What is the Social Investment module?
The Borealis application Social Investment module – one of the four social responsibility modules – assists companies implement compliant and transparent social investment processes by simplifying the management of data, the processing and screening of requests, and the delivery of benefits to the community.
According to the United Nations Global Compact: “Social investment is the practice of making voluntary financial and non-financial contributions that demonstrably help local communities and broader societies to address their development priorities.”
In order to obtain support for an extractive project, lenders often require a commitment to a program of social investment, and governments and regulators often impose social investment obligations.
Moreover, successful social investment programs assist companies to acquire and retain their “social license to operate”.
This module allows to track:
- small scale contributions
- large social investment projects
- training events that support capacity building
What is the Social Investment process?
Social Investment Planning is a high-level cyclic process, which for many businesses occurs annually. The major phases are:
- Review Social Investment Strategies: the overall strategic approach is appraised and possibly revised including the assessment of defined strategic indicators
- Define Social Investment Plan: the management plan (or plans) for social investment is defined for the next period (year)
- Invest in the Community: the social Investment Plan is executed, including the processing of requests and delivery of individual social investments
- Review the Plan’s Success: the overall outcomes are determined. Activity 3 of the Social Investment Planning Cycle (defined above), can be further expanded to show the Activities for a single social investment.
A typical Social Investment process can be illustrated as follow:
- Register the request: a new request for social investment (received from the community) is documented.
- Screen the request: the request is checked to ensure that it meets the minimum prerequisites.
- Review the request: the request is formally considered for approval (often by an independent Review Committee).
- Deliver the Social Investment: the delivery of the approved money, goods or services to the beneficiaries in the community.
- Assess the Impact: after delivery; evidence is gathered and documented to assess the community impact.
What are the Social Investment benefits?
Here under are the key benefits of the Social Investment module.
- Delivers results through social investment programs
- Manages the social investment process, from reception of a request to investment
- Measures benefits to communities in accordance with corporate vision and commitments made based on community needs
- Demonstrates transparency and equity in the decision-making process for each request for investment within the project scope
- Allows regular reporting to internal and external stakeholders on investments made and visualization of the distribution of benefits on a map
- Ensures good corporate memory and creates a history of each investment request
The Social Investment module supports the Governance and Reporting by allowing to:
- Set up strategic indicators
- Align activities to management plans
- Define the screening rules for requests
- Manage a transparent approval process
- Report on the distribution of benefits