Redesigning Impactful CSR in Post COVID World

 

The world after a long struggle with the pandemic is gradually coming out of the shell of self-imposed 2020 COVID Lockdown exclusion. After much deliberation and persuasion we finally reach a point of tentative social pragmatism to resume normal life with grudging acceptance of long term adjustments in the post pandemic world. But as people head back and reach out to their offices, shops, schools and factories in the usual scheme of things, they are discovering it might never be the same again. Governments, societies and businesses are limping back to existence, realizing that the long COVID lockdown has disrupted their operational capacity and it may take some time to regain normal levels of efficiency & productivity. Not only government institutions are staring at huge fiscal gaps because of large scale state expenditure on controlling COVID spread, but also corporate whose revenue verticals have been impacted by the shutdown of the commercial activities.

As we start searching various resources to launch this mammoth task of realigning the social and economic order we ironically realize that in spite of economic slowdown, there is need for higher social spend not only from aid organizations and government but also from corporate social responsibility (CSR) corpus to be of critical importance to pull economy out of this hole.

CSR is a fully developed and embedded concept as a key part of the corporate strategy across the globe and numbers of transformative social endeavors are credited to the exceptional leadership from trade & industry. But with COVID pandemic affecting the current industrial profitability and projected production capacity, it is safe to assume that the mandatory 2% CSR budgetary requirement out of total net profit is going to proportionally shrink, resulting in lesser funds available. The current situation is obviously, is a matter of exceeding concerns in all sectors and demands an introspective re-thinking with regard to Corporate social spend too.

Here in this essay we aim to look at evolving CSR scenarios post COVID and various strategies to optimize the impact in terms of new paradigm.

Avoid the Non-Performing NGOs

For a long time the NGO sector in India and a number of other growing economies has been solely dependent on corporate funding or grants for their social campaigns. While there has been a slow shift globally, in perception of welfare economics toward self-sustained community owned entrepreneurship, this has not been practiced, due to lack of interest & tendency to work within traditional NGO structure in India.  While the smaller new age NGO have shown exceeding resilience in optimizing their human resources and innovative use of technology, the old institutional NGOs are still working on the principle of higher markup cost . This has to change. Post COVID the funds are limited and such slow & non performing NGOs will slow down the entire social sector by unnecessary tying up the critical resources & projects. The days of spending 60% clients’ money on operational/administrative cost and only 40% on targeted beneficiaries are over. There will be preference for leaner, bootstrapping, and grassroots level change makers.  Accountability and sustainability is the name of the game in the new age social works sector. The corporate sector will seek project proposals with more scalable ROI and lasting social impact for every rupee worth of welfare campaign. NGOs that fail to accept this new reality will soon cease to exist because of lack of funding partners.

Skill Development, Renewable Energy and Social Entrepreneurship

These are the new buzz words for a society dealing with post-COVID job scarcity and economic slowdown. The economy coming out from six month inertia will take time to engage surplus manpower and will require massive reskilling to accommodate them to current market realities. There is an obvious need for CSR campaigns that they prioritize the health infrastructure, cleaner environment and employment creation, promoting social entrepreneurship and skill development within the communities. At present while societies across the world are facing the acute danger of the novel coronavirus COVD-19, we also need to prepare about greater ecological disasters waiting to happen in near future. The chronic condition of climate change and the resultant effort to reduce CO2 emissions is making us re-imagine a sustainable and safer world through timely global action. When the danger of the current pandemic lifts, the world will be, facing the other big existential crisis to address the issue of climate change.

What economies now will need is to have more entrepreneurs and leveraging CSR to train, support and mentor youth entrepreneurs for clean energy oriented low carbon local economies. Off grid community owned solar farms, low emission innovative tech research, local air quality monitoring micro setups, basic health care training and digitally supported education initiatives/agri supply chain are few examples of these. With the natural economic shift toward online platforms during COVID, there is a need for NGOs to not only reimagine their role as implementing agency through innovative use of digital tools but also to incorporate digital skill building to empower more youths to embrace this drastic change.

 

Go Digital to Optimize the Social Impact

One take away from COVID is that it has increased the common digital threshold tremendously.  For once the internet has been adopted by masses, apart from communication & entertainment, for wider use in terms of healthcare, education and retailing. It’s now a logical paradigm, to reframe certain components of CSR campaigns and its delivery to the digital platform. Contrary to commonly held belief, digital applications are not only great in optimizing cost, it also democratizes the entire process by engaging and empowering the target group, helping them to access the latest technology. Telling from my own experience, while conceptualizing the next stage of a path breaking CSR campaign by for one prestigious energy service provider company in India, aiming to create awareness & train students from weaker section of society, about renewables suggested using a digital video app (during COVID) though we loved the novel idea, I faced reservations from my own team, as they felt children from “such background” will lack interest in doing this on their own, without classroom teaching environment. Surprisingly on conducting a pilot study among the same group of the students in nearby slums we found that 75% of them were already using mobile apps to study and were very open to such ideas. The point is not finding an easy way out or to go entirely digital in your approach by limiting human interaction but to find out new ways that’s good for all the stakeholders and brings out far reaching and sustainable impact. As part of CSR best practices a digital assessment study should always be conducted to find out process gaps and related applications that can fill these gaps within the expected outcome and cost criteria. 

