40 top CSR leaders reflect on past decade, vision for future in dus Spoke India Inc report

Ten years ago, India introduced the Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) law. To commemorate a decade of this milestone, Give Grants, a Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) tech platform, along with research partner The Bridgespan Group, has released a report titled dus Spoke India Inc. The report captures the learnings of 40 of India’s top CSR leaders from the last decade and their vision for the next 10 years.

Through in-depth interviews with top companies with annual CSR spending of Rs 4,300 crore, surveys, and secondary research, the report offers some interesting insights into their reflections and learnings from their CSR journeys and the barriers for realising CSR’s true potential.

The report says that with CSR now becoming a professional career track, corporates are investing in creating dedicated CSR teams for implementing CSR projects effectively. 95% of organisations surveyed have dedicated CSR teams and 85% of organisations have dedicated CSR heads.

India Inc’s leaders and board members are also recognising the critical role that CSR can play. About 77% of organisations stated significant alignment between their CSR and business priorities. There has been a significant emphasis on involving employees in CSR initiatives (e.g., field visits, volunteering). CSR leaders also view employees as one of the stakeholders and adequately inform them about their CSR initiatives, fostering a sense of ownership and pride among employees.

The report also highlighted the need for continued investment in capability creation, and extending it to implementing partners, factors critical for CSR growth in the next decade.

Accordingly, there are some important barriers that CSR needs to overcome.

79% of the CSR leaders surveyed feel they need to strengthen their strategy in terms of clearly defining their impact goals and outcomes. 69% of CSR leaders believe there is a need to improve reporting practices for CSR activities. CSRs should also be mindful of the extensive compliance burden on their implementation partners, recognising the capacity constraints faced especially by smaller, grassroot partners.

CSR programmes are increasingly adopting an equity lens, but there remains scope for taking a more intentional approach. Gender equity has been a key priority, with 87% of CSR organisations prioritising women and girls as one of the marginalised communities they serve.

About 82% of CSR leaders believe they need to hire talent and / or upskill existing teams to enhance effectiveness. CSR teams need experience in running programmes on the ground.

33% of CSR organisations surveyed don’t actively leverage their corporate assets, competencies (e.g., project management, technological skills), and connections to amplify the impact of their CSR initiatives.

The report quotes the Pay What-It-Takes India Initiative where among a survey of 388 NGOs, 83% NGOs stated they struggle to get indirect-cost funding and 70% of NGOs stated that most funders do not support their OD needs.

Looking forward

According to the report, the next decade will see CSR as a catalyst to amplify and enable impact with annual spends of Rs 1 lakh crore.

It also highlights the following:

●     Annual CSR spending is barely 1.3% of annual government spending; CSR leaders intend to drive catalytic impact through ‘funding leverage’ (unlocking government and philanthropic capital) and ‘impact leverage’ (enhancing outcomes of other programmes)

●     59% CSR leaders are willing to step into funding innovative pilots and projects, that require a high tolerance for risk and high agility

●     87% CSR leaders are interested in multi-stakeholder collaboratives with the government, philanthropists, and other CSRs

●     49% CSR leaders would like to strengthen the ecosystem by supporting research and convenings

●     33% CSR leaders are willing to fund organisational development of CSR teams and NGO partners.

“India is the only country to have ever made ‘legally-mandated CSR’ work, that too at this scale. 18,000 companies deploying Rs 250,000 core annually is huge! For ten years, this unique experiment has been going on, yet hardly any attempt has been made to delve deep to understand if it has actually delivered on its promise or not, and to judge where it is headed. dus Spoke India Inc fills that gap, through the words and vision of India’s top CSR leaders,” Sumit Tayal, CEO of Give Grants, told SocialStory.