What's Your CSR moment of the week?

Some Fridays before dinner, everyone in my family shares the most remarkable thing that they experienced during the week. Mostly, they are small things that have a big impact. Our kids are 8 and 10 and I hope that sharing these stories will be one of the things that they remember well when they’re older. 

I was thinking about all the amazing responses and ideas I’ve had from readers over the last while (it’s clear that you guys really have lot’s to say!) and it occurred to me that every Friday anyone who’s interested could share their CSR “moment of the week”. Here’s mine:

I’m writing an article that I hope will appear soon in Advertising Age that asserts that “return on integrity” has become central to how we measure the success of business. As a part of this, I’m interviewing people from a wide range of companies to get examples return on integrity. A while back I happened to buy an amazing chocolate bar made by a single-origin chocolate company based in Springfield, Missouri called Askinosie. It occurred to me that they might have something to contribute so I got in touch with their Founder, Shawn Askinosie (he was in Ecuador meeting with their chocolate farmers).

Here’s part of what he wrote about integrity: “Here is the deal with us.  We are a small company and the people who work there are people OF integrity so it naturally follows. So the first thing I would say is that we hire for integrity.  Therefore the “operationalization” comes naturally.  We all wrote our mission statement together.  In fact it was first circulated as a “draft” with that word clearly at the top of the document.  Our mission statement is in permanent letters on a white board in public view so we can write on it with erasable markers and remind ourselves that we are in fact living it out.  After the board gets full – we erase and start again. Our mission itself is laden with ideas that promote integrity.”

Needless to say, I was astonished and inspired by what Shawn wrote. In a subsequent email, Shawn mentioned that he loved this blog and could spend hours reading it. Hands down, that’s was my CSR moment of the week. Thank you Shawn.

I invite readers to share their own CSR moments. It doesn’t have to be a big thing – just the first thing that comes to mind. I bet we’ll all be inspired and learn something too!

Hope you all have a great weekend.

 Impakt was founded in 2001 by Paul Klein, an authority on corporate responsibility and community investment who is a guest lecturer of marketing at York University, writes a blog about corporate responsibility for Canadian Business Magazine, sits on the Advisory Board of the Centre for Corporate Social Responsibility at the Queen's School of Business, and has written numerous articles on the subject for publications in Canada and the United States.