By Jocelyne Daw
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India is the first country in the world to mandate corporate social responsibility. Companies by law are required to give back 2% to support community. BUT how do they make sure their support has a real impact and makes a difference for the community AND the business.Enter NextGen: India's leading CSR & Sustainability Management Company that works with Fortune 500 clients in 16 different sectors across 6 countries. They are committed to ensuring companies across the country make the biggest impact through their innovative measurement assessment platform!Meeting Fellow Shared Value MembersAs a fellow member of the Shared Value Initiative it was my privilege to meet with some of the NextGen team while I was in India to learn more about their work in Shared Value projects.As we sat down to discuss their work I was interested in understanding what is driving their clients long term CSR vision. Here are their key insights:
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Impact – Clients are interested in quantification and assessment of impact i.e. making a tangible effect has emerged as important for every CSR leader. When being asked to spend a quantum of money as huge as 2 percent of profits, companies want to ensure they create impact that can be seen and talked about.
Partnerships – With CSR reports for the first year of the new Law now out companies are seeing the value in collaborative efforts, with non-profits, government and even other corporations. They are interested in leveraging partnerships to create a collective and sustained impact.
Long-term projects – With the Law setting a recurring spend for firms year-after-year, companies envision owning a cause and making it their CSR identity. They wish to establish long-term projects that not only serve the purpose of their annual CSR funds but also establish a strong recall for their brand whenever a particular issue is talked about.
Employee engagement – Companies realize the value in engaging their employees in the conception and implementation of CSR programmes. With the Law allowing scope for quantification of volunteering time, companies now actively seek modules of CSR that have employee involvement as a core feature.
Creating Measurable Shared ValueIn order to support their clients and capitalize on this historic law, NextGen has developed India's first CSR and sustainability management IT Platform. Called p3 - People.Planet.Profit, the platform helps in managing CSR and shared value projects while also measuring its impact. The platform enables data recording, progress monitoring, performance evaluation, reporting and providing data to drive decisions for CSR, sustainability and shared value initiatives. So what is p3 and how is it making a difference?
p3 - a cloud-based platform - enables data entry and reporting via multiple sources such as mobile, desktop and voice from across the world. The cloud enabled infrastructure enables one-click reports and real-time dashboards for the CEO, Implementation partners and Project Managers.
The intuitive features of p3, helps its users understand performance of their initiatives, the impact and where it could take action to address both underperformance and opportunities.
p3 helps organizations connect, coordinate and communicate with implementation partners across the world. By bringing all the stakeholders on one singular platform, p3 significantly reduces the amount of time and effort required for managing the CSR and Shared Value initiatives.
p3, is named after the three pillars of organizational stability: People, Planet and Profit, is customizable to suit CSR and sustainability requirements for any organization, of any size, industry and region. It is compliant with Section-135 of Companies Act 2013 (India), GRI-G4 Guidelines, UNGC, CDP and a host of other global reporting frameworks.
p3 is currently deployed for 100+ corporations, 1000+ NGOs with 10,000+ users and 1,000,000+ data points.
At JS Daw & Associates we’re excited about the possibility of this new platform and are exploring ways to bring it to Canada. We’re looking to do a measurement pilot and are seeking interest from our client base. Stay tuned for more details!This blog is the second in a series about CSR in India. To read the first blog, please click here. Sign up for our newsletter for the latest in business-community innovation!