CSR Essay - Grade: A PDF

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Corporate social responsibility or CSR is defined as a corporate’s drive to assume liability for their impacts on natural and social prosperity. It generally refers to efforts that go past what is required by regulators or environmental protection groups. It could also mean an organization is incurring short term costs in efforts to promote a positive social or environmental change instead of a financial benefit to their particular organization. (1) According to the reputation institute their CSR RepTrak gathered that the companies with the highest CSR rankings in 2017 are at first place LEGO with a score of 74.4, Microsoft at 74.1 and Google with a score of 73.9. In this paper I will analyze and research that makes these corporations represent the best practices in doing good. LEGO has developed key strategic partnerships with agencies like UNICEF, and the World Wildlife Fund. In a global effort to supporting childhood development programs LEGO joined UNICEF by making a financial contribution of $8.2 million with a focus on play over 3.5 years. It’s been estimated that around the world 200 million children under 5 are not developing their learning capacities to the full potential due to poverty and inequality. UNICEF and LEGO are promoting early learning through play and targeting stakeholders from governments to policymakers etc. with the intention to allow children to become creative learners through play. Next I want to talk about UNICEF’s structure. They have a strong presence in 190 countries, where in each country they develop a unique program mission with the specific government for better rights for children and women. The way they market themselves is having people hear about them through the activities of their 34 National Committees. These NGO’s promote children’s rights, raise funds, sell UNICEF greeting cards and products, create key corporate and civil society partnerships and provide supports. UNICEF

is supported entirely by voluntary funds where governments contribute to 2/3 of resources and private groups or individual donors contribute through the National Committees. Some of their challenges include reducing malnutrition among children under 5 by at least 1/3. Since the 90’s there has been success since the malnutrition rates have fallen from 32 percent to 28 percent. In places like Bangladesh, China, Indonesia, Mexico and Vietnam these rates dropped by 25% or more. There are still some challenges that remain. Almost half of all children in South Asia are still malnourished, the number of malnourished children has increased in sub-Saharan Africa and the number of maternal deaths in pregnancy and childbirth remains the same. Next I will analyze LEGO’s other partnership with the World Wildlife Fund. LEGO is currently the first and only toy company to partner with the World Wild Life Fund (WWF) in their mission to reduce greenhouse emissions. Through this partnership LEGO committed to cutting 10% of carbon emissions by 2020 removing approximately 10,000 tones of carbon. The LEGO Group’s partnership with WWF has been very successful and they have met or exceeded all of their goals since they joined in 2014. These goals were: “Balancing 100% of energy use with renewable sources through investing DKK 6 billion in two offshore wind farms. Research and development of more sustainable materials, and improving energy efficiency of producing LEGO bricks by more than 12%.” To go a little more in depth about WWF, it is one of the worlds largest conservation organizations registered under Swiss law and with offices in more than 80 countries in the world. Their mission is to stop the degradation of the planet’s natural environment and they run about 1,300 projects at any time. They have invested nearly 10 billion in more than 13,000 conservation projects in over 150 countries. WWF seems to take their online presence and marketing very seriously. In 2012 the WWF Website received more than 5 million visitors and more than 15 million page views from 236 countries and territories.

They currently have 22,015,994 Facebook likes, 7,301,663 Twitter followers and 45,281,913 YouTube views. LEGO’s collaboration with agencies like UNICEF and the WWF has helped them get their number one deserved place in the CSR Rep Track rating. The next company positioned in second place by CSR Rep Track is Microsoft. Microsoft is known for their efforts in enhancing education as a global issue. One of the company’s major shareholders and former CEO Bill Gates has a stellar reputation for his work with the Bill & Melinda Gates foundation. Microsoft has collaborated with many non profit organizations such as Mercy Corps, CARE and Net Hope in aiding refugees in places like Jordan, Lebanon, Turkey and Greece through more then $30 million in technology and funding. They also have their partnership with the TEALS program which has helped engage 750 volunteers from more than 400 different companies to bring computer science education to students in 225 high schools in the US. However, their biggest commitment to doing good comes probably from their expansion in creating the new organization Microsoft Philanthropies within the company which is what has worked with all these other organizations mentioned above as TEALS, Mercy Corps etc. Just as I did for LEGO I will analyze one of the non profit organizations Microsoft collaborated with to analyze and I choose Mercy Corps. Their mission is to “Alleviate suffering, poverty and oppression by helping people build secure, productive and just communities.” Charity navigator gives them a 3 out of 4 rating and an overall score of 88.51 out 100. Mercy Corps was named brand of the year by a 2017 Harris Poll Equitrend as well as “Most Loved Brand” among international aid non profits. When collaborating with Mercy Corps a particular company will also get an authentic marketing campaign designed for them. This increases visibility for both the charity and the company. Mercy Corps provides companies with sample messaging, social sharable and any other customizable templates or whatever they may need to

