Is crowdsourcing bringing awareness to CSR business strategies?

Raising public awareness of your organisation’s commitment to CSR business practices is a topic that I find myself returning to time and time again. Unfortunately in many cases there is a disconnect between the corporate social responsibility initiatives of a company and the public perception of them, depending on the business or industry the opportunity to present such information to customers, clients or the public at large presents various challenges. Therefore an article I stumbled upon this week from earlier in the year was of special interest to me as it combined two areas that I write about on a daily basis but never until now in tandem.

Whilst in the past I’ve written at length about crowdsourcing approaches and success stories in conjunction with professional nonprofit fundraising and donor relations I’d never seen any official study about the capacity for crowdsourcing to develop awareness for CSR actions. If anything you can tell it has been in a fairly natural way via avenues such as Facebook plus the print and television media, you know the examples I’m thinking of; a company is looking to advertise and sell a new car or dishwasher they allow just enough time for a short and sometimes disjointed message about CSR be included. However I have wondered whether many larger companies are taking this opportunity fully, using the growing public understanding of CSR as a chance to not only share details about their business standards with existing customers but to actively pursue new ones with CSR being moved front and centre in their approach.

Weber Shandwick conducted a study late last year that provides intriguing information about the discrepancies between the approach being taken by larger companies in actively crowdsourcing with CSR as the basis. The study focused on over 200 executives from Fortune 500 companies who are dedicated to those organisation’s philanthropic or community arms. The study reveals dedication to such activities ranging from non-existent up to rapidly growing and almost everything in between, however I was surprised that only 44% had used any method of crowdsourcing at the time the survey was conducted despite 95% of those who had moved in that direction were finding it to be worthwhile. Of those interviewed 5 out of 6 do see the potential in this practice which gives a good indication of what to expect in the not too distant future. Executives stated that the social engagement encourages new ideas and in particular helps companies gather input from sources they may otherwise have no connection with. Simply raising the awareness of CSR programs was the key goal with the most effective method (85%) being via community events. The study also suggests that 2011 is poised to be the year that the concept really takes off as social media is fast replacing or supplementing many traditional methods of communication. It’s only in the last 12 months that most radio and television commercials began directing audiences to a company’s Facebook page when sharing their web address, suddenly this has become almost commonplace as the momentum gains.

There is still reluctance from some industries to actively crowdsource via social media and according to the study not only have some 40% of the largest companies yet to invest in the approach but 16% of those surveyed felt it had no value whatsoever. I’m willing to guess that the percentage of doubters was much higher two or three years ago. Amongst these larger organisations that have used these tools, Facebook, blogs and LinkedIn are the three most preferred approaches in that same order. Meanwhile the two largest advantages cited were the ability to connect to far larger and more diverse audiences while doing so efficiently with low overheads.

The entire study is well worth a read and drills down deeper into these results by business sector and offers more detail in the perceived value of these activities. I’d be fascinated to see a follow-up survey with identical questions being released next year.

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