Jared Skok: Building a CSR strategy in 5 steps

Jared Skok has had quite an illustrious career in corporate social impact. After getting his start at LBG Associates — one of the first Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) consulting films that coined the term “strategic philanthropy” — he designed and implemented CSR strategies at companies like Elanco, Marathon Petroleum and Florida Blue. With over 20 years of experience, Jared has authored 8 studies in CSR and won numerous awards. It was a truly educational experience to discuss trends and best practices he’s learned from his time in corporate social impact.

In your past positions, you’ve built CSR strategies from the ground up. How do you manage that process?

There’s no one-size fits all approach, but I utilize a 5-step process which starts with securing buy-in from leadership. When you create a social responsibility program, it should advance your business goals and objectives. First, I go on a listening tour to find out the goals and objectives of senior leaders and different teams — like human resources, marketing, etc — and how social impact could align with their priorities. Then I get feedback from employees themselves through surveys and focus groups to find out what they’re passionate, how the company can support their giving and volunteer efforts, and  the barriers and challenges they see playing out in the community. Employees might be part of the communities that your company is well-positioned to help. Third, you listen to the community itself — nonprofits in your network, school board members, etc., to learn the real needs in the community and where the company is best positioned to provide support. Fourth, you establish benchmarks by researching what other companies are doing — executives are pretty competitive people, so being able to show your leadership team what similar companies are doing in social responsibility is a valuable tactic. Finally, it’s important to develop a comprehensive communications plan that not only engages stakeholders  at the beginning, but throughout the entire strategy development process and beyond. The plan should communicate what you learned during the process – especially from stakeholders – what strategy will and will not focus on and include, and why. 

What role do you think volunteering plays in a greater CSR strategy?

Volunteering plays a huge role. When you look at the Venn diagram of  community needs, business goals and objectives, and employee passions, volunteering touches all of those. It’s important for employees to have an outlet to express a purpose that’s meaningful for them — whether that’s traditional volunteering, l completing a skills-based project or  serving on a board. Skills-based volunteering is hard to pull off, but can be enormously impactful—not only for the nonprofit but for the employees and company itself. 

How do you measure the impact of Corporate Social Responsibility—both internally on company metrics and externally on the community?

That’s a great question — if you’re serious about  measurement and evaluation, it takes time and money. For companies that don’t have big budgets, it’s a challenge. Bigger companies can bake it into their grant-making strategy, because ultimately the data has to come from the nonprofits themselves. Finally, you can also measure the internal impact on your employees and learn how their experience as a volunteer impacted them.

Incorporating a logic model in your grant-making is helpful because it walks applicants  through the decision-making process: the problems they want to solve, their goals, outcomes and metrics, the needed resources , etc. Asking potential grantees if they plan to use evidence-based models in their program delivery is also helpful. There are a lot of free resources out there on both logic and evidence-based. 

What are you most excited about for the future of social responsibility?

Companies are becoming smarter and more involved. When CSR was a new field, the people working in the field came from all different backgrounds — it was trial by fire. Now that many colleges are offering degrees in social responsibility, the talent has gotten a lot more sophisticated. CSR has moved from being a cost center to a strategic business imperative. Companies have always cared, but as a result of the ESG movement – Environment Social Governance - there’s more demand for them to share what they’re doing and become more transparent. That’s great for people like me who are passionate about corporate social impact!