Dozens of the largest corporate foundations, CSR groups, and nonprofit executives attended the 2009 Boston College Center for Corporate Citizenship Conference. The theme of this year’s conference was “Leading Change, Finding Opportunity.” CEO of Mission Measurement, Jason Saul, led a workshop at called Beyond the Business Case: Measuring the Business Value of Social Impact. The goal of this session was not only to share Mission Measurement’s expertise in measuring the business value of CSR strategies, but also show that sector of corporate philanthropy must find opportunities to break from the pack and demonstrate their integral value to their corporations and society.  The overcrowded ballroom was abuzz with palpable energy to learn a new methodology to approach measuring the impact of corporate philanthropy, and ultimately, communicate philanthropic value. It was clear that those in attendance wanted to know more about metrics with two areas that were particularly top of mind: standardization and benchmarking. Listed below are the key questions CSR executives want to know about their own efforts and others.

•    How do we design quality metrics?
•    How do we test the quality of the metrics?
•    What are the tools to capture the data/information?
•    How do we get to standardization of metrics that are self-explanatory in the same way financial metrics  are self-explanatory?
•    Would it be possible to develop and all use a universal employee survey to gauge employee satisfaction, productivity, and retention?
•    We need a framework to understand business strategy and goals.  What questions should we ask the business/business units as part of our work?  What are the interview protocols?
•    How do we overcome capacity and cultural challenges to measurement?

There are many answers to these questions – probably too many; the CSR sector lacks general consensus on what are quality metrics and which metrics should be used to benchmark themselves against others. In our experience working with corporate foundations and philanthropic arms, CSR executives must start measuring their impact by defining their outcomes: what is success for your CSR department and, almost more importantly, the business? After defining the right outcomes, it is important develop a handful of valuable, high-quality metrics that actually track data that the CSR team, and the business, care about. When more CSR groups perform this exercise, they will find that there are many overlapping and common outcomes and metrics, across companies, and across sectors. Ultimately, there are a handful of integral, common business outcomes to track the success of CSR initiatives. Armed with these metrics, corporate philanthropic arms will demonstrate their value to the business, which will empower them to provide increased value to the community and the important social issues they support.