For many firms, large and small - good CSR program and bad CSR program, writing the all imprtant CSR/ sustainabilty report is an important step.

At its core, the importance of this report is to engage various internal and external stakeholders that have a stake in the programming.  Often more externally focused, in large part due to the role PR firms play in creating these documents, many firms fail to fully understand rise to the task, and sadly the failure may have little to do with the quality of the programming.

The recent SustainAbility presentation Beyond the Sustainability Report - Communicating Accountability is a well written document that looks into why companies, even those with the best program, fail to properly communicated the success of their programs.

While clearly a pitch for services, many of the issues they highlight are issues that we have seen in reviewing nearly 25 CSR reports over the last year, and further support the fact that firms need to see these as documents that offer insights into impacts and postive change.. rather than a document that creates a false impression by either failing to understand the market, or somehow believing that readers in the marketplace are somehow not aware of the issues/ programs.

So, with this month's theme of cost effective CSR policies, our hope is that firms will take the time this year (while things are slow) to study their stakeholders (internal and external) and begin to develop a platform that brings together a document that is useful in reporting your firms CSR programming to them.

It does not have to be innovative.  It does not have to be pretty.

It has to be informative.  It needs to be comprehensive.

It has to be useful