 Hello, good afternoon. My name is Philip Preston and I would like to welcome you to today's webinar express getting from giving CSR life lessons hosted by CIM Southeast Region. Before we get started, I'd like just to go over a few things so you know how the event will work and how to participate. The presentation will last for approximately 30 minutes, followed by a short 5 to 10 minute Q&A session. You'll be able to post any questions you have by typing into the ask a question chat box in the Q&A panel, which you'll see on the right hand side of your screen. You can send in your questions at any time during the presentation and will attempt to answer as many as we can during the Q&A session at the end. If you want to share your thoughts on social media, we're using the hashtag CIM events. The webinar has been recorded and we will share a link to the recording with you over the next few days. You'll also be emailed a short feedback survey after the event, which we'd love you to complete. It'll only take a few minutes. All survey sponsors are anonymous, so please do let us know your thoughts. I'd now like to hand over to Nikki Rudd who is our guest speaker today. Hello everybody, welcome. Hopefully you've got better weather and I'm praying that we don't have some sort of power cut because I've got hideous weather definitely based out in the new forest. So just before we start, just a bit of an introduction. I'm managing director of Padua Communications. We are a content marketing and PR agency and we are 11 years old, literally in a couple of weeks actually. We work mainly in the B2B space, but we do have some B2C clients and they are across all manner of industries. Most of our work comes from referrals, which is really, really lovely. And we love content and storytelling and hopefully the story that I'm going to tell you today will resonate and will encourage lots of questions. Please don't feel that there's anything that's too silly to ask or too personal because as you see as I go through this, hopefully you'll get to know me a little bit better. As I mentioned, we work with lots of companies across different sectors. So the examples that I'm going to give you today of the companies that I've worked with with doing CSR are right across the board. So again, even if you have sort of an industry sector question that you want to ask with relation to CSR or CSI, then jump in please, feel free to use the chat. So just as a starter, this focus on CSI or CSR and some people are kind of a little bit unsure sometimes about what the difference is. Is there a difference? CSR is obviously a corporate social responsibility and has been around for longer and basically is about a business giving back, I suppose, and trying to help others or help charities or other not-for-profit organizations get a bit more out without it having to cost huge amounts of money. And then CSI is kind of the new kid on the block. It's kind of a sort of come out of the CSR umbrella, if you like. And is more of a focus, I would say, on sort of communities. And so hopefully when we're going through this, you can see that I've actually done a little bit of both in my experience over the last decade. So let's start. This is my lovely, lovely, lovely friend Kathleen. And Kathleen is basically the main reason that I got involved with volunteering. Don't be wrong. I'd kind of, you know, done some runs, great self-run and the rest of it and raised money for charity. But I had never really thought about volunteering my time in the way that I have done over the last 10 years until, unfortunately, my very dear friend passed away. And Kath had motor neurone disease and died at the age of 38 and she left three boys under the age of 10. And she died a couple of days before my 40th birthday. And it was a really, really, obviously, it's horrible news. And it's still very, very difficult to think that somebody who's such a bright spark was taken so quickly. And at the time, we had set up casual communications. So I run the business with my husband, but he at the time was still working as journalist and so at that time it was just me doing everything. And it really hit home the fact that actually Kath, when we found out a bit more about what she'd been going through, we realised that she basically had three young carers looking after her. I have to say, I'm going to apologise a little bit for this photo of her because this is her on a Hindu where we went to Orkney. And she is the only person I know to have been tarred and feathered in a traditional Scottish fashion. So yeah, excuse the dress. We all dressed as Madonna through the ages. But she was an absolute love. And when she died, it really made me think, what could I do? Was there anything? And I remember having a conversation with Jason as we were getting ready for him to go to work and be to go to work one morning. And we were listening to something on Radio 4 and it was talking about caring. And I just kind of all of a sudden in my mind, I had this sort of jigsaw of ideas. I thought, hang on a second, I want to do something. I want to see if there's something near me because Kath was based up in Edinburgh and we at that point were in Surrey. And I don't want it to just be carers. I want to specifically see if I can find something to do with young carers. And just see how I might be able to get involved. And I really know very much at all about the kind of care industry at all at that point. And so I did a bit of research and I came across an organisation called Action for Carers Surrey. Now that's the umbrella kind of organisation that does some carers. But actually within it, they have an organisation that is called Surrey Young Carers. And so for the first probably about four years of running Padua Communications, I would work my time so that I could go and volunteer. Now, the reason that it was quite a big step for me. I'd worked with children in the past. I'd been a teacher before I worked in comms. But actually when you get involved with an organisation that's specifically focused on children, there are a lot of questions as to kind of why you want to be involved quite rightly. And so I had to tell the story of Kath quite a lot and why I wanted to be involved specifically with young people, why I wanted to just volunteer my time. And there was quite a lot of discussion of kind of what kind of things could I do. And actually the majority of things I did there were basically being an adult in the room so that they could actually have more young people around. And I did some amazing things with the organisation. They did absolutely brilliant, brilliant work. Sometimes it was going to see danger in the manger. I think I saw that three times in one week with different groups at the cinema just because their ethos and their philosophy was we will let these young people be young people and not have to be