Corporate Citizenship: It’s Just Good Business

ConeInc.Com is among my favorite websites. It should be among yours, too. Cone is one of the most respected cause marketing groups in business. Some say they invented cause-related marketing, back when Carol Cone was at the helm.

Carol has left the company to pursue other interests, but Cone remains a hugely valuable resource for data and findings on American attitudes towards corporate citizenship. Drilling through their website, from the home page to Corporate Responsibility, to the link for “Shared Responsibility,” you’ll find an informative PDF titled “Who’s Responsible?”

Here’s the summary:

Amid the stats and the stories, companies are realizing checkbook philanthropy and checkbox responsibility will not suffice. Dated approaches to addressing social and environmental issues are too formulaic, too reactive and won’t turn the tide on corporate trust. Companies must proactively deal with critical business issues while engaging with and addressing escalating expectations of key stakeholders. Companies are changing the way they approach burgeoning social and environmental challenges because today, it’s difficult to assert where a company’s responsibility begins, where it ends and who is ultimately accountable for solving the issues we collectively face.

And here’s a screenshot of a chart from the document:

The data points are undeniable.  The American public expects good citizenship from corporate America. Over a broad range of topics, the trend of opinion is overwhelming. 

And, the source is trustworthy. According to the site, “The 2010 Cone Shared Responsibility Study presents the findings of an online survey conducted April 8-9, 2010 by Opinion Research Corporation (ORC) among a representative U.S. sample of 1,045 adults comprising 507 men and 538 women 18 years of age and older. The margin of error associated with a sample of this size is ± 3%.”

So, for businesses, what’s next? It’s clear that corporate resources devoted to identifying, tracking, and mapping these sorts of data would not be wasted. Customers, employees, and the public in general are important stakeholders in corporations. Paying attention to public opinion is not Pollyannaism. It’s not “playing to the polls,” as they say in politics.

No, it’s just good business.

Go to ConeInc.Com for more insights like these.