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sustainability


Sustainability Reporting: Preparing Your Organization

Sustainability Reporting: Preparing Your Organization

Preparing for sustainability reporting Our advice before starting sustainability reporting, is to prepare your organization before you do anything else. First things first. Before setting pen to paper or fingers to keyboard to write outlines or strategies or any text at all, there are a few important steps that will help build the foundation for a quality corporate sustainability report (CSR). Most people won’t see the report’s foundation. But, just because you can’t see it, doesn’t make it any less important. Any builder (or homeowner with a leaky basement) will tell you how critical it is...
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Numbers Don’t Lie

Numbers Don’t Lie

Ask any writer or reporter who deals with the real world, and they will tell you that language is not the thing that quickens their hearts. It’s numbers. In a world that’s awash in words, subjectivity, and spin, hard data is the ladder back to dry land. A few revealing numbers can instantly provide a clear context for everything around them, enabling us to understand things better, faster, and more usefully. For example, a lot of people thought it was crazy for Angelina Jolie to get a double mastectomy to prevent cancer. (You can find her announcement here.) But once you get a few relevant...
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Five Sustainability Report Formats

Five Sustainability Report Formats

The pros and cons of five sustainability report formats What format will your corporate sustainability report (CSR) take? Determining how to present the final product is one of the key decisions to make as you develop the strategy and project plan for a CSR. The format not only has budget and timeline implications, but it also impacts the way your report is organized and written. For example, writing for the web requires a very different approach than a long-form printed copy. It wasn’t too long ago that most companies simply prepared printed documents and/or a downloadable PDF of the same...
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Meaningful Brand Strategies: The Consumers Perspective

Meaningful Brand Strategies: The Consumers Perspective

Consumers are expecting a lot from businesses, according to the 2013 Cone Communications/Echo Global CSR Study. Consider these findings relative to the role of a business’s social responsibility: “As global citizens become increasingly aware of businesses’ behaviors and CSR initiatives – in part because of social 
media, they are also becoming more astute about both corporate and consumer impacts. Around the world, the majority 
of consumers feel both individuals and corporations are having some degree of positive influence on social and environmental issues; however, just one-quarter feels...
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Five Not-So-Obvious Ways External Experts Can Improve Your Sustainability Report

Five Not-So-Obvious Ways External Experts Can Improve Your Sustainability Report

Producing a Corporate Sustainability Report (CSR) is a big job that requires significant time and expertise. It’s easy to underestimate the full scope of resources that reporting requires. Fortunately, there are a wide variety of consultants and agencies available that can help handle many parts of the workload – from strategy, to writing, to data management, to graphic design, as well as agencies that can do it all. Typically, reporting teams only consider hiring a consultant or agency in order to fill obvious gaps in internal resources or expertise. But, hiring the right experts will also...
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