the grown-ups that they have to be as carers. So we would just do sort of fun activities. So it might be that or it might be sort of a day trip down to Brighton for them to just hang out and just get a break from really what is an ongoing care situation that they sometimes have to do for a very, very long time. I had no idea until I got involved with Sorry Young Carers that there are carers as young as four, five. I mean my daughter's six now and I mean she's pretty helpful but that is not something that a young person should have to do. And it was a real eye opener for me to sort of think about some of the things that these young people would have to go through. So for instance if they were late at school it might be because actually already that morning they'd have had to sort out their meds for their parents. They might have had to feed their younger brothers and sisters, get them dressed, get them washed, get them to school themselves. So it was actually just that weight of having to be the responsible person was absolutely massive. So we did a kind of whole variety of things. One of the things that we did and I have to say this is one of the best experiences that I've ever had in my entire life. There was a Young Carers Festival which ironically was held at the YMCA in Southampton not so far from where I live now. And it basically was a weekend camping trip. Unlike my days at Glastonbury and the rest of it there was no alcohol obviously on site. And it was just young people doing what young people do, having fun, trying kayaking and climbing and you know just getting to know each other. And while we were there I met a young girl who was absolutely fantastic at playing cards. She was just incredible. Could have been a croupier then and she was probably about 14 at that point. So Surrey Young Carers basically works with carers up until the age of 18. She was absolutely terrific. And she just was really, really lovely. It ended up being sort of one of those, I suppose, real eye-opens for me that sort of a year and a half later she was on another trip with me and we went to Brighton again taking him out for a day at the sea. And she came and said, have you got a top of a cabaret, one with long sleeves? And I thought it was just because she didn't want to get sunburned. But actually, as she pointed out to me, she'd been self-harming and needed something to cover her arms. And so we sort of got it sorted and so that she didn't have that issue in front of her peers. But so basically this whole kind of step into a world and kind of giving of your time actually was a real eye-opener for me. It was a real learning curve. It taught me not to basically assume that I knew what people were going to be going through. And it also, I think, really taught me to hone my listening skills and not be always there with kind of an answer or some advice, but just to actually be there and listen and take on board what these young people wanted to just offload. And it was a really, really fantastic experience. It made me, I suppose, as a professional and as a young person even then, but obviously not compared to the young people I was working with, but it really made me reflect on life and kind of what I wanted out of life and how lucky I was and the opportunities that have been given to me. And actually that getting that back from just giving of my time was a real light bulb moment for me about not necessarily how I always decide to live and the choices I make, but it has changed. It did change me as a person. It did make me fundamentally rethink what my values were as a person, what our values were as a business, how we would effectively spend our time or spend our time to be more effective. And so, yeah, it was quite a steep learning curve as a kind of an entry into the CSR world. It probably was one of the most grueling ones because of some of the stuff that I just wasn't expecting to come across in my work with sorry young girls. It also put me in different environments. And I think this is something that actually as a person, it's a good thing. I mean, we often have people that say, you know, you should try and take stuff out of your comfort zone or get scared once a day if you can, once a week if you can, but just challenge yourself. And actually volunteering particularly with, you know, with that organization did make me rethink, you know, sort of how I would behave in different environments. It made me perhaps face things and learn about things that I would never have kind of really come across beforehand. You know, I had a very good education. My mum and dad still together had very, very nice upbringing. So actually it was quite interesting and illuminating to be and find out more about other people and kind of just how that background and that journey that people can be on kind of makes the kind of that their adult self or how they think about things. So I think it from a, you know, giving and also being putting yourself out there to be in a sort of different sometimes use of challenging environment is actually a really, really good thing. And I would, although it's tough, I would help hardly recommend it. So after Sorry Uncarers, we've actually pretty much the same time. So I didn't have any kids at that point. I also got involved with City YMCA, which is one of the YMCA sort of groups. And I think basically I this came about as a kind of just a bit of a conversation. So the lady on the right hand side that you can see on the screen is somebody I went to university with. And it's one of my dear friends as well. And she's chair of City YMCA. I mean, she came and said to me, I need to trust you. I need one with marketing PR comms and I want you to do it. And up until that point, I'd never really, I'd always worked for kind of smaller agencies. I'd worked with large corporate companies, but I'd never really been in a sort of board meeting, if you like. I'd managed to escape, so to say. And so when Jill asked me to be a trustee, I think had I not been in that sort of, had that experience with Sorry Uncarers and kind of putting myself out there, I would have felt a little bit differently about it. But as it was, I kind of had the confidence to say, yeah, okay, fine, I'll do it. And I, you know, it was a different environment. And but I will come and I've done this before. And I will, you know, I have an understanding now of kind of the language and the terminology that particularly within that kind of care and the kind of child, if you like, or young people sort of world, you need to be aware of. I have to say, being trained as a teacher, I really haven't come across it. So I think kind of even within the education space and the kind of care and the young people space, there is a massive gap, hopefully not so much now as it was when I was teaching. But, you know, sort of that that link up between kind of everybody working