Community Investment Strategies

Companies around the world engage in community investment (CI) efforts as a way to promote local development and benefit stakeholders in their areas of operation. For the private sector, community investment—a subset of overall social performance and corporate responsibility—is linked to competitiveness and to creating an environment conducive to private investment while promoting local development. In contexts where social risks and expectations are high, benefits channeled effectively through community investment programs can help companies gain a social license to operate, access land, reduce project and reputational risks, boost productivity, meet government requirements or global standards, and/or successfully compete for the next venture.
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Companies around the world engage in community investment (CI) efforts as a way to promote local development and benefit stakeholders in their areas of operations. The aim of this handbook is to help IFC client companies and the wider private sector operating in emergining markets to think strategically about how they can support community investment projects that are successful, sustainable, and consistent with their business objectives.
The original Community Development Toolkit (CDT), which this document updates and replaces, was produced in 2005. It was the product of a joint project between the World Bank Group’s Oil, Gas and Mining Policy Division, the Energy Sector Management Assistance Program (ESMAP) and the International Council on Mining and Metals (ICMM). The development of this revised toolkit was informed by a review of the usage of the 2005 version. It was also informed by approaches developed in the intervening period by other organizations, notably the International Finance Corporation (IFC).
At the beginning of 2012, there is no end in sight for the economic malaise and fiscal crisis that is gripping many parts of the developed world. Global growth is slowing, even in emerging economic powerhouses like India, billions of people remain trapped in poverty. As politicians debate the best way to reform the financial system to prevent future collapses, protestors around the world are questioning the moral foundations of the capitalist system itself. Despite the crisis, shifting attitudes, new technologies and the promise shown by the microfinance revolution have led to new opportunities for market-based innovations to serve the global poor. These are being pioneered by ambitious entrepreneurs who are taking great risks for little potential financial reward, but for tremendous potential social value. Such ideas have elicited a rush to the new field of ‘impact investing’.
The genesis of this article occurred at the FSG-hosted Shared Value Summit in Cambridge, Massachusetts in June 2011 where sixty company representatives and co-authors of the Harvard Business Review article “Creating Shared Value,” Michael E. Porter and Mark Kramer, identified measurement as a key driver of shared value adoption. Nestlé, Intel, InterContinental Hotels Group, and the Rockefeller Foundation committed to work with and support FSG in developing this article on measuring shared value. Insights were drawn from a systematic literature review, in-depth interviews with featured companies, and FSG’s work on shared value with dozens of corporations
Improving the management of the social and economic impacts of significant mining and industrial operations has become an increasingly important public policy issue in recent years. It is a critical element in the sustainable development agenda. This manual provides a process designed to assist Extractive Industry operations to identify and manage their social and economic impacts (both positive and negative). It also provides guidance on how to improve overall social performance where this is necessary.
Harnessing the opportunities that the mining sector can bring to community development is not an easy task, and not one that can be completed quickly. Within a limited time frame the activities of seven mining operations and two projects at the pre-operational phase were reviewed and lessons drawn from these experiences as well as from other community development and poverty reduction programmes in Guinea. Examples of good practice approaches to community development in the extractive industry in other countries have also been considered. This report and the framework presented are intended as a first step in establishing a new approach to community development and are dependent on the participation and commitment of all players.
Social investment (SI) programmes are defined as the voluntary contributions companies make to the communities and broader societies where they operate, with the objective of benefiting external stakeholders, typically through the transfer of skills or resources. This guidance document aims to address the question of how to create successful and sustainable community investments and how to measure their success.
The Australian minerals industry developed Enduring Value – the Australian Minerals Industry Framework for Sustainable Development to enhance its commitment to sustainable development and to build on its Industry Code for Environmental Management, the industry’s platform for continual improvement in managing environmental issues
The Corporate Engagement Project (CEP) works to ensure that the presence of companies has a positive, rather than negative, impact on the communities with whom they work. Since 2000, over 60 international companies, mostly from the extractive industries - operating in Africa, Asia, Latin America, Australia, and North America - have participated in the Project. Insights from Corporate Engagement Project were published in May 2009 in Getting it Right: Making Corporate-Community Relations Work by Luc Zandvliet and Mary B. Anderson. CEP is part of CDA Collaborative Learning Projects, a non-profit organization in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
Value-driven organisations are using new ways to understand, measure and foster awareness of their impacts. The benefits can then be seen in terms of the ‘return’ for individuals, communities, society or the environment. This is a powerful way of viewing impact. It enables those who invest in, and have a stake in, social change to thoughtfully weigh the resources they use. This guide sets the standard for a complete and rigorous SR OI process and report.
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The Community Development Toolkit was developed to support government, industry, and community efforts to realize more sustainable community development around mining and mineral processing operations. The Toolkit contains 17 tools which cover the assessment, planning, management, and evaluation phases of community development as well as stakeholder relationships. In addition, a background volume contains an examination of the mineral policies and mining laws necessary for mineral activity to contribute to sustainable development.
Breaking New Ground presents an analysis of a large and heterogeneous sector through the many stages of minerals and metals exploration, production, use, reuse, recycling, and final disposal.The project assumed from the start that sustainable development could provide a useful framework to guide the minerals sector.