By: Paul Klein

There was a good piece in yesterday’s Globe and Mail by Richard Blackwell called ” The double-edged sword of corporate altruism”. It discusses the importance of corporate social responsibility and also the challenge in measuring program performance – especially in today’s economic climate.

Tomorrow, I’ll be going to Ottawa to do a presentation for the Conference Board’s Community Investment Council. The session is entitled “Measuring and Evaluating Your Community Investment Programs” and I’ll be speaking about why community investment managers need to be prepared to demonstrate how their programs are contributing to their company’s business objectives and how to best do this.

Since 2001 when I founded Impakt, we’ve been focused on developing more effective ways of measuring the ROI of community investments as needed to increase internal accountability and improve program performance. Recently we launched the Impakt Partnership Valuation Tool – a management tool that’s the culmination of many years of work in this area and is unique in its ability to establish the value of partnerships with non-profits – usually the most conspicuous aspects of CSR programs.

Both the article in the Globe and the session at the Conference Board support the need for more effective ways of measuring the ROI of community investments.