The Symbiotic Relationship Between Corporations and their Stakeholders

As an organization that was created more than a decade ago to help corporations further engage their employees in social responsibility, YourCause, a Blackbaud solution, has preached the business case for CSR to companies for quite some time. For years, we have shared statistics like the percentage of consumers that believe large companies have a responsibility to help make the world a better place (70%) and the number of S&P 500 companies that publish their impact in a report every year (86%), but the current events of the past year plus growing desires of younger generations have finally placed CSR into the forefront of corporate minds.

According to the Blackbaud Institute’s latest report, Comprehensive Social Responsibility: How Companies are Creating Impact in 2020, “CSR is more than simply responding to a movement with a statement or donation. CSR is a mindset that permeates an enterprise and infuses every aspect of its work.”

Unlike normal social responsibility reports, COVID-19 and the Black Lives Matter movement are addressed immediately within the introduction. This addition is necessary not only because of the significant impact these events have had upon CSR and the world population this past year, but their ability to completely re-orientate the corporate mentality. 2020 and its events called companies to respond to a moment in history, ‘weaving [their purpose] into their brand- not as an addendum, but as a core element of the enterprises’ essence.’

To better explain what companies are shifting toward, Blackbaud Institute’s Comprehensive Social Responsibility report introduces a symbiotic relationship that corporations integrate throughout stakeholders, employees, and community. This Purpose Ecosystem combines a company that is engaging in social good activities that supports their people, as well as their brand, with employees who want to bring their whole selves and cause interests to work.

This movement towards a symbiotic relationship has been so prominent that 76% of companies have altered their corporate purpose statements within the past five years to reflect the desire to create a more positive social change. As companies continue to be examined and more heavily scrutinized, not only for their profitability, but also their environmental, social, and governing (ESG) impact, they must maintain the symbiotic relationship for stakeholders, employees, and consumers

Learn more about how companies are changing the way they create impact, engage their employees, and align their brands with good in the complete Blackbaud Institute report Comprehensive Social Responsibility: How Companies are Creating Impact in 2020.