As President Trump's stance on DEI reverberates across the public and private sectors, organizations are beginning to take a stand and redefine their values around social responsibility.
Typically, DEI efforts are considered separate from corporate social responsibility initiatives, which tend to be more broad ventures like employee volunteerism, sustainability and learning and development strategies. Seventy-seven percent of corporate social impact leaders anticipate their company's commitment to these causes to stay the same, according to a survey released by the Association of Corporate Citizenship Professionals (ACCP). Thirteen percent even anticipate an increase of those efforts.
According to Andrea Wood, ACCP president and CEO, when Trump signed executive orders to end "radical" and "wasteful" government DEI programs, it also threatened the existence of CSR programs, too.
"Companies are doing this primarily because they want to have a positive impact on their communities," says. "But [corporate responsibility] also makes good business sense. It drives strong business results from employee recruitment and retention to brand loyalty. It strengthens trust and builds partnerships. That's why companies are continuing their commitment."
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Fifty-three percent of respondents cited a "change in language describing the work" as the top way they anticipate being impacted by the executive orders and, to a lesser extent, 31% cited a likely "decrease in external communications about the work." In addition, 30% of those surveyed said that they anticipate an increase in legal oversight, which could stunt CSR's impact if organizations consider these initiatives as part of the policies they've been ordered to eliminate.
"Corporate social impact teams are working very closely with the communications teams to make sure that they are communicating the work in a way that their stakeholders understand," Wood says. "I've been advising members and the companies we work with that it's really important to tell the stories that came from the impact of their work."
This means using successful partnerships and community efforts as examples of shared value — a term coined by the Harvard Business Review — to keep programs in place. For example, Wood used to work with companies in Minneapolis and St. Paul whose incoming talent pipeline came from a diverse background. As a result, the companies argued that in order to keep organizations staffed, they would need to invest in outreach programs that appealed to those demographics.
As for the 10% that are potentially walking back their efforts, a lot of it has more to do with budgetary concerns and economic uncertainty than it does with the belief that those programs are unnecessary.
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"If there's one piece of this that companies understand it's that it's much harder to build back trust when you break it than it is to build it and keep it," Wood says. "These companies have spent a long time investing in community partnerships; dropping them can have reputational damage."
While corporate dollars cannot wholly make up for federal dollars, both in the case of CSR and DEI efforts, Wood urges companies not to underestimate the power of finding flexible solutions, whether it's looking for private funding for certain programs and initiatives or restructuring certain efforts so that they have a larger business proposition in the mean time.
"Organizations have put a lot of effort and resources into building their diversity and corporate responsibility strategies," Wood says. "They're staying the course, they're going to continue to do this work and they're not planning to walk away from them any time soon."
