CauseWay is a management consultancy devoted to the strategic alignment of businesses and causes.

With expertise in business development, marketing and communications in the legal, financial and other professional services sectors, and extensive experience structuring cause alliances between respected charities and the world’s most admired brands, CauseWay helps firms develop cause branding and social responsibility programs that are the best fit for their culture, meet the unique needs of the services environment and provide the highest ROI for both their brand and recruitment/retention efforts.

Click here to learn about how CauseWay’s approach can help your firm.

CauseWay’s cause branding development process helps firms build an authentic cause brand on a foundation of your core business, institutional values, corporate culture, organizational footprint and community/client expectations. We do so through a multi-phased process that includes extensive research, strategic planning, internal and external communication, training and ongoing monitoring, reporting and refinement.

Internal Audit
How do you currently support causes? What causes are important to your firm leadership, employees and clients? How does your business align with important societal issues? What are your business priorities? What cultural barriers exist to implementing a strategic cause branding program?

CauseWay has developed proprietary tools to analyze your brand, culture, key stakeholders’ needs, goals and challenges to identify the most advantageous cause alliances. Analysis of the competitive landscape is built into the process to ensure market differentiation.

Cause and Partner Analysis
Maybe the audit reveals you want to give to causes that support education, or that you want to make a meaningful contribution to eradicating a particular disease, or perhaps that you want to focus your giving in one region. Once a succinct direction for your cause brand is determined, CauseWay will identify a short list of the most suitable charitable partners. We then manage an RFP process to solicit alliance proposals from each organization, analyze the proposed programs and work with our clients to select your perfect partner or partners.

Implementation and Project Management
CauseWay will work with your in-house team and charity partner to create a strategic plan including deliverables, tactics, communications and measurable goals. The plan will include goals and tactical steps for every facet of the partnership you have deemed important, such as media relations, event sponsorship, employee volunteerism, in-kind donations, workplace giving, cause marketing campaigns and more.

Internal Communications and Training
Internal education is key in integrating a cause into your culture and maximizing your ROI. CauseWay will help you develop internal communication plans and programs to ensure your internal cause team is able to lead and grow the initiative and that everyone in your organization is engaged and able to serve as an evangelist.

Monitoring, Reporting and Reassessment
The professional and financial services industries are always changing, and your cause branding program must evolve with market realities. CauseWay has developed proprietary tools to evaluate the success of cause programs and offer strategies for refinement. The only thing worse than not having a strategic cause brand is continuing to invest in one that is no longer effective.

What benefit is your firm realizing from your current charitable giving program? How much of an impact are you having on the causes you support? If you are still engaging in the practice of “checkbook charity” by making donations to dozens of unrelated causes, the answer to both questions is probably “not much.”

There are thousands of worthy causes doing important work around the globe, however, no organization can tackle all of them at once.

In order to truly make a difference and leverage cause alliances as a key differentiator, firms have to be strategic and focused, aligning with one or at most a handful of issues that connect to your core business and corporate culture. Today’s breed of smarter cause branding programs not only have a more significant impact on the community or society at large, but they also maximize business return by:

• Creating a sustainable competitive differentiator and advantage
• Growing your customer base and loyalty
• Improving employee satisfaction and retention
• Enhancing your brand identity and long-term equity
• Increasing peer, community and press recognition

And as professional and financial services firms become accountable to an increasing number of diverse stakeholders in a highly transparent marketplace, publicly aligning with a cause will become a critical part of a company’s corporate responsibility efforts. In fact, 66% of global consumers believe it’s no longer enough for corporations to merely give money away, but that they must integrate good causes into their day-to-day business* and nearly 9 of 10 think it’s important that business, government and nonprofits collaborate to solve pressing social and environmental issues.**

Want to learn more about how a strategic cause program can benefit your firm? Read one of CauseWay’s latest articles:

• Mythbusting 1o1
• Post-Merger Integration
• Boosting Recruitment and Retention

Click here to see how CauseWay can help you transition reactive giving to strategic giving, and create significant bottom-line and community impacts.

* Source: 2009 Global Edelman Good Purpose Study
** Source: 2008 Cone Cause Evolution Study