This great article on Triple Pundit has some practical suggestions on how to bring a holistic mindset to CSR, integrating it into your entire business. Tip #1 is to "Act Like a B Corp" explaining
"For starters, B Corps are clear about both their business and their social goals—and how the two work together. This means developing and articulating a high-level understanding of the company’s social aims, and thinking about how those goals fit with the larger business strategy. While CSR groups may not be positioned to unilaterally set their companies’ social impact goals, they are uniquely positioned to document firm-wide social impact activities, make sense of what’s happening, and help formulate how social and business goals can be integrated...."
Reading this, I couldn't help but think about a program I organized with Etsy for the Integrated Reporting U.S. Community (see this great post by Larry Yu together with video of a portion of the program). Etsy used to be a B-Corp but decided not to become a Benefit Corp (no public company has yet to make this transition). But that didn't mean Etsy had changed their culture and purpose. The solution? Develop a new Impact Update format that tells their story in an integrated way.
Etsy's Sustainability Manager Hillary Young explains how they advanced their integrated view of the company using the graphic shown on the cover of the video of a portion of the program:
It's a great example of what Triple Pundit was advocating: bringing a CSR mindset to the entire enterprise.
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