CommunityMark is a win-win

Community investment is an opportunity for businesses to achieve competitive advantage by understanding that a ‘win’ for community also means a ‘win’ for business.

As a theory, this concept has been embraced by innovators in community investment – yet even those businesses which are recognised as exemplars of best practice struggle to articulate, quantify and qualify the business benefits of their community strategies.

"The Community Mark is the highest accolade externally, with a robust application and selection process. This ensures that only the best achieve this recognition.  It also enables companies to receive constructive, quality feedback on their CSR programmes, in particular about where they can make improvements, which they are expected to do to retain the Community Mark." Cadbury

CommunityMark companies are scrutinised by their employees and community partners, and are able to demonstrate return on community investment and the value of this to their business. The CommunityMark provides a shortcut to communicating excellence in integrating best practice community investment through all aspects of a company's operations.

The benefits of achieving the CommunityMark include:

• Improved colleague and customer loyalty
• Enhanced corporate reputation among peers, media, government and other stakeholders in the wider community 
• Recognition from an independent third party validating performance
• Supports building an internal business case for employee volunteering by measuring the value of return on investment in terms of talent, skills and enterprise development in staff. 
• Provides leadership platforms and opportunities to showcase best practise to peers and key stakeholder groups

Achieving the CommunityMark provides businesses with a unique opportunity to strengthen their position as innovators and leaders  in community investment.