India is the first country in the world to make corporate social responsibility (CSR) mandatory, following an amendment to the Company Act, 2013 in April 2014. Businesses can invest their profits in areas such as education, poverty, gender equality, and hunger.
CSR is the procedure of assessing an organization’s impact on society and evaluating their responsibilities. Companies now have specific departments and teams that develop specific policies, strategies, and goals for their CSR programs and set separate budgets and “external implementing agencies” to support them.
Why you should assess the impact of your company’s CSR activities?
This is to understand the following
o Does CSR project create an impact?
o How successful has the project been in achieving planned results for the beneficiaries?
o Are there any winning conditions (enabling environment) to ensure sustainability after the project?
o Are outputs delivered in a cost-effective manner, in expected quantity and quality?
o Are the project objectives consistent with beneficiaries’ needs, state and national policies, and with the partner’s vision & mission-aligned to this project?
Benefits of conducting CSR Impact Assessment Study
o Market Search India carries out impact assessment study post conduction of CSR activities to check its effectiveness among beneficiaries.
The study captured information about the satisfaction of beneficiaries in terms of
o The feedback from the target segments helps the company to understand the impact of CSR programs and changes suggested by the beneficiaries to make the activity more effective.
o It also helped to track the performance of the implementing agencies and areas of improvement required.