corporate social investment

Since 2009, the development sector has made a notable shift in the monitoring and evaluation (M&E) practices of corporate social investment (CSI) programmes.
 
Trialogue reported in their 2012 CSI Handbook that while the sector is still focusing less on evaluations, monitoring of programmes has improved from tracking only expenditure to additionally tracking outputs and outcomes indicators; and conducting site visits of funded projects.
 

In the worlds of business and finance, when someone makes an investment, they do not simply give that money away; rather, they expect it to generate a financial return.

My dad used to say, ‘you can’t just take take take, you gotta give something back!’ At the time he was referring to my (lack of) maintenance and care for my Volkswagen Beetle, but I often think of it as my first lesson in sustainability… about looking beyond the present moment and considering the longer term.

There is a school of thought arguing that Corporate Social Investment (CSI) should be done discreetly and below the radar. I have tried to find the business advantage or any advantage, either to the beneficiary organisation or the donor company, in this way of working and came up with a blank. The argument for the donor company that it will prevent a flood of other applications does not really hold water, because the flood is probably already there.

Do social investors thoroughly research the geographic areas into which they launch development programmes? Tshikululu corporate social investment practitioner, Beatrice Watermeyer, compares three of Johannesburg’s historically informal areas to emphasise the stark differences between these three parts of one city.

In my keynote address to the 2012 Serious Social Investing workshop, I noted that no singular national corporate social investment (CSI) plan or body can replace the need for well-defined strategies and the nuance of multi-faceted development.

Social investment long ago moved away from the ‘heart of giving’ to the science of strategic social investment. How we go about this on a daily basis may seem challenging at times, especially in a country with such vast needs and opportunities.

As the corporate social responsibility sector evolves, so should monitoring and evaluation (M&E) practices.

There were 65 000 nonprofit organisations registered with the Department of Social Development at the end of March last year, which are some of the tremendous number of organisations in South Africa that have been formed with the intention of alleviating social problems; of ‘doing good’.

The wise company doesn’t regard its social role and the challenges of broader society as a thing to be paid lip service. It understands its opportunity to use innovation in landscaping a successful South Africa decade by decade, and knows how this will affect its own prosperity.

“Social entrepreneurship is an evolving space, and yet one of the most profound developments in our world today. Simply put, social entrepreneurship is about correcting an accepted social imbalance for some economic gain. I can just hear the last part of my statement still buzzing around your heads: “for some economic gain?" to which I say absolutely “for economic gain”.