Our Methodology:We crunch the numbers so that you don’t have to.
Why focus on CCI?
Corporate Community Investment (CCI)
Corporate community investment is a businesses’ voluntary engagement
with charitable organisations or activities that extends beyond their core
business activities.
How we calculate CCI?
Our Framework is compliant with global best-practice frameworks
including the LBG Framework* for corporate community investment.
Included
Cash Contributions
A cash contribution is the gross monetary amount a company pays in support of a community organisation/project, and can include:
Time Contribution
A time contribution is the cost to the company of the paid working hours contributed by employees to a community organisation or activity.
In-Kind Contribution
Companies can also commit other non-cash resources to community activities. These in-kind contributions can include donations of the company’s product or services or other corporate resources such as IT equipment, used furniture, meeting rooms or other space. All in-kind contributions must be valued at what it has cost the company to make.
Management Costs
Companies can report costs incurred in making its contributions. These will include the salaries, benefits and other overheads of community affairs staff along with research/communications spend if used to help the community engage with the company.
Not Included
Leverage
Leverage is money that is raised by a company from employees, customers, etc. This money is not a cost to the company, and therefore is not counted as community
investment.
Forgone Revenue
When companies calculate the cost of their investment, they must calculate the direct cost to the organisation, not how much they would have made if they had charged the full
value – which is known as forgone revenue. This number is too subjective and can distort community investment figures.
We apply a rigorous method for ensuring that we have a valid and complete set of data to formulate the Index.
We rank all companies within an industry – this is not an opt-in model.
Most companies make CCI information available. We seek validation from all companies
that CCI information is consistent with our framework.
When we are unsure, we don’t include data. Companies that are not transparent with
their information receive a 0 in any categories which cannot be verified as consistent with
our framework.
We check all data against industry standards and third-party data sources where available.
• Check discrepancies
• Get Clarification
• Validate data where possible
Finally we check against…
Third Party Data
• LBG
• CSR Hub
• Strive Philanthropy
How do we create the index?
WHAT WE CALCULATE
Giving ratio
Social Footprint Score
HOW WE CALCULATE IT
Divide how much companies GIVE (i.e., corporate community investment) by how much they MAKE (i.e., their revenue)
Divide the giving ratio of each company by the best performing company in their industry
WHY WE CALCULATE IT
So you can compare companies based on how much they give relative to their size
So you can directly compare companies in each industry
How and why do we measure transparency?
TRANSPARENCY SCORE
The Transparency Score is a grade given to each company based on how transparent they are with reporting their CCI data to the Social Footprint Index. The more transparent the organisation, the greater the confidence we have in their data.
We do this because transparency is important, and we want to incentive corporations to be more transparent with their data.
Scoring
We have implemented a scoring system to reflect the amount of information that companies make available for scrutiny. The more transparent a company is with their data, the better their rating.
F
• No Data is reported publicly
that can be verified
• Company is unresponsive
to requests for data
D
• Some data is reported, but
cannot be mapped to the
framework.
• Company unable or
unwilling to provide data
that is compliant with
framework
C
• Data is reported only in
aggregate form, not by
community investment
category (E.g., cash, time
contribution, etc.)
• Company is responsive to
clarification/validation
requests
B
• Data is reported at the level
of community investment
categories (E.g., cash, time
contribution, etc.)
• Company is responsive to
clarification/validation
requests
A
• Data is reported at the
level, where each donation/
contribution is accounted
for at level of the activity.
• Company is responsive to
clarification/validation
requests
What about other Socially Responsible Practices?
Where data is available, SFI provides ratings on corporations responsible actions towards employee practices, the environment and human rights.
Environmental Practices
Human Rights & Supply Chain Practices
Employee Practices
These scores are calculated based on ratings provided by CSR Hub, the largest aggregator of Corporate Social Responsibility practices in the world.
What do our practice categories cover and how are they scored?
Environment
Environment category data “covers a company’s interactions with the environment at large, including use of natural resources, and a company’s impact on the Earth’s ecosystems. The category evaluates corporate environmental performance, compliance with environmental regulations, mitigation of environmental footprint, leadership in addressing climate change through appropriate policies and strategies, energy-efficient operations, and the development of renewable energy and other alternative environmental technologies, disclosure of sources of environmental risk and liability and actions to minimize exposure to future risk, implementation of natural resource conservation and efficiency programs, pollution prevention programs, demonstration of a strategy toward sustainable development, integration of environmental sustainability and responsiveness with management and the board, and programs to measure and engage stakeholders for environmental improvement.”
Human Rights & Supply Chain
When television was young, there was a hugely popular show based on the still popular fictional character of Superman. The opening of that show had a familiar phrase that went, “Look. Up in the sky. It’s a bird. It’s a plane.
Employees
When television was young, there was a hugely popular show based on the still popular fictional character of Superman. The opening of that show had a familiar phrase that went, “Look. Up in the sky. It’s a bird. It’s a plane.
In a competitive market where price, service and product are comparable, it makes
sense that social responsibility becomes a defining factor for choice of provider.
