The value of the CSR circuit
The other day we received an email here at CO3 Towers, alerting us to a number of forthcoming CSR industry events that we might wish to consider attending. Nothing too unusual in that – we are a CSR consultancy after all. But the email got us thinking: what are the respective merits of these numerous seminars/workshops/conferences? And, centrally, are they an effective promotional tool for advancing the CSR agenda, which they purportedly exist to espouse?
What becomes abundantly clear, if you sign up to any of a plethora of available online CSR newsletters or bulletins, is that this is big business: a fairly new, and growing satellite industry, one might say. In fact, you could probably fill your calendar, from the January sales right through to the office Christmas party, by global CSR event-hopping. Not convinced? Well, if we had said yes to less than half the events mentioned in that email, we would be signing off on a round-trip touching London, Bucharest, Cape Town, and Amsterdam. So much for concerns over carbon, eh?
Some of these gatherings are free, and do look discernibly genuine. Others look less so, on both counts. From our experience, many turn out to be merely business development opportunities, rather than legitimate conventions for CSR. We are also reminded of the many ‘awards’ that have appeared over the last few years. Digging a little investigative ground on a proportion of these accolades revealed them to be nothing more than advertorial, masquerading as best-in-sector prestige. Whilst not wishing to denigrate the industry as a whole (we have been to many a stimulating seminar), clearly there is a need to select the greener fruit from the CSR tree.