communicate easily and effectively about the partnership to the consumers. Mercy Corps is managed by CEO Neal Keny-Guyer and a board of directors lead by Co-Chairs Allen S Grossman and Linda Mason. Mercy Corps has partners in over 40 countries and the way they use the law to the advantage of helping people is by infusing millions of dollars into local economies through business loans and grants. Being an international organization of course has it’s challenges and failures however. For example, in March 2017 Turkey ordered them to immediately shut down their Turkish operations ending assistance to hundreds and thousands of Syrian civilians and refugees, claiming it’s due to some missing documentation. Mercy Corp said they would continue to seek dialogue with Turkish authorities and that their operations in Syria will continue trying to limit any adverse effects from the departure from Turkey. I think it’s important to learn from this challenge or failure that happened in Turkey and to try and create a different opportunity for the people seeking help there just as they did by trying to limit the effects. Next I will continue with the last company in my list In 2017 Google’s rating fell from first place in 2016 to third in the CSR Rep Track. Even though falling however being the 3 most “doing good company” is still something worth analyzing. One of the corporate efforts to use resources efficiently and support renewable power is Google Green. Google has seen an overall drop in power requirements for their data centers by an average of 50 percent. One of the NP’s they support is Charity: Water. Charity: Water has a four out of four rating on charity navigator. Google donated a $5 million Impact Award grant to them in efforts to deploy a hand-pump sensor to monitor and relay data on water flow. The charity’s challenge is to help bring clean and safe drinking water to everyone in the world. To do so they look for

supporters to raise funds, increase awareness and maximize their presence online. In today’s world it’s important to know that there is 663 million people in the world without clean water. The organization works with dozens of local partners overseas has completed more than 6.4 million people access to water, hygiene and improved sanitation. Since their collaboration with Google for Nonprofits the Charity: Water had a 350% increase in their site traffic, a 300% increase in total visitors and a 333% increase in video views. This charity does an amazing job increasing their viewership and marketing with today’s audience. In 2015 the charity started a funding campaign with the hashtag #NothingIsCrazy encouraging people to do extraordinary things to raise money. With Google’s help this campaign inspired 1900 individual fundraisers and raised $1.8 million bringing clean water to more than 60,000 people. The organization is based in the US and they provide a privacy policy about how the information you provide them with as a donor is used. Being in the US they follow US laws and state that residents of some other countries like in the European Union should be aware that the US doesn’t offer the same protection as the laws of their possible home country. The organizations CEO is Scott Harrison he explains his story of how he went from being a club promoter to reviving his Christian faith in his websites bio and why charity: water happened. Despite it’s success especially in social media there are some skeptics about charity: water. A piece on Truthout states that after raising $27 million last year the charity cannot tell donors how many of the projects are still working. Also their dual bank accounts one for funding water one for operations make it difficult to know where the money actually goes and lastly the $20 per person gets cleaning water might be a little misleading in all the infrastructural changes needed to access to clean water. These are some of the things the organization still needs to address to maintain their reputation.

To conclude I want to say this class has taught me a lot about NP’s and NGO’s and how they have such a huge impact in the world. It has allowed me to think more analytically and study where all this money is actually going to. Also through my research in this paper I learned about how some industry giants like LEGO, Microsoft and Google are making their impact whether be it on helping the children, the wildlife, through education or basic needs like water. And my conclusion is that everyone can do more to live in a better united society, us as individuals and company giants. It’s important however to fully research to cause and aim to actually do good.

Works Cited https://www.investopedia.com/terms/c/corp-social-responsibility.asp https://www.reputationinstitute.com/csr-reptrak https://www.unicef.org/corporate_partners/index_91213.html https://www.unicef.org/about/structure/ https://www.lego.com/en-us/aboutus/responsibility/ourstories/a-climate-savers-partner http://wwf.panda.org/what_we_do/footprint/climate_carbon_energy/?302251/lego-wwfparntership-extended http://wwfsocialstats.appspot.com/ https://betanews.com/2017/03/01/microsoft-donate-giving/ https://www.charitynavigator.org/index.cfm?bay=search.summary&orgid=4078

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-mideast-crisis-syria-turkey-ngo/u-s-aid-group-mercy-corpssays-turkey-has-revoked-its-license-idUSKBN16F1Y3 https://www.autodesk.com/redshift/doing-their-part-3-excellent-examples-of-corporate-socialresponsibility/ https://www.google.com/nonprofits/stories/charity-water.html https://www.charitywater.org/privacy/ http://www.truth-out.org/news/item/13814-the-problem-with-charity-water...