CSR is dead; Long live CSR
- Mon, April 25 2011
- Filed under: Partnerships
Last week, I attended an event for Georgetown University’s new Global Social Enterprise Initiative, led by Bill Novelli (a mentor/hero of mine). The initiative at the McDonough School of Business will promote public-private partnerships that improve global health, economic growth, responsible investing, international development and a cleaner environment. Bank of America is an early supporter.
Public-private partnership is certainly experiencing a renaissance and replacing antiquated CSR paradigms. As one attendee put it, “CSR is dead; long live CSR.” (CSR = corporate social responsibility)
Darell Hammond, founder of Kaboom and a panelist at last week’s event, explained why: “Problems don’t come from single sectors, and the solutions won’t either… We have siloes of good: good business leaders, good nonprofit leaders, good foreign service leaders, etc. What we need is a horizontal line among them.”
So how do you forge effective new alliances across sectors? Reggie Van Lee of Booz Allen Hamilton, who also spoke at the event, had some good advice:
1. The social problem you’re tackling needs to be something all stakeholders perceive as a shared challenge that urgently needs addressing.
2. You need to assemble the people who share that perception into an organized entity with infrastructure.
3. Put in place rigorous program management, including managing to shared milestones.
Good advice.
Comments
Good take-aways, Katya. #1 puts less “sexy” missions at a disadvantage. The ones that are perceived by all stakeholders as having a “shared challenge that urgently needs addressing” will often rule out nonprofits that don’t have urgent social needs. Arts, humanities, and many other missions struggle in this area.
Indeed! Problems come from dysfunctional systems, and solutions must be addressed systemically. Jim Collins said the same thing in “Good to Great,” but it was somewhat hidden, and therefore ignored, within the “Doom Loop” discussion. There are still organizations that think their problems will be soved with a new technology, a new CEO, or a new approach.
This sounds very much like what Heerad Sabeti has been working on for years with the Fourth Sector Network. http://bit.ly/uEyZA
It’s nice to see that people are starting to think outside the silos.