Boston College’s Center for Corporate Citizenship developed the corporate social responsibility index (CSRI). The CSRI is the combined average of the general public’s perceptions along the three key dimensions – Citizenship, Governance and Workplace. This combined score yields greater insight into the influence of stakeholder programs, policies and activities on reputation.

The 2010 Corporate Social Responsibility Index (CSRI) has been released.  In 2010, the areas of Citizenship, Governance and Workplace continue to account for over 40% of a company’s reputation, or Pulse score, in the United States.

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Want ideas on how to gauge how your company volunteer program is doing?   Yesterday I ran across an article summarizing a great study Bea Boccalandro did which was funded by Bank of America on benchmarks for employee volunteering and giving programs for Fortune 500 companies published by the Boston College Center for Corporate Citizenship: Mapping Success in Employee Volunteering: The Drivers of Effectiveness for Employee Volunteering and Giving Programs and Fortune 500 Performance.  Years ago I frequently worked with Bea on evaluating social program impact for national service programs.   We also did a presentation at the National Conference on Volunteering and Service on evaluating employee volunteer programs.  Bea has continued to do research on volunteering among the Fortune 500 and this study offers much great food for thought.

The study found the 6 drivers of effectiveness for employee volunteering and giving programs:

1. Cause-effective Configuration – program structured to productively support social causes and nonprofit partners;
2. Strategic Business Positioning – program positioned to contribute toward business success;
3. Sufficient Investment – program receives company resources commensurate with other company efforts similar scope;
4. Culture of Engagement – Company encourages and facilitates employee involvement in the community;
5. Strong Participation – program has involvement from a majority of employees; and
6. Actionable Evaluation – programs tracks its efforts, holds itself accountable to outcome goals, and engages in continuous improvement based on findings.

There is a lot of great additional information on indicators and targets in this study that I will do more work with and pull together a Tip Sheet which I will share shortly.