LBG Benefits

LBG was built 14 years ago by corporate community involvement professionals, representing six UK companies, because they needed to make their programs more efficient. The main issues they were facing at the time had to do with identifying the real impact of those projects, estimating the resources invested by companies, especially human resources, and difficulties in communicating results in particular to the media.

These needs diversified and gained new dimensions. Moreover, they are common to all the communities where companies develop such community initiatives, including Romania. LBG was developed in order to meet the new needs. At present, LBG brings the following benefits to its members:

1. It determines the efficiency of resources invested by the company. LBG helps the company get a very clear understanding of the ratio between resources invested in community programs and impact to both business and society.

2. It helps to adapt community initiatives early on. When a company sets benchmarks for its CCI investment volume and expected results, it is much easier to detect any diversion from the desired direction beforehand and it is consequently easier to correct projections made in the planning stage. LBG can help the company to evaluate how it impacts the community and whether it has picked an adequate needs approach.

3. It measures the time needed for a person or a team to carry out CCI programs. Apart from financial, time or in-kind resources, companies invest a great deal of time to manage these initiatives. LBG helps the company to evaluate and plan the real time needed to manage community projects, which helps to decide on the size of the team or the time assigned to an individual for such initiatives.

4. It makes community involvement initiatives more viable. A company’s program outputs are the first step in arguing if that program has been useful, if it should continue and if the resources invested by the company have produced the expected change. LBG equips companies with a tool that can measure program outputs and ensure program viability.

5. It gets more top management support on board. When programs prove their community and business impacts they gain a much more important place in the company’s overall strategy. The contribution of this type of program to the company’s business goal reaching often goes unsuspected by the top management team. LBG offers visibility over community and business outputs of CCI programs and wins over top management support.

6. It increases community initiative efficiency. Similar to business operations, community initiatives gain in structure when they are based on rigorous groundwork and lessons learnt. Like the company in general, they mature and increase in value. LBG gives companies the possibility to check if their programs are evolving and reaching their full potential.

7. Communication improves. There are many times when companies choose to communicate their community involvement practice but they are not understood or are suspected of non-transparent practices. Most frequently, this is due to the fact that companies are not able to always present, with concrete data, what they have done for the community. That is why stakeholders’ expectations become unrealistic or inconsistent with the company’s real practice. The LBG model offers the data needed for transparent business goal-related communication.

8. It cuts back company efforts. When the company keeps a record of its projects and those of other companies, the time invested in developing its own initiatives reduces significantly. LBG is an archive of information on the most efficient ways to manage community projects. This corporate memory cuts down community project management costs.

9. The company becomes a good practice model. A long-term use of this model by companies that have reached their maturity in terms of social responsibility programs turns this practice into a model for other companies seeking to improve their community involvement. Offering access to CCI good practice and discipline models, LBG member companies may influence the way companies operate across the country.