 

Choosing the Right CSR Project and Scaling It Up : ( Emission and Environment impact)

Today we have issues with continuity. The ongoing CSR programs have been disrupted and to resume the same will require us to analyze whether it is still relevant to the target group considering COVID has drastically altered the social equations.   While continuity of ongoing projects does make sense considering long  term impact , it’s also true that having a project that addresses the current social issues gives you better outreach and brand visibility. For example if you are investing in an environment centric community outreach, while pursuing regular energy mix, there will no real impact on overall branding. But same can be optimized if energy portfolio is also reworked to accommodate higher renewable components (which will highlight truer intent to community) while reducing the overall toxic emission. To resume the same CSR in original form may result in less than optimum impact or social gains which have risk of negative media coverage in case of future pollution control regulations or accidental ecological disaster. By adding new components of renewable energy and sustainability reinforced by virtual platforms and supporting ongoing clean air national efforts, the same project might not only amplify the impact but also reconnect your campaign to real issues.

Every CSR initiative is composed of different components, which needs to be periodically checked and evaluated for effective social impact. Like any business strategy, not all parts of your CSR strategy are equal. There should be a strong business case for each CSR investment based on the best ROI whether its social start up, incubator or NGO. Even in CSR you need to pick the best ideas, grow them, share them and scale them up. Be critical about your choice. Ask yourself questions why I need to continue the same NGO, why must not, I go beyond the existing target communities and do I really need to scale. Part of it may merit expansion, part of it does not. There are immense social possibilities demanding your attention, but stretching yourself to areas that you don’t have natural fit, or alters your organization vision will slow down your social outreach. Your job as CSR head or NGO is to identify the part to scale it or let it be a pilot case. All outreach at the end of day should stay within a sustainable range of business operations.

Incorporates Meaningful Impact Measurement and Share the Results

Let’s be honest, doing a CSR campaign is  a demanding assignment in itself requiring extensive ground coverage and follow ups. But impact assessment of the same is an issue that leaves a lot to be desired in terms of methodology and indicators. NGOs have always considered it the last mile, considering wrapping project implementation takes most of their energy and funds. Most assessment is restricted to feedback forms, photos and paper trail to capture impact on stakeholders, which in this age of geo tagging do not suffice intelligent matrices. Lassitude and lack of active mapping will never let you map the full potential of the project or identify the gap areas. Remember this will burden you with a lot of dead weight cost in the campaign without much social ROI. For example while undertaking CSR campaign in rural Gujarat, an initiative of OTBL (ONGC TERI Biotech Ltd) even in most remote locations I always found an OTBL field engineer waiting to accompany us to village school or state institution to support the activity of the day. Such closely integrated business approach to CSR operations not only gives you on-ground mapping but also helps to successfully share the same data to external agencies. Keeping your CSR campaign around your operational sites not only gives you logistic advantage but also helps you by keeping the employees in the driver seat to monitor the desired impact on the beneficiaries.

 

CSR Project Should Reflect Core Business Goals : BSES Rooftop Solar project

It’s important to understand here that any sustainable and long lasting CSR mission can only succeed if it’s driven by core business values. The corporate vision to contribute socially should impact & engage the immediate local community and its environment in which the organization operates. Starting from the employees, consumers and all the people who are in some way key to the business should be first visible recipients. One such case study in this regard is BRPL BSES, one the world’s leading power Distribution Company, running electricity power supply in Delhi. BRPL while launching it rooftop solar energy aggregation service among its Delhi consumers, also simultaneously initiated their CSR campaign on parallel lines, for promoting the training and education of solar PV technology among students in Delhi government schools so that they achieve twin objectives of responsible social outreach and also help youths to develop know how & skills to deal with solar technology. This entire program fits perfectly well with BSES core business goals by aligning it to a larger social drive in providing Delhi consumers clean energy, and  reducing air pollution while skilling youths for a new energy resilient economy. 

 

Linking CSR Outcome To Value Chain : ITC agro Project

Business in all its forms should finally absorb the value it creates. Even from the CSR. As previously stated, today CSR should aim for is self-sustained and employment generating community enterprise that not only solves the existing social problem by innovative use of local resources but also creates scalable economic value. This economic value once created not only diversifies income opportunities of low earning groups but also aligns the entire community as a potential consumer block. CSR projects should create these backward linkages that assimilate CSR outcomes in the value chain for greater success.

ITC a is major Indian company in cigarette, hospitality, paper, FMCG and agro retail, which has won global recognition for their exemplary social outreach that has developed critical backward integration in their value chain by  utilizing the value created by communities. For example, the famed ITC e-Choupal initiative led by the agri-business division is a major sourcing base for the company’s packaged food & FMCG business which enables rural communities’ to access digital connectivity by building village knowledge centers, that also helps to empower farmers, diversify rural income and provided critical information on farm productivity, prices and markets.

With the rapid pace of socio-economic and technological changes taking place across the globe, the role of CSR is also evolving every day. Even if over a period of time CSR grows out of its present mandatory legal contribution, corporates will keep playing a crucial leadership role in paving path for sustainable social welfare. For this not only corporate funders but also the sustainability executives and implementation agencies like NGOs are equally responsible for shaping the future course of action by adopting industry best practices and innovative social strategies to successfully pursue the goal of creating empowered, educated, and prosperous communities.