services such as professional audits. This is also true for branding, white labeling, and any customization. Other websites don’t advertise standardized pricing and, instead, give out customized quotes that are dependent on a multitude of factors.
Return on Investment (ROI)
ROI is a hotly debated topic and manifests in a multitude of ways. Measuring the amount spent on CSR campaigns and gained in donations as well as hours spent volunteering is a simple matter with the functionality built into the programs. Business leaders can see clear cost savings while tackling environmental responsibility or pay equity. It ties company culture to tangible engagement metrics collected via survey.
