Are you improving the role of business in society? You’re the CEO, board member, or head of corporate responsibility.   You’re an investor, investment analyst, blogger, or member of the media.  You’re a leading member of the academy, graduate student, or dedicated professional.  You’ll get a year’s worth of connections and data in hours.

Do you lead your company’s responsible, sustainable, and transparent practices? You’re the head of corporate responsibility, sustainability, or governance.  You lead environment, heath, & safety or human rights, supply chain, or risk management.  You head up communications, marketing, or brand awareness.  You’ll get practical tools to implement the next day.

The annual COMMIT!Forum calls on business and sustainability leaders to share their insights on how to improve the role of business in society and how corporate responsibility and sustainability drive sales, save money and improve asset values.

Join the world’s leaders shaping the face of corporate responsibility October 8-9, 2013 in New York City, NY!

Learn more and register here. CSRHub members can enjoy a 40% discount!

Simply select Sponsor/Speaker/Guests/Press, then enter ID Code: CSRHUB.

By Bahar Gidwani

It seems to be my fate to explain corporate social responsibility (CSR) to all of my friends (and to a number of strangers!).  I suspect that my eyes sometimes glaze with messianic fervor and that some of my listeners start looking for the nearest exit.

The most frequent question I get when I pause for breath is “Who is interested in CSR?”  Of course, I have my own favorite answer (“EVERYONE!”), but I thought I’d offer a little more concrete data.

Our friends at CR Magazine run one of the bigger and broadest CSR events each year—Commit!Forum.  They recently put out a multi-page document to solicit sponsors for the 2013 Commit!Forum.  (Yes, they try to make money, running these things!)  As part of proving the case for why a company should spend up to $332,633 (the price for a “Platinum” marketing package) to be part of the event, CR offered some stats on who showed up in 2012.

This data seems to suggest that the C-Suite (the biggest slice) above is heavily engaged in sustainability.  Attendance rose 8% in 2012 over 2011, despite a slow economy.

CR also offered some data on the industries that were represented.

I thought it was interesting to see that corporate managers, lawyers and PR types were mingling and interacting with NGOs, government employees, and academics.  I’ve participated in Commit!Forum for the past few years as both a sponsor and via panels and seminars.  A lot of companies are making a serious effort to improve their performance and meetings such as these illustrate this.

If you have other examples of the “demographics” of our industry, please point them out to me.  We’ve done our own research (which we’ll share in the next post) and it comes to a similar conclusion.  A broad swath of organizations and industries is interested in sustainability.  You now have even more facts with which to bore your friends, and any strangers unlucky enough to have to listen to you!

Bahar Gidwani is a Cofounder and CEO of CSRHub. Formerly, he was the CEO of New York-based Index Stock Imagery, Inc, from 1991 through its sale in 2006. He has built and run large technology-based businesses and has experience building a multi-million visitor Web site. Bahar holds a CFA, was a partner at Kidder, Peabody & Co., and worked at McKinsey & Co. Bahar has consulted to both large companies such as Citibank, GE, and Acxiom and a number of smaller software and Web-based companies. He has an MBA (Baker Scholar) from Harvard Business School and a BS in Astronomy and Physics (magna cum laude) from Amherst College. Bahar races sailboats, plays competitive bridge, and is based in New York City.

CSRHub provides access to corporate social responsibility and sustainability ratings and information on nearly 7,000 companies from 135 industries in 82 countries. Managers, researchers and activists use CSRHub to benchmark company performance, learn how stakeholders evaluate company CSR practices and seek ways to change the world.

CSRHub rates 12 indicators of employee, environment, community and governance performance and flags many special issues. We offer subscribers immediate access to millions of detailed data points from our 200 data sources. Our data comes from six socially responsible investing firms, well-known indexes, publications, “best of” or “worst of” lists, NGOs, crowd sources and government agencies. By aggregating and normalizing the information from these sources, CSRHub has created a broad, consistent rating system and a searchable database that links each rating point back to its source.

CSRHub CEO and Co-founder Bahar Gidwani will be speaking at CR Magazine’s COMMIT!Forum, Good Business Makes the Difference, October 2-3, 2012 in New York, NY.  Joining Bahar’s conference panel, Assuring Sustainability, will be executives from Intel, UPS and the Global Reporting Initiative.

Bahar will be moderating one of the Ask-the-Expert discussions, Assuring Sustainability: When & How to Undergo Third Party Validation…and When Not To.  He will also be leading one of the CROA discussion groups on CSR training.

Assurance can improve trust, but at what cost? Is it right for your firm right now, or should you explore other options? Hear from seasoned practitioners and experts who've weighed the options for themselves and come to different conclusions. In engaging session our panelists will share their perspectives and provide you with a roadmap for making your own decisions.

