The Power of Benchmarking

Once per year, LBG Canada participants benchmark the total value of their community investment programs across each input category (cash, in-kind, employee time and program management costs), across motivations (philanthropic investments, social investments and commercial initiatives) and across community investment areas (i.e. health, education, arts & culture, etc...).

This process provides valuable management information: across companies of varying size, within industry, cross-sector and among peers. As all LBG companies apply similar principles to value their program investments, LBG Canada benchmarking enables true apples-to-apples comparison, which informs decision-making, management practice and the overarching community investment strategy.

The following graphs illustrate how benchmarking enables companies to compare their community investment approach and then learn from others within the group. When LBG Canada has representatives from 4 or more organizations within an industry, benchmarking across the sector is possible. This allows companies within these sectors to delve more deeply into management trends that are unique to their industry, as demonstrated in graph 2.

Graph 1: How LBG Canada companies contribute (2006 – 2008)

Graph 2: Financial institutions offering programs whereby employees receive a specific number of hours (during work hours) to volunteer (2008)

 

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