NORMA ISO 9000:2005: SISTEMA DE GESTIÓN DE LA CALIDAD –

As has been announced in the outline of the thesis (chapter 1.4.), this section will present advices for social organizations, private companies active in CSA as well as the SROI community. To start with the latter, it was striking that the research brought about the finding that companies indeed are willing to accept and see SROI as a potential selection criterion under certain prerequisites.34 Hence, the promoters of SROI stemming from the scientific or practical community should aim to establish a level of awareness through direct communication with CSA conducting companies most preferably. Here, they should emphasize the potential of SROI as a transparency facilitator. This can also represent the link to the social organizations – which of course must be convinced of its usefulness in order to apply it – through the showing of how SROI makes this particular selection criterion achievable.

Having regard to the implications of this thesis’ findings for companies, the discussion and interpretation of the findings firstly gives a clear recommendation for them to proactively disclose generic selection criteria for e.g. social sponsoring. This can lead to an efficiency increase on the side of the company as well as on the side of the social organization. It will nevertheless stay possible for a company to deny support when other parameters are e.g. not acceptable. A disclosure would deliver the enormous advantage that an internal and external consistency could be achieved and more importantly, the company would resemble much more authentic through a demonstration of openness. In addition, companies should focus on long-term relationships to support cooperations. This leads to more credibility (especially on the customer’s side) and provides the company with more influence on the respective social organization in terms of where the organization’s strategy is heading to etc. Finally, It is always advisable for companies to have formulated guidelines for CSA behavior (an aspect which probably is not really new) in order to make the whole approach to CSA

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I.e. more standardization, increased acceptance and availability of application/best-practice cases as well as the provisioning of clear information on the context of such a measurement.

64 more concise. Such guidelines can help every employee to present corporate values and social aims, giving the possibility to push up the company image and brand to one of holistic authenticity.

Ultimately, social organizations can improve their operations based on the findings this thesis could deliver in various aspects, too. First, the marketing approach for aspects like fundraising should, when targeting private companies, strongly emphasize the economic advantages of CSA like better employee motivation or access to alternative financial capital markets etc. Therewith, more attraction can be generated and if there are supporters in a respective company, strongly rational arguments are being provided that can help these particular persons to better convince e.g. top managers that are focusing on economic considerations more strongly. Second, to increase selection success, social organizations should clearly aim for professionalism of and at their work: they could search for and adopt best practices for example. Here, as described beforehand (chapter 5) it makes sense for social organizations to conduct a SROI analysis since it was found that indirectly, such an analysis leads to more transparency and higher professionalism through the process itself. Moreover, if there is the insight that coaching or external support is needed (for e.g. accounting), this could become a prominent way of initiating a cooperation with a private company: the direct “corporate volunteering” involvement is also providing the donating company with more added value than the simple money spending.35 Too, the probability to become engaged in a follow-up cooperation/support relationship increases if a company has given practical advice and therewith, had a look inside the respective social organization due to the experienced relationship. Third, social organizations should look in advance to find potential supporting companies that have the highest fit in terms of goals or business products/services etc. Therewith, they can better position themselves and it is, as identified to be an important selection criterion, already going one step further and shows of course, professionalism, too. Fourth, social organizations should increase transparency to be more likely to receive support. This can be done through information material providing results from a SROI analysis and through a direct and open contact between donor and recipient.

Ultimately, although the aspects above might be fulfilled by a social organization, the final decision rests on a couple of managers and therewith, individuals. This, as demonstrated beforehand in chapter 4.5., increases the likelihood to be chosen based on emotional preferences by the key persons. It is therefore advisable to aim for building up an emotional strategy to target these decision-makers and also show and offer possibilities how they personally can get involved through e.g. the invitation to become a foundation board member. Such an action can foster the building up of a reciprocal commitment and makes long-lasting cooperation and support more feasible.

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Here, not only can the company “give something” in terms of working time, it can additionally support a positive organizational climate in the company due to higher social awareness resulting from such actions.

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