Making community and sustainability efforts add up: from a list of good deeds to a coherent set

Most small businesses that care about their community and their environmental footprint end up with a collection of good deeds. A sponsorship of the local sports club. A donation to the hospital appeal. A staff volunteering day. Office recycling. Solar panels on the roof. A tree-planting morning. A line on the website about doing the right thing.

Each of these is defensible, and many are genuinely good. Together they are often a list rather than a strategy. They were started by different people at different times, nobody has asked how they fit together, and the most visible activities may not be the ones that matter most. A business that runs a delivery fleet, for example, may put real effort into a tree-planting day while its fuel use, which is by far its largest environmental effect and a large cost, gets little attention.

This article explains how to treat community and sustainability efforts as a coherent set: start from the few outcomes that matter most for your business, give every initiative a clear reason to exist, assign ownership to the people who control the results, and decide what to grow, combine or stop. It is general information. Environmental and social claims made to customers are covered by the Australian Consumer Law, so make sure any claim is accurate and can be backed up; the ACCC publishes guidance on environmental and sustainability claims.

Why good initiatives fail to add up

When each initiative is considered on its own, three kinds of waste appear:

• Duplication: several activities aimed at the same thing, run separately.
• Fragmentation: activities that are each useful but never combine into a meaningful result.
• Opportunity cost: visible, easy-to-explain activities absorbing time and money that would achieve more if aimed at the business’s core effects.

Four misreadings keep the list growing:

• More initiatives means more responsibility. It may just mean less prioritisation.
• Every good initiative deserves support. Resources are finite. Something can be beneficial and still be a lower priority than another use of the same money and time.
• Coherence means everything must pay for itself. It does not. Some initiatives build trust, reduce risk or strengthen the workforce in ways that are hard to put in dollars. The test is not financial return; it is whether the reason for doing it is clear.
• One person can own it all. A staff member with a sustainability title can coordinate, but the results depend on people who run operations, purchasing, sites and customer relationships.

Start from outcomes, not activities

Reverse the usual order. Instead of collecting activities and then writing a story about them, start with the business itself:

1. Purpose: what the business is for and how it creates value.
2. The few outcomes that matter most: usually two or three, based on where the business has its biggest effects, risks and opportunities.
3. The initiatives that serve each outcome.
4. Measures that show whether each outcome is improving.

The outcomes that matter most are usually close to the core of the business: the materials a manufacturer uses, the fuel a transport business burns, the packaging a food business sends out, the safety of the people who work there and the relationships with the community around the site. The from footprint to drivers article covers finding the few drivers behind an environmental total.

Give every initiative a reason to exist

Each initiative should be able to say which of these it does:

• Reduces a risk, environmental, social, safety or reputational.
• Uses resources more productively: less material, energy, fuel or waste.
• Builds capability: skills, systems or supplier relationships the business needs.
• Strengthens a relationship that matters, with the local community, customers or staff.
• Creates market value: something customers want and will choose you for.
• Prepares for likely requirements, such as customer or regulatory expectations.
• Tests an option before a bigger commitment, such as a trial of electric vehicles.

If an initiative cannot be placed against any meaningful reason, question why it continues. This also keeps easy-to-promote “halo” projects from crowding out the quieter work that achieves more.

Review the set together

Once a year, review all initiatives in one sitting against six questions:

Then sort each initiative into one of four actions:

• Grow: strong fit, good evidence, manageable effort.
• Continue and improve: useful, but needs better design or measurement.
• Combine: overlapping initiatives that would work better as one.
• Stop: weak fit, little difference made, or a better use exists for the same effort.

Stopping matters. A set that can only grow is not being managed. The stopping projects well article covers ending things cleanly.

Put ownership where the authority is

Do not assign every initiative to whoever looks after “sustainability”. If the outcome is packaging waste, purchasing and production control the result. If it is fuel use, the operations manager and drivers do. If it is staff wellbeing and safety, line managers do. If it is the relationship with the local community, the owner or site manager does. A coordinator can keep the set together and report on it, but accountability should sit with the people who can actually change the result.

Measure what each initiative is for

There is no single measure that captures everything. Use measures that fit each outcome:

• Fuel and emissions: fuel per delivery or per kilometre, not just total fuel.
• Waste: material per unit produced, disposal costs and recovered value.
• Safety: incidents per hours worked or kilometres driven, plus near misses reported.
• Community: what the program achieves for the people involved, not just how many logos appear.

Be careful with what you say publicly. Claims such as “carbon neutral”, “sustainable” or “eco-friendly” need to be accurate, specific and supportable. The sustainability as an operating choice article covers making claims you can support.

Budget the set, not each activity

Community and sustainability spending often comes from scattered places: a marketing budget for the sponsorship, the owner’s discretion for donations, an operations budget for solar, staff time that nobody counts. Bring it together, at least on paper, so the business can see the total effort, including staff hours, and decide how it should be split across the outcomes. Staff time is often the largest cost and the least visible. A volunteering day for 20 people is a significant investment, which may well be worthwhile, but it should be chosen as deliberately as any other.

Involve staff and customers, through the outcomes

Staff often have the best ideas, and their involvement makes initiatives last. Customers increasingly ask suppliers about their practices. Use both, but route them through the agreed outcomes. Invite staff suggestions against each outcome rather than open-ended. Ask your main customers what information or improvements matter to them, rather than guessing, and answer supplier questionnaires with the same specific facts you use internally.

