It’s
proven that businesses that can demonstrate a social purpose and greater long-term ambition than their own bottom line are ultimately more successful. People and communities are becoming increasingly invested in supporting projects and products that have a positive purpose. The reason for this could be because the more isolated we become with intelligent technology, the more we crave deeper connections with the world around us.
A
report from Havas showed that the respondents said that they would prefer to live somewhere where they could share more resources. The report also showed that 60% felt that living in a city felt too impersonal and that there was no sense of community.
Corporate responsibility is therefore becoming a more integrated part of business and less of an afterthought, and, in-turn, the impact these companies have is more sustainable and effective in the long run. As explained by Co-founder and CEO of
Who Gives a Crap Simon Griffiths, implementing a solution that solves multiple aspects of a social issue, particularly if one of those is poor education, is ultimately more effective than implementing a single ‘quick fix’ solution. Simon uses community led total sanitation as an example, an approach which includes implementing three things: clean water, toilets, and the sanitation education that grows with that.“The research shows that if you do one of those three things by itself, you're about 10% as effective as when you do all three of those things together.”