The Conference Board Middle East and North Africa Briefs

With the focus on the health and safety of staff and partners, how do you balance your work between planning for the impacts of COVID-19 and identifying alternative volunteer experiences for workers in response to travel restrictions and cancelled events?

Strategic partnerships with nonprofits are increasingly important to companies that understand the business case for community engagement. For Atlanta-based Novelis, a decade-long collaboration with FIRST has helped the company innovate and advance its diversity and inclusion goals.

As the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) has initiated proposed reforms to the proxy voting process, retail investors - whose retirement accounts, savings and private investments fuel the markets - have become more aware of the role proxy advisors play in the system. With greater knowledge of proxy advisors’ influence comes greater support among retail investors for increased SEC oversight.

With the World Health Organization declaring the Coronavirus outbreak a global health crisis and cases arising around the world, Jeff Hoffman, The Conference Board's Corporate Citizenship & Philanthropy Institute Leader, offers companies six steps they can take as they consider how to respond.

When Larry Fink, CEO of BlackRock Inc, the world's largest asset management firm announced that he expects companies to consider their business in the context of climate change and that sustainable investments are the way forward, he added to mounting pressures on corporations to address environmental, social, and governance issues, experts and investor advocates said.

2019 was a pivotal year in CSR and 2020 promises to bring more challenges and opportunities to the field including these developing global trends: searching for truth, achieving carbon neutrality, employee relations, pursuing purpose over passion, and looking for the next big thing.

Of the nearly 24 million U.S. children under the age of six, 15 million kids have parents who are participating in the labor force. This begs the question: Do working parents have access to affordable, high-quality child care?

How should companies prepare themselves to take a position on social issues? It comes down to four Ps: Purpose, Plan, Process, and Product. The important thing is to be strategic and to approach taking a public stand in the same way that a company would approach any other business decision.

Does your grantmaking consider input from the communities it's intended to serve? Known as participatory grantmaking, this process helps shift traditional power imbalances that exist in philanthropy. For foundations, this could mean including grantees in priority setting, strategy development, and research, or having them sit on advisory councils or boards.

Is the amount donated to nonprofit organizations focused on women and girls in the U.S. enough, given the focus on gender equality in our culture? At $6.3 billion, approximately 1.6 percent of all charitable giving, the answer appears to be no. By simply integrating gender equality into other giving areas, such as religion, which received $123.8 billion in 2016, we might see an uptick in gender equality movements.