Featuring:

• Michael Jacobson, Director, Corporate Responsibility Office, Intel
• Steve Leffin, Director, Global Sustainability, UPS
• Marjella Alma, External Relations Manager, Global Reporting Initiative
  

Register to attend COMMIT!Forum today using ID Code: CSRHUB at  www.eiseverywhere.com/commit2012?discountcode=CSRHUB, to enjoy one of two special offers from CSRHub valued up to $225!

CSRHub CEO and Co-founder Bahar Gidwani will be speaking at CR Magazine’s COMMIT!Forum, Good Business Makes the Difference, October 2-3, 2012 in New York, NY.  As COMMIT!Forum’s website states, “It’s called the COMMIT!Forum because it calls on individuals and organizations to make commitments that change the world.” Joining Bahar’s conference panel, Assuring Sustainability, will be executives from Intel, UPS and the Global Reporting Initiative.

You can join world leaders in corporate responsibility and “walk into MissionPossible Case Studies, Game Changing Innovation Lightening Rounds and Ask-the-Expert Discussions ready to dive into the issues at hand.”
Bahar will be moderating one of the Ask-the-Expert discussions, Assuring Sustainability: When & How to Undergo Third Party Validation…and When Not To.

Assurance can improve trust, but at what cost? Is it right for your firm right now, or should you explore other options? Hear from seasoned practitioners and experts who've weighed the options for themselves and come to different conclusions. In engaging session our panelists will share their perspectives and provide you with a roadmap for making your own decisions.

Featuring:

• Michael Jacobson, Director, Corporate Responsibility Office, Intel
• Steve Leffin, Director, Global Sustainability, UPS
• Marjella Alma, External Relations Manager, Global Reporting Initiative 

If you haven’t already, register to attend COMMIT!Forum today!

CSRHub has launched a new special issue: Involvement in Iran. We have tagged 42 of the approximately 5,000 companies we rate on sustainability.

Iran’s actions have been a major foreign policy problem for the U.S. for a long time. The U.S. has recently pressed its allies to tighten the sanctions that have been placed on Iran. These sanctions are intended to force Iran to drop any programs that might lead to it developing a nuclear weapon. This Federal effort has now been joined by state initiatives: both Florida and California have passed laws that seek to prevent their citizens from investing in companies who are involved in Iran.

Registered users and subscribers to our site can now incorporate their view on Iran involvement into their personal profile. When they include this factor, the overall ratings for 42 companies we’ve tagged with this special issue will either move up—if our user believes involvement in Iran is positive—or down if our user believes it is negative.

We decided to treat involvement in Iran as a special issue for three reasons:

1. A number of groups and experts advocate “engagement” instead of sanctions, as the way to deal with difficult regimes. We wanted to give them room to express this view—as we do with the companies who are involved in Burma and the Sudan.

2. The U.S. perspective on Iran is not shared by a number of other countries. Since more than half of our users are outside the U.S., we did not believe we should mandate a “U.S.-centric” view on Iran.

3. The available data on involvement is not broad and deep enough to be definitive. We found four publicly-available sources on Iran Involvement. Together, they mentioned 304 of the companies we rate. However, only 42 of those companies were mentioned in at least two sources. By only tagging these companies, we were able to offer a “middle path” for those interested in this issue. Users who have a stronger view can find all 304 companies if they wish, using our search methods. And, everyone on both sides of the issue can inspect each of our sources.

We will be interested to see how our users react. We can track the aggregate attitudes of our users towards each special issue—and towards each of the four categories that are part of our profile system. We have already shared some of this data in a previous post.

In April, we launched the special issue of companies involved in fracking. We have also added three new sources to our list of companies involved in fracking, to give us a total of nine sources. Our sources identify 91 of the companies we rate and in 51 cases, we have found enough overlap to feel confident that a company is involved in fracking.

Please feel free to suggest new special issues and new sources for our existing issues via info@csrhub.com.

By the way, CSRHub CEO Bahar Gidwani is hosting an Agrion seminar tomorrow (Tuesday, July 24, at 11:00 EDT) on Company Involvement in Sustainable Cities. Please join us if you are interested. And, we are sponsoring and look forward to participating in the Commit!Forum in New York on October 2^nd and 3^rd. We got a special discount on the registration fee for our users. Contact us at info@csrhub.com for more information.

Photo courtesy of indigoprime (Flickr CC).

CSRHub provides access to corporate social responsibility and sustainability ratings and information on nearly 5,000 companies from 135 industries in 65 countries. Managers, researchers and activists use CSRHub to benchmark company performance, learn how stakeholders evaluate company CSR practices and seek ways to change the world.

CSRHub rates 12 indicators of employee, environment, community and governance performance and flags many special issues. We offer subscribers immediate access to millions of detailed data points from our 150-plus data sources. Our data comes from six socially responsible investing firms, well-known indexes, publications, “best of” or “worst of” lists, NGOs, crowd sources and government agencies. By aggregating and normalizing the information from these sources, CSRHub has created a broad, consistent rating system and a searchable database that links each rating point back to its source.