Increasingly, there is pressure for companies to understand the impact of their community investment.  However, this is seen to be a challenge by many companies.  While moving the focus too much on the evaluation could run the risk of taking resources away from valuable project work, focusing on the impact can help ensure that the resources of businesses are being used well and contributing to sustainable development in the region.  This interactive workshop will examine the issues regarding the measurement of corporate community investment and look at tools such as the London Benchmarking Group (LBG) and balanced scorecard approach.  It will examine questions such as:
 
• What do a company’s stakeholders want to know regarding the impact of community investment?
• How can companies demonstrate the impact of their business and for communities?
• How can measurement help improve the quality and strengthen the impact of community
based initiatives?
• The challenge of community investment from a global vs. local perspective
• What have been the lessons learnt from other companies in the region?

Michelle Brown is the Director of Community Development Foundation based in Hong Kong. She joined CSR Asia in 2007. She has over 10 years of work experience primarily with development organizations in Vietnam, China and elsewhere in the region but also with the private sector on partnerships for community development.

Previous professional posts held include both Country Director for VSO in Mainland China; Programme Officer for the Canadian Corporate Citizenship Programme IMAGINE; a Business Analyst for Janssen Ortho in Canada looking at issues related to the pricing of pharmaceuticals; Co-Director of the NGO Resource Centre in Vietnam (the Secretariat for the Vietnam NGO Forum) She has also worked as a consultant for a variety of organizations including the Red Cross, Oxfam, ActionAid and others in Vietnam. She has also lived and worked in South Korea; the UK; and China and has carried out short-term work assignments in Laos and Cambodia. She is a PhD candidate at the University of Hong Kong where she is focusing on the measurement of the development impact of CSR. She has helped to launch the Community Investment Roundtable in the region and developed the Community Investment Scorecard to help companies understand and communicate the impact of their program. In the last year she has lead projects for a major brand on measuring their community investment and developing their sustainability vision and strategy for the region. She has also carried out extensive research on looking at the impact of the ILO Better Factories program for workers and manufactuers for Oxfam Hong Kong in Cambodia.