Roll up your sleeves and get involved

HARD EDGES It may not always be easy to see how social investment will add to your bottom line, but the effects are always spectacularly clear when things go wrong. SOFT ISSUES HAVE

Although the term corporate social responsibility refers to corporations it is no longer associated with corporations alone because all businesses, large or small, are expected by society to play their part in building and uplifting the country.

It is deemed being responsible through caring for the less fortunate and businesses do this using Corporate Social Investment (CSI) programmes. As an entrepreneur, how can you play your part by “giving back”? Because doing so is no longer a choice but mandatory. Gone are the days when small businesses were seen only as recipients of CSI programmes; today small businesses must find a way to “give back” or risk losing contracts.

Socially responsible companies want to do business with other companies that are socially responsible. And it doesn’t stop there. In certain tender bidding processes, government requires you to illustrate how you will give back if you get the tender.

So how do you implement a CSI programme? There are many ways you can help the less fortunate and you will find that these people have many problems. You can’t tackle them all, so assist in some way that you consider essential for living well and progressing in society.

It could be that you consider education as key in life. If so, create a bursary programme. Maybe you consider health a priority: in that case, help create a health clinic to educate people about healthy living or to give free medical checkups.

The next step is setting up your CSI programme. Remember, administration is just as important as the initiative. In fact, executing the programme is the most important part of the challenge, because without proper management the initiative could backfire.

Too many companies view CSI as an unnecessary, mandatory task and, by so doing, fail to commit full administrative resources to it. And this is how companies get scammed out of millions of rands by fake NGOs who don’t have competent systems in place. Allocate adequate resources that allow the programme to be competent.

In terms of registration, there is no registration required because CSI is considered an internal function of a business. Last but not least, I would encourage you to have a CSI programme. If not for the sake of helping the less fortunate, then do it for the tax incentives.