What is CSR? The Basics of Corporate Social Responsibility

Imagine your company wakes up tomorrow to hundreds of employee messages asking the same question:

“How can we help?”

A natural disaster has impacted a community where employees live. A local nonprofit needs support. An employee resource group wants to rally behind a cause that matters to its members.

People are ready to donate, volunteer, raise funds, and take action.

But who approves that campaign? Where should donations go? Will contributions be matched? How will employees find opportunities to get involved?

Without a plan, even the best intentions can stall. That’s why today’s top organizations usually have systems, processes, and programs in place long before these moments arise.

In many organizations, those efforts fall under a broader strategy known as corporate social responsibility (CSR).

The thing is, despite being a familiar term, CSR is often misunderstood. Some people associate it with charitable giving. Others think of sustainability initiatives or community investment programs. So, in this article, we’ll explore what CSR is, why it matters, and how it helps organizations respond with purpose when employees, communities, and causes need support most.

Main Takeaways:

• CSR provides a framework for turning company values into action.
• CSR can include employee giving, volunteering, community investment, sustainability initiatives, and disaster response.
• Successful CSR programs make participation easy, flexible, measurable, and relevant.
• CSR continues to grow in importance as employees, investors, consumers, and communities place greater expectations on businesses.
• CSR and ESG are related, but they serve different purposes.

What is CSR?

Corporate social responsibility (CSR) is best defined as a business approach that helps companies create positive social, environmental, and economic impact through activities such as employee giving, volunteering, community investment, ethical business practices, and sustainability initiatives. CSR helps organizations align business goals with the needs of employees, communities, and other stakeholders.

Think back to the scenario we started with.

When a community faces a crisis, when employees want to rally around a cause, or when an opportunity arises to make a positive impact, organizations need a clear way to respond. CSR helps make that response possible.

In many ways, it answers a simple but important question: How does a company act on the values it says it cares about?

The response looks different from one organization to the next. But the goal is often the same: creating a repeatable way to transform concern into positive outcomes, whether the need comes from employees, communities, nonprofit partners, or the world around them.

What Does CSR Look Like in Practice?

CSR can present itself in a variety of forms. So, let’s break them down:

• Employee giving: Donation campaigns, matching gift programs, and year-round giving opportunities that allow employees to support causes they care about.
• Employee volunteering: Opportunities for employees to donate their time and skills through individual, team-based, virtual, or skills-based volunteering. Many organizations also encourage participation through Volunteer Time Off (VTO) and other volunteer incentives.
• Community investment: Nonprofit partnerships, grants, sponsorships, and other initiatives that address community needs.
• Responsible business practices: Environmental initiatives, employee wellbeing programs, ethical sourcing efforts, and other actions that reflect an organization’s values and commitment to positive impact.
• Disaster relief: Campaigns and emergency support programs that help employees and communities respond to crises.

While some organizations may focus heavily on one aspect of CSR; most often, businesses combine multiple approaches to create a CSR strategy that reflects their goals, values, and community priorities. Together, these efforts create a more well-rounded approach to impact, and allow organizations to support causes, communities, and employees through a variety of channels at multiple points during the year.

Who Actually Owns CSR?

In some companies, CSR is managed by a dedicated social impact, corporate responsibility, community engagement, or corporate citizenship team. In others, ownership may sit within Human Resources, Sustainability, ESG, Corporate Affairs, Communications, or another business function.

The thing to remember is, while day-to-day responsibility often belongs to a specific department, effective CSR programs don’t operate in isolation.

• Leaders help establish priorities
• Employees drive participation
• Nonprofit partners provide expertise
• Cross-functional teams often support program delivery and measurement.

Ultimately, CSR tends to be most successful when it is viewed as a shared responsibility across the organization rather than the responsibility of a single team.

CSR vs ESG: What’s the Difference?

Although they’re often used interchangeably, CSR and ESG are not the same thing.

Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) refers to the programs, initiatives, and actions organizations use to create positive social and community impact. This can include employee giving, volunteering, nonprofit partnerships, grantmaking, disaster response, and sustainability efforts.

Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) refers to a framework used to evaluate how organizations manage risks and opportunities related to environmental impact, social responsibility, and corporate governance.

Put simply:

• CSR is about what a company does.
• ESG is one way those efforts may be measured and evaluated.

Many CSR activities contribute to broader ESG goals. For example, an employee volunteering program may be part of a company’s CSR strategy while also supporting the social component of its ESG reporting.

While the two are closely connected, CSR focuses on action and engagement, while ESG focuses on assessment, reporting, and accountability.

Why Does CSR Matter in 2026?

