Before a crowd in Toronto last week, Imagine Canada CEO Bruce MacDonald launched the organization’s latest initiative—a new corporate social responsibility network called PRISM. 

The new program is a reboot of the charity association’s Caring Companies initiative, which since 1988 has offered certification to medium and large businesses that contribute at least one per cent of pre-tax profits in support of community initiatives. 

Research has shown certified companies give more: A 2018 Imagine Canada report found Caring Companies contributed about 1.9 per cent of pre-tax profits, whereas non-certified competitors offered just 0.4 per cent. 

But while the program may be boosting corporate philanthropy, there’s a snag: uptake has been modest. Currently, just 43 companies have been certified. 

PRISM Community Impact Company Network is the charity association’s answer. 

For a fee, companies can join the network and gain access to new programs—advisory services, peer networking, research and more. PRISM members can also choose to apply for certification but are not required to do so.

The program launch comes at a time when corporate profits are sky-high. 

In 2023, Canadian corporate profits totalled $577 billion—down just three per cent from an all-time high the year prior, according to a report from the Centre for Future Work. 

MacDonald said he’s hopeful PRISM will bring “hundreds and hundreds” of new businesses into the Imagine Canada community. 

Alex Gill, director of Toronto Metropolitan University’s Social Venture Zone, said it’s a worthwhile goal—that corporations will choose to give on their own timeline and terms without outside pressure. 

But he stressed it won’t be easy. 

“There is a literal graveyard of NGOs that have tried to incentivize and program better community connections from corporations,” he said. 

Network to offer ‘gap analysis’

Despite the challenge, Shawna Peddle said PRISM is on the right track. 

Peddle is the associate vice president of citizenship for The Co-Operators, an insurance company that was invited to join a group of twelve businesses that piloted some of the PRISM programs early. 

Over six months, Imagine Canada poked and prodded the company’s community investment strategy in the form of a so-called gap analysis, assessesing DEI, Indigenous reconciliation and giving performance. 

This analysis was the best part of the whole pilot, said Peddle. 

While it was a fair amount of work, it provided staff with a better sense of what the world wants from us, she added.

Since receiving their results from Imagine Canada, The Co-operators has changed its website, providing more information about how charities can access funds, what it looks for in non-profit partners, and what grantees can expect from the company. 

The gap analysis also said The Co-Operators hadn’t done enough internally to celebrate the good work already underway. 

Peddle said that though the company offers staff two paid volunteer days per year, they weren’t celebrating this volunteerism. Now, they plan to do so.

The new PRISM peer networking and learning events will also be valuable, she added.

While community and private foundations commonly work together, collaboration is much less common among corporate giving staff, she said. 

“Creating that community of practice makes us better at our jobs, but it will also start to increase the amount of organizations that will want to be part of this [network].” 

That subtle fear of missing out will be crucial to PRISM’s success, said Gill. 

Relying on FOMO and expectations

Initiatives like the Caring Companies certification have typically tried to apply gentle pressure to corporations in exchange for a mark signifying strong corporate citizenship.

But such programs struggle to offer value, said Gill, because it’s expensive for a certification provider to sufficiently educate the public about its mark.  

“I don’t think people are going to stop banking at National Bank or Scotiabank if they’re not a Caring Company,” Gill added.

Instead, the TMU director said a program like this must rely on peer pressure—a subtle expectation among corporate executives that a business of a certain size and standing must be involved.  

As part of the PRISM program, Imagine Canada will also offer benchmarking—a way for corporations to assess the scale and scope of their CSR efforts relative to their peers.

Frequently, Peddle said she is asked by board members how the company’s community contributions stack up. 

She knows the figure for The Co-Operators—about four or 4.5 per cent of pre-tax profits—but said she’s in the dark when it comes to other mutuals. 

“The benchmarking by industry is going to be a critical tool for us,” she said.  

Program reboot: An effort to ‘thread the needle’

However, in rebooting the Caring Company program, Imagine Canada opted not to increase the percentage of pre-tax profits a corporation must give, despite corporate Canada’s financial success over the last several years. 

As has been the case since 1988, businesses can earn the certification mark if they contribute at least one per cent to the community. This figure includes donations, but corporations can also count toward their total dollar value associated with staff volunteering, in-kind donations, and charitable program management costs. 

Asked why the threshold is the same, MacDonald said its complex to pick one bar that works for all corporations. 

While a smaller company might donate seven per cent of pre-tax profits, contributing $50,000 to the community; a larger corporation might struggle to get to one per cent, but donate $45 million, he said. 

In addition to sticking with the pre-tax threshold, Imagine Canada also opted to keep the certification to community contribution alone, deciding not to assess other aspects of a business’s performance in the verification process. 

This means TD Bank, an existing Caring Company, will face no additional barrier to recertification next year, despite having recently pled guilty to money laundering-related crimes. 

Or, that Suncor, another Caring Company, will face no additional scrutiny over the company’s contributions to Canada’s fossil fuel emission tally. 

MacDonald said that they reviewed corporate certifications that assess companies’ impact more broadly, such as the B Corp certification, but stuck with the one per cent threshold for its simplicity. 

“We heard very clearly that by keeping it that way, [staff] get it, senior executives get it and it helps [companies] invest more in communities,” he said.  

Gill agreed this approach makes sense. 

It’s challenging for any organization to be the arbiter of good and bad corporate behaviour, and it’s wise to grow the network before tightening certification criteria, he said. 

“Once you have everybody on the bus, then you can have a discussion about where you want to steer it,” he said. 

A new magnet

When the Caring Companies program was launched more than three decades ago, the one per cent mark was a magnet, helping pull corporate philanthropy forward, said MacDonald. 

Though the one per cent mark remains, the new program has added additional draws—exposure to data to encourage change and cutting-edge community investment practices, he said. 

“It’s time to construct a new magnet.”

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