Presentation of State of Corporate Citizenship Survey Results

July 14, 2003

Good morning ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to the United States Chamber of Commerce. I am Suzanne Clark, Chief Operating Officer of the Chamber and President of the Center for Corporate Citizenship.

We are here today to present the findings for our survey – the first of its kind – on the state of corporate citizenship in the United States.

Joining us today are Steve Rochlin (Rock-lin), who led the Research Team at Boston College's Center for Corporate Citizenship, our partner on this project, and Joe Kasputys (Kasp-YOOT-is), Chairman of the Board of The Hitachi Foundation, which funded the study.

I would like to start off by telling you what we hoped to accomplish with this survey and also note a few significant findings.

Steve will then go into more detail on the results of the survey, and finally, before we take questions, Joe will discuss how this survey might help increase understanding and awareness of corporate citizenship in the U.S.

Many of you may not have a complete understanding of what we mean by corporate citizenship. In fact, corporate citizenship means different things to different companies.
We've learned that some companies believe corporate citizenship means always adhering to ethical business practices. For others, it's philanthropy. And for still others, it's about how you manage relationships with investors, customers, employees, and communities.

But no matter how companies define corporate citizenship, the survey shows that an overwhelming percentage of them are committed to it.

For example, 70% of businesses, regardless of size, contribute cash or resources to a great or moderate extent to local community activities.

We also hoped this survey would provide information on small business attitudes toward corporate citizenship.

Over the years, the approach to corporate citizenship taken by large companies has been fairly well documented in a number of surveys and reports.
We know that over 2,000 companies have corporate foundations and/or community relations departments.

We know that total corporate charitable cash and in-kind giving totals approximately $20 billion, with another $9 billion allocated to event sponsorships, which in many cases support charitable causes.

But we didn't really have any pre-conceived ideas about how small and medium-sized businesses approach corporate citizenship.

By polling smaller companies, this survey establishes a new benchmark and helps us gain a better understanding of how companies of all sizes approach business-society relations.

It also provides the public with a better understanding about how businesses feel about their roles in society.

Let me also mention a particular finding that poses a challenge to the future of corporate citizenship.

Our survey shows that 46% of companies identified "lack of resources" as the primary obstacle to investing more in corporate citizenship activities.

By comparison, the next most common reason was cited by just 18% of respondents.

It is easy to infer from this finding that the more companies grow and prosper, the more they are able to give back to their communities. Or as a former chairman of the Chamber liked to say, "When business does well, business does good."

So that is why the Chamber urges our national and community leaders to promote policies that will spur economic growth and greater prosperity.

Ladies and gentlemen, we think the overall results of this survey help paint a clearer and more balanced view of corporate behavior and attitudes vis-à-vis ethics and society.

We believe this is the most inclusive and comprehensive survey of corporate citizenship ever conducted, and we intend to work with our partners to expand the scope of this survey in the future to include companies in other countries.

Now I'd like to turn things over to Steve. Thank you very much.