A decade ago, CSR was often associated with charitable giving and occasional volunteer events. Today, it includes everything from employee giving and volunteering to sustainability efforts, disaster response, employee wellbeing programs, and community partnerships.

More importantly, stakeholders want to understand not just what organizations support, but how they demonstrate their values through measurable action. Employees, job candidates, investors, consumers, and communities all want a better understanding of what companies stand for and how they contribute beyond their products and services – and CSR has become one of the primary ways organizations demonstrate those commitments in practice.

Employees and Candidates Expect Purpose

Purpose has become an increasingly important factor for both employees and job seekers. Research shows that 72% of employees are more likely to apply to companies they perceive as socially responsible, while 71% say a company’s societal impact is a strong expectation, or a deal breaker, when considering a job. At the same time, nearly half of Gen Zs and millennials report making career decisions based on their personal ethics or beliefs. CSR can help demonstrate company values in action before a candidate ever submits an application, while creating opportunities for employees to support causes they care about after they’re hired.

Investors Expect Accountability

Investors are paying closer attention to how organizations manage social impact, engage employees, support communities, and respond to emerging challenges. With 76% of investors expecting companies to have a clearly defined corporate purpose, and 93% believing that purpose is necessary to create long-term business value, there is growing emphasis on building lasting growth through stakeholder trust and responsible business practices. CSR programs help organizations demonstrate that commitment by creating measurable outcomes, providing accountability, and enabling transparent reporting on progress over time.

Consumers Expect Authenticity

Consumers have more information and more choices than ever before. As a result, many have more exhaustive criteria around the kind of businesses they support. They seek out organizations whose values align with their own, but they’re also increasingly skeptical of performative initiatives. They want to see actions that support the promises companies make.

For many organizations, CSR helps provide visible examples of those commitments through ongoing programs and community partnerships.

Communities Expect Partnership

Employee giving, volunteering, matching gifts, grantmaking, disaster response campaigns, and ongoing nonprofit partnerships create opportunities for organizations to provide support throughout the year. These programs help strengthen relationships while creating more consistent sources of funding, expertise, and volunteer support.

Despite differing priorities, collectively, these expectations influence many of the factors that drive long-term business success – and CSR offers a practical framework for managing those priorities while still creating value for both businesses and society.

What Makes a Strong CSR Program?

While no two CSR programs are exactly alike, after analyzing 306 companies and more than 7 million employees, here are some common characteristics we’ve seen across the strongest programs.

1. They make participation easy. Employees are more likely to get involved when opportunities fit naturally into their routines. Our latest data found that payroll giving remains the most popular giving method, while volunteer participation continues to rise even as average hours per volunteer have declined slightly. This trend suggests employees are looking for more accessible and flexible ways to engage, whether that’s through recurring payroll donations, shorter volunteer opportunities, or activities that fit more easily into busy schedules.
2. They offer flexibility and choice. Some employees prefer donating, while others gravitate toward volunteering, board service, or fundraising campaigns that align with their values. Companies that provide multiple ways to engage are often better positioned to sustain engagement over time.
3. They create visible moments for action. Companies that provide timely opportunities to engage often see stronger results. For example, companies using Engagement Elements to promote giving opportunities achieved a 9.7% giving engagement rate, compared to 7.5% among companies that did not.
4. They connect multiple types of impact. Leading organizations often combine employee giving, volunteering, community investment, and disaster response efforts. In fact, internal data shows that companies offering both giving and volunteering programs achieved a significantly higher engagement rate (16.5%), compared to programs with giving (5.0%) and volunteering (6.3%) alone.
5. They prioritize measurement. Effective programs measure both participation and impact. Of the companies we work with, 80% collect both output and outcome data, while 67% also gather participant stories and qualitative feedback to help tell a more complete impact story.
6. They build communities around participation. Some of the strongest programs are those that create spaces where participation spreads through peer networks rather than corporate communications alone. Companies using Employee Resource Groups (ERGs) reported a 19.2% combined engagement rate and a 15.6% volunteer engagement rate, compared to 15.0% and 8.8%, respectively, among organizations without them.
7. Participation is encouraged through incentives. Our data revealed that the average donation tied to volunteer incentives increased by 21%, while incentive redemption rates reached 65%. This suggests that employees are more likely to engage when their contributions are acknowledged and supported through incentives like matching gifts, Volunteer Time Off (VTO), volunteer grants, and more.

So, What Does This Mean for Your Organization?

At the beginning of this article, we were faced with a simple question: “How can we help?“

At its core, CSR provides a way for organizations to offer a meaningful answer.

And once that foundation is in place, the conversation shifts from “How can we help?” to “How much impact can we create?“