Skip to content
English
Contact us
Back to Dashboard
  • There are no suggestions because the search field is empty.

Community Impact & Development

Community impact & development resources

Overview

Every organization affects and is affected by the community (or communities) where it has a presence. Those communities are important stakeholders. If an organization and its community are supportive of each other, both are more sustainable.

Community impact & development is the effect and influence an organization has on a local community. That effect and influence can simply be a result of the organization’s operations in the community. Or, it can also include the contributions an organization makes to meet community needs and goals.

Resources

Business risks

You can’t donate or sponsor your way into good citizenry if it’s viewed as self-serving or a payoff for ills your company creates. Many organizations have at least some philanthropic community activity. But, if you are not focused at all on community needs or you are creating burdens that you fail to remediate, you have reputation and operations risks. This could be as simple as not having positive community support when you need it to respond to a full-scale public relations backlash.

What can businesses do?

In the past, organizations engaged with local communities primarily through charitable donations to worthy causes. Increasingly, businesses are helping build better communities by creating positive social change. One tenet of sustainability is for an organization to show that it understands its effect on the community and the ways in which it can help the community. It can do this through both philanthropic and community outreach programs.

Programs include donating time, services, products, and/or money to help meet a community need or reduce a burden the company has created on the community. These programs can take the form of targeted development projects, impact investing, and company-sponsored volunteerism. There is a particular emphasis on sustainable outcomes including education, empowerment, and opportunity.

In terms of sustainability, businesses achieve effective community impact and development by:

  • Ensuring that community investments foster sustainability’s economic, social and environmental objectives.
  • Providing resources for solutions to complex social issues such as economic development, community revitalization, and education.
  • Engaging stakeholders to achieve consensus on community development projects and investments.

Collectively, these activities help create a ripple effect of positive change, socio-economic stability, and societal progress all of which are key performance indicators for sustainability.

For businesses, pursuing positive social outcomes improves reputational and social performance by ensuring community support and social license to operate. Working on community needs enhances a community for all, including the businesses operating there.

Local needs

Every community has needs separate from, and created or exacerbated by, the businesses within the community. Organizations that engage with the local community to define and understand needs through a formal assessment, and then help to address community challenges, can be better corporate citizens and provide meaningful support. Many organizations go well beyond ensuring that operations and business practices are not contributing to community challenges. Utilizing capabilities specific to an organization’s business to address needs and improve conditions in a community is a strategic and effective way to engage the workforce, cultivate good will, and strengthen a community for the benefit of all.

Resources

Economic support

Economic support through financial investments and gifts for community development efforts are mutually beneficial, helping improve local economic conditions and better serving the needs of a company. Examples include targeted training programs (improves company local recruiting), retail redevelopment programs (improves resources for company buy local initiatives), and housing redevelopment (provides affordable housing for a company’s lower salaried employees). A company can use community economic support to help the community fill gaps in its ability to meet company needs.

Philanthropy & volunteerism

Many organizations create philanthropic and volunteer programs to support and enrich charitable activities and organizations in their local communities. These programs often reflect charitable interests of employees, supporting volunteer and other personal connections between employees and the community. These efforts take the form of charitable donations (including outright and matching contributions), discounted services, microfinancing programs for the underserved, and paid volunteerism. Philanthropy should never be viewed as a means of justifying or avoiding responsiblity for an organization’s negative community impacts. The latter should be dealt with directly by addressing local needs.

Resources