Corporate Social Responsibility
=mc is a socially engaged business. As part of that we are committed to a programme of Corporate Social Responsibility. This approach has been part of the =mc philosophy from the start. For example the very first =mc cheque ever written was to the ANC (African National Congress) in 1988 when it was still a proscribed organisation in South Africa.
The programme has a number of elements:
- Donations
- Staff contributions
- Pro-bono work
- Awards and prizes
- Environmental responsibility
- Ethical sourcing, local economic development and fair trade
- Access and diversity
Donations
We make donations to a number of charities – and balance radical and ‘unpopular' causes with those closer to the mainstream. In the last 3 years we have made significant donations to organisations as diverse as the British Red Cross, Macmillan Cancer Support, Amnesty International, Oxfam, Comic Relief, the Darfur emergency and the Disasters Emergency Committee. We also donated the prize =mc's directors received for their book Breakthrough Thinking, which won ‘best non-profit book in the USA’, to the Darfur emergency.
Staff contributions
=mc staff have also directly contributed to a number of appeals. We make a special efforts for one-off appeals, such as the Tsunami appeal in 2005, and the Macmillan Tea Party. Most recently we matched staff donations to the Haiti appeal, giving £4,000 in total.
Pro-bono work
We provide staff to carry out pro-bono work – mostly in the fields of fundraising training and management consultancy and mostly in Africa and South America. This work is primarily to build local capacity and competency in NGOs. We've worked on a pro-bono basis in locations as diverse as Uganda, Peru, Namibia and Baltimore. Trainers and consultants do this on top of their normal workload.
Awards and prizes
We support some awards and prizes. One is example is the Beto Viesca Prize for Young Fundraising Leaders. This is normally awarded annually to a fundraiser under 30 working for a UK NGO. It is in memory of a great =mc friend Beto Viesca, Vice Chancellor of UDEM University in Monterrey, Mexico. The prize offers a free place at the world’s largest fundraising conference in the USA. We have also supported the Guy Stringer Bursary Fund which provides free places for delegates from developing countries at the International Fundraising Congress in Holland.
Environmental responsibility
At =mc we take our impact on the environment very seriously. We have a culture of engagement with green issues, and all =mc staff have signed up to an internal ‘green charter’ of guidelines to reducing our impact on the environment.
Here are just some of the things we do:
- seek where possible to avoid flying and carbon offset all flights
- purchase office products from sustainable or environmentally friendly sources
- source and use ISO140001 printers
- re-use scrap paper for internal notebooks
- print double-sided or on scrap paper
- recycle a large proportion of our waste, including Tetrapaks, polyethene, batteries and light bulbs
- encourage staff to bring in items that they can’t recycle at home
- use water coolers attached to the main water supply
- use portable coffee mugs in cafes instead of disposables
- discourage the use of cars by =mc staff
For more information, please download a copy of our company environmental policy.
Ethical sourcing, local economic development and fairtrade
We buy fairly traded products – especially tea and coffee, biscuits and chocolate – whenever possible. We prioritise business links with companies who themselves are committed to ethical sourcing and practice – for example we use the Cooperative Bank as a way of ensuring our business success doesn’t benefit unethical companies.
Finally, we seek suppliers who share our values, for example we always use environmentally friendly printers.
Access and diversity
We ensure all our staff understand and are trained in disability awareness. We also do our best to accommodate any specific requirements of our customers such as large print documents or a hearing loop. This is so our services are accessible to all.
All this could make us all a bit worthy and dull. Or it could simply mean that we do cool stuff in our work and match our business practices to our ethics.
