This is, for me, the most interesting development in CSR since the Global Compact. This platform will thrive or die based on its ability to act as a hub of stakeholder opinion and actionable change. Stakeholders must ‘get engaged’.

As with all web 2.0 technologies, it is not the platform that matters here but the conversation, and the ability to transform conversation into management systems and thence into behaviours.

I had the pleasure of attending an early stakeholder session with Timberland at the start of their reporting journey and was wowed by their openness to feedback. Of course there is further to go. But what has been achieved already is remarkable. This is a true learning organisation.

According to friend and management facilitation guru David Butter, in the FT, it’s best done by having a dog.

It isn’t clear yet if the ‘get a dog’ is a sustainable leadership strategy. Or even if it is risk free. I guess sub editors across the world have a bank of ‘dog’ headlines in their ‘cupboard’s’ already and there may come a time when with his power waning, the world begins to look at him and think, like King Lear, ‘a dog’s obeyed in office’. 

Thankfully, David’s other recommendations will be more palatable to most leaders.

As for the ‘dog’ strategy….it all seems like good short term PR: it makes him more human, friendly etc and it is extending the brand Obama on-line. In Google, Obama generates 360m search results. Obama’s dog generates 179m. Does this tells us anything material? Probably not, Google ‘results numbers’ are that indicative per se….but it does show that showing you have an affinity with animals is still alive and kicking as a political strategy. For more fun with Obama’s Dog go here:

Not according to the evidence at Westminster this week, when the editor of SportsBusiness, Miriam Sherlock, and a panel of judges including Derek Wyatt MP, chair of the All Party Parliamentary Rugby Group.

The investment in cash, kind and time being made by the 12 Guinness Premiership clubs is actually up over last year and the infrastructure is expanind: the clubs now have 100 community officers (FTE) and are pumping over 100,000 hours into community programming.  

According to Wyatt, a shareholder at Charlton, professional rugby now matches all bar ‘one or two’ of the football clubs, often regarded as the gold star in sports CSR for the size and quality of their programming. Sherlock was struck by the return on investment and the quality of the return for the sponsors involved.

To hear the judges directly go to: http://www.rugbyinthecommunity.com/

Oh, by the way. Saracens were voted ‘Community Club of the Year’, the top award.

So, it is good news to see that Sports Business, one of the key reads for the sports and sponsorship industry, is running a conference soon-ish to get to the heart of the issue: can CSR in sport deliver? Speakers and attendees look like a top quality bunch so if you’re interested check out:

www.sportandsocialresponsibility.com 

If you want to have a look at what rugby union is doing at a social marketing and community level check out the site we help run for Premier Rugby Limited:

 www.rugbyinthecommunity.com 

or check out this week’s

www.marketingmagazine.co.uk

Yesterday, an alliance of the consultative groups there with whom Glasshouse Partnership works, launched a new policy called Farming First which calls on national governments to put agriculutre back at the heart of the global political agenda.

If we don’t, according to Ajay Vashee, the first African President of the International Federation of Agricultural Producers, in an interview with Dow Jones, ‘…in 24 months we’re going to see a resurgence of the food crisis…’.

At a time when the world is understandably obsessed with the economic and financial crisis, agriculture and its relationship to sustainable developnment clearly risk being sidelined.

The policy document, Farming First, is an attempt to avoid that. It has six key principles: 

1. Safeguard natural resources 

2. Share knowledge 

3. Build local access

4. Protect harvests 

5. Enable access to markets 

6. Prioritize research imperatives

‘Farming First’ is available on the UN web site:

http://www.un.org/esa/dsd/dsdaofwmg/mgpdfs/mgcsd17commposi.pdf

Hilary Riva, Chief Executive, British Fashion Council, says: “This is a positive step forward for models and the modelling industry.  The AMA represents nearly all of this country’s leading agencies; this site gives a voice to the modelling industry, professional advice to those wanting to enter the industry, and through the Code of Practice knowledge to know what is and isn’t acceptable practice.”

Susan Ringwood, Chief Executive, Beat, says: “Beat congratulates the AMA on this new website, which will give anyone involved or interested in the model industry access to information, support and advice.”

They use different methodologies so when is it a methodology which is causing a difference rather than a real shift in opinion? 

At moments like these, I turn to Anthony Wells at UK Polling Report because I like his technical analysis (why a methodology might be the cause of a difference) and insight (why are the last polls showing the Libdems benefiting more than the Tories from the fall in Labour support?).

There’s also a swingometer, constituency guides and some good chat in the fourms. An essential site for the amateur psephologist. 

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