Unless companies do research into the needs of the communities their corporate social investment projects will touch, they will not know at the end of the project whether they have satisfied any needs at all.
Organisations must start by establishing the need for an intervention and then set a delivery matrix that will allow them to measure whether what was done was a success. Those parameters need to be set upfront. This cannot be done without research.
Commonly, companies make unconfirmed assumptions about what support communities require, fulfilling their own agenda without addressing real needs.
Companies should engage a service provider to conduct a proper baseline study once they have established what information they are looking for. A needs analysis must be done by a qualified service provider and then the company should design a programme that will address as many of those needs as possible. It is not always possible to deliver on all of a community’s needs.
The scientific baseline research must not be used in isolation. There must be stakeholder engagement that precipitates the baseline research. The research charts the journey forward and provides a map of how to proceed.
Organisations must ensure the service provider is credible, with a good track record and references. A service-level agreement that clearly spells out what the expec-tations are must be put in place. Companies must familiarise themselves with the tool that is being used for the research.
This research should be used to develop models that can be replicated elsewhere and by others. There is no need to re- invent the wheel in terms of interventions. Rather, information should be shared for the benefit of all primarily stakeholders.
With so many companies making education their focus for corporate social investment initiatives, this area has become ‘overcrowded”. Education is one of the key needs of our country. Without a sound educational basis our economy and even our livelihoods are affected. That is why so many companies elect to support education.
However, in terms of leveraging opportunities, companies need to choose a focal area to concen- trate on, be it early childhood development, formal schooling, informal learning or universities, among others.
What happens now is that we all touch a little here and there, and the money gets concentrated in one area. Let’s spread the money around and create a balance in terms of the support we give to education. For example, a once-off R100 000 donation to a large university won’t go far, whereas that same donation used to buy equipment for a technical college could add better value.
We must look beyond formal education, focusing, for example, on entrepreneurial training for unemployed youth. There are many young qualified people who lack the experience companies want. We must think about how we can assist them with lifelong learning for sustainability.
However, do not underestimate the importance of formal education. Without that foundation we can’t go anywhere.
Lulu Khumalo is manager, education and communication, BHP Billiton Development Trust