Managing our
community programme
We have specialist teams in both the UK and the US to manage our
community engagement. In both cases the teams administer and oversee
the projects, but draw on a wider pool of Experian’s employees
when it comes to making decisions about which projects to support.
These Community Councils involve members from a number of Experian
sites who can act as a mouthpiece for their colleagues in making
decisions.
We plan to give our group of CR management champions a greater
role in the community programme. In conjunction with our specialist
teams they will develop and approve our Community Policy which will
give direction to our giving and involvement. They will allocate
the initial budgets at the beginning of each year, with the employee
Councils responsible for nominating and developing projects. Twice
a year the community specialists will provide progress reports for
the management champions to enable them to track progress against
plans.
Experian invests of the equivalent of 3.3 full time staff into the
management of its community programme, at an equivalent cost of
$222,045.
The total value of our community activity is therefore as shown
in the table below:
| |
2007 |
2006 |
2005 |
2004 |
| Financial donation from Experian |
$728,843 |
£825,015 |
£668,603 |
£209,754 |
| Management costs |
$222,045 |
| Employee time volunteered |
$156,917 |
£125,996 |
£60,607 |
£65,009 |
| Gifts in kind |
$331,934 |
£261,692 |
£163,070 |
£68,616 |
| Total from Experian |
$1,439,739 |
£1,212,703 |
£892,280 |
£343,379 |
| As % of benchmark profit |
0.20% |
|
|
|
| Employee fundraising |
$330,327 |
|
|
|
| GUS Trust Donations |
$517,170 |
|
|
|
| Total value including funding given
by others |
$2,287,236 |
|
|
|
One of the most important roles for our community teams is to record
the impact of our programmes, both within the business and externally.
Measuring impact can be tricky, and there is no agreed standard,
but we tackle it in a number of different ways:
Social impact
We measure social impact on a project-by-project basis. In the
UK, all projects have a Partnership Agreement between Experian and
the project partner, and a Project Delivery Plan is developed at
the outset. The Plan includes a number of expected outcomes, and
we are able then to follow up on each project to see whether/how
it met these. In the US each project partner includes in its original
request a specific measurement strategy to measure the project’s
outcomes, which serves a similar purpose.
Commercial impact
Our community programmes are popular with employees and help make
Experian a great place to work. We track this via our employee survey,
and through an external survey to establish our partners’
opinion of Experian. The employee survey in the UK showed that:
- 83% agreed that the community programme helps promote Experian
as a good place to work
- 69% indicated they are specifically proud of Experian due to
its community commitment
- 95% indicated a positive change in attitude toward Experian
as a result of community participation
We also record media coverage generated by projects. There were
over 122 features in the UK press last year.
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