Over time, fewer projects is a good sign

As the set matures, the most effective efforts tend to stop being separate projects and become part of how the business runs: how products are designed, how materials and suppliers are chosen, how vehicles are routed and maintained, how staff are trained and kept safe. A business with fewer standalone “initiatives” because the thinking is built into everyday decisions is usually further ahead, not behind.

A worked example

This is an illustration. A regional courier and freight business with 30 staff and 22 vehicles has accumulated eight initiatives over the years:

• Sponsorship of a local netball club.
• An annual donation to a hospital appeal.
• A staff tree-planting morning.
• Office recycling.
• Solar panels on the depot.
• A driver safety program.
• A trial of one electric van.
• A website page about the business’s values.

The owner and operations manager agree three outcomes matter most: fuel use and emissions, the business’s largest environmental effect and one of its largest costs; road safety, the biggest risk to staff and the community; and relationships with the local businesses that make up most of its customers.

Counting staff time for the first time, the owner finds the eight initiatives used about 300 staff hours a year, with the tree-planting morning and website updates taking around a third of them.

Reviewing the eight initiatives against those outcomes:

• Driver safety program: grow. It serves safety directly. The business adds near-miss reporting and recognises safe-driving records.
• Electric van trial: continue and improve. It tests an important option, but nobody had defined what the trial should show. The owner sets criteria: range in winter, charging time at the depot, maintenance cost and driver feedback over six months.
• Route optimisation: added. A new initiative, with routing software expected to reduce kilometres travelled. With annual fuel spend of about $400,000, an 8% reduction in kilometres would be worth roughly $32,000 a year and cut emissions to match. It is run as a three-month trial on half the fleet first.
• Netball sponsorship and hospital donation: combined into one community program focused on road safety for young drivers, run with the netball club, whose members include many learner drivers. It now serves two outcomes at once.
• Office recycling and solar: continue. Low effort, sensible, no change needed.
• Tree-planting morning: stop as a business initiative. Staff enjoyed it, so it continues as an optional social event, but it is no longer presented as part of the business’s environmental effort.
• Website page: rewritten to describe the specific actions and results, removing general claims the business could not support.

A year later, the business can point to fewer, clearer initiatives: kilometres per delivery down after the routing trial was extended to the whole fleet, safety incidents reported and falling, and a community program that local customers recognise.

How this applies to a small Australian business

• List every community and sustainability initiative in one place.
• Choose the two or three outcomes that matter most for your business.
• Give each initiative a clear reason to exist.
• Review them together once a year, and grow, combine or stop.
• Assign ownership to the people who control the results.
• Use measures that fit each outcome.
• Check public claims against ACCC guidance.
• Focus effort on core effects, not just visible activities.

Signals worth watching

• Initiatives nobody can link to an outcome.
• Visible activities growing while core effects go unmanaged.
• Several programs aimed at the same group, run separately.
• Everything owned by one enthusiastic person.
• General claims on the website with no evidence behind them.
• An annual report that lists activities but no results.
• Staff time on initiatives that nobody has counted.

Common mistakes

• Starting with activities instead of outcomes.
• Never stopping anything.
• Judging everything on financial return, or on nothing at all.
• Giving one person responsibility for results they cannot control.
• Making claims you cannot support.
• Neglecting the business’s biggest effects in favour of easier ones.
• Leaving staff time out of the true cost.

Frequently asked questions

Is it wrong to sponsor a local club just because it is good for the community? Not at all. Supporting your community is a legitimate reason. The point is to be clear about the reason and to check it is the best use of what you have to give.

How many outcomes should we focus on? Usually two or three. More than that and the set becomes a list again.

What if our biggest effect is hard to change? Start with what you can influence, measure it, and look for partners such as suppliers or industry groups who face the same issue.

What about staff who championed an initiative we stop? Thank them, explain the reasoning in terms of the agreed outcomes, and invite them to lead something that serves those outcomes. Enthusiasm is valuable; point it where it achieves most.

Should we publish what we do? Publishing specific actions and results builds trust. Avoid broad claims you cannot back up.

Do we need a formal sustainability report? Small businesses are not generally required to produce one, though some customers ask for information. A short, honest summary of outcomes and results is usually enough.

Questions to ask

• Which two or three outcomes matter most for our business?
• Which of our current initiatives serve those outcomes?
• What changes because we do each one?
• Which initiatives overlap, and should be combined?
• Who controls the result for each outcome?
• Which of our public claims could we prove tomorrow?

Bringing it together

A collection of good deeds is not a strategy until the business can explain how its efforts fit together and why each deserves its share of time and money. Start from the few outcomes that matter most, usually those closest to the core of the business. Give every initiative a clear reason to exist, review them together, and grow, combine or stop accordingly. Put ownership where the authority is, measure what each effort is for, and keep public claims specific and supportable. Fewer, clearer efforts usually achieve more than a long list.

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Source: KEVOS notes, drawing on teaching material on corporate social responsibility as a portfolio, including a teaching example from a 2015 Harvard Business Review article on CSR programs. Examples and figures in this article are illustrations. This article is general information.