Dozens of US companies announced layoffs towards the end of 2022 and we continue to see more announcements of layoffs in 2023. Many companies are looking for ways to restructure and reduce operating costs while continuing to evolve how they focus on people and culture, including CSR and ESG initiatives. Given our role powering social good with companies, we wanted to gather data and insights on current trends shaping the CSR industry to help practitioners evaluate and strengthen their program strategies at a time when their stakeholders need them the most.
Chief Executives for Corporate Purpose (CECP) regularly surveys leaders in CSR and social investment at their affiliated companies on various topics throughout the year to get a pulse on current trends. In December 2022, the CECP Pulse Survey topic was corporate impact budget 2023 forecast, with ~60% of respondents reporting their budget would remain about the same or increase.1
As a follow up to that survey, we partnered with CECP to understand how current economic conditions are shaping the focus of corporate purpose in 2023. For the February 2023 CECP Pulse Survey, the respondent pool was expanded to include YourCause clients in the Global Good Network™. This special edition of the survey asked three questions aimed at understanding how companies are navigating their CSR programs during this time of economic uncertainty and what goals they have set.
74 respondents participated in the first question of the survey:
Are the current economic conditions impacting your corporate social responsibility programs?
a. No impact to our programs, it’s business as usual
b. Somewhat impacting our programs, we’ve had to tighten our belts
c. Significantly impacting our programs, we’ve had to make some cuts