together. I don't really feel was there when I was working with young people as a teacher in my early twenties. So I became a trustee at City YMCA. And I, yeah, again, did a whole manner of things, including sleeping at rough, that you just don't think you're going to do. And you find yourself saying yes to. I have to say one of the things that I have learned over the last decade, particularly volunteering, is somebody asked something to say yes, because you will get something from it. Even though it might sound like the craziest idea when it first kind of appears on the horizon. So I became a trustee and I helped with the team and tried to do some PR and some kind of media training and just some general marketing support. And then basically what came about was the fact that the building that City YMCA uses was basically not fit for purpose and needed to be demolished and needed to be rebuilt. And I ended up chairing the subcommittee about housing, something that I have to say at that point I knew very, very little about. And all of a sudden I was part of the team meeting with architects, building regs and the council about what was going to be allowed and the different stakeholders. And all of a sudden a whole different set of audiences that I'd really sort of had to deal with in the past, which was terrific, I have to say. And again, I learned an awful lot, but also that experience of being chair was something that I'd never really had to do before. Not in a kind of chair meetings and put together the agenda. But actually in that kind of more formal chairing and meeting was something very, very new and was something that basically I learnt all about. So different skills of kind of managing a meeting properly, making sure everybody's being heard, making sure that you stick to the format of the meeting rather than it just going and running over. So all of that became kind of new skillset as well as the kind of actual subject matter of actually how do you build a new hostel. Which I have to say I started and then when I went off and had a baby I decided, in fact I decided but my husband also emphasised that I didn't really have the time to just be volunteering all this time. The building I did meet Jill earlier this year to go and see the building before they kind of lock down and it is now up and about to open and really does look terrific. So I feel very, very proud about some of the work that I've done with City 1CA and it was really, really great again working in a different environment with different people and just sort of seeing what skills you could pick up along the way, what knowledge you could pick up on the way and also what knowledge you could impart as well, whether it be to other stakeholders or whether it be to some young people that we were working with. So that brings us on to sort of more recent days. So I'd obviously been chair of this subcommittee to do with housing, I'd gone off had a baby and then lots of things happened at the same sort of time. One of them being that we moved to Fordingbridge, so we moved from Surrey down to Hampshire, which is where I'm now based. And as a new business in town, we went along to some of the Christmas lights and what other community events you could get involved with and that kind of stuff, just getting to know people. And what turned out to be basically, I think, a reaction to getting over flew also again then opened my doors, I suppose, to be my next kind of volunteering initiative, if you like, which was much more CSI, I would say, rather than the CSR. The Surrey Young Carers and City 1CA we kind of had done very much with the kind of Padua Communications. It was me, but it was still very much kind of work then. And it still is to a certain extent with the work that I'm doing now, but it is much more on a kind of local scale, mainly because I have a little person that I have to look after and we have pickups from schools and that kind of stuff. So my focus became much more about kind of what can I do within my community. And so I went along to a meeting and basically we had lots of kind of disparate messaging going on with different events and different business groups that happened. And I all of a sudden found myself putting my hands up in a meeting once and saying, yeah, I think there should be a group and I think I should chair it with this kind of newfound confidence, I think, from having done the City 1CA work. So we set up For the Bridge Events Group, which is basically a not-for-profit organisation. I'm chair, I've been chair now for coming up for three years. We run several events throughout the year that are for the community, including the For the Bridge Festival, which unfortunately this year had to be cancelled, postponed until next year because of COVID. Basically, that's our main fundraising event for us to be able to run other not-for-profit events in the community. So we are very involved with the Christmas Lights event that happens in our local town. But also with that, you know, every child gets to see Father Christmas in a grotto and get a gift that we basically source. The year before that, we ran For the Bridge Culture Week, which was putting together all of the arts organisations within the local community. We ended up doing our own event as part of the 10 Days Worth of Events, which was a re-enactment of Constable's The Haywayne in the river with one of our community trustee members and his heavy horses. So you may have seen us in the Times because we did actually make it into the Times in one of the big photo spreads about what's been happening over the weekend. But yeah, so we basically got involved with this group and set it up. And we now have a website and we have, you know, sort of a code of conduct and we have articles and all of those things. All of those things that had you asked me a decade ago to do, I would literally have had no idea. And it is purely from my volunteering time that I feel that I was able to step into this sort of chairs role and actually sort of move the organisation from just running kind of a little event to being very much a kind of a key player within our local community. And it's been terrific again because actually it's apart from volunteering a time, it has been a case of getting to know an awful lot of people, getting to know an awful lot of groups, whether they are the schools or the churches, whether it's other charities and not profit organisations. And it's been really terrific. We've really tried to kind of up our community impact. And actually a lot of the people that involved with the events group when COVID hit because we have not been able to obviously run events, which is our being and our kind of, you know, our mission have been involved with kind of local Facebook initiatives. We had one in particular that was called Ford and Bridging Needs, which was about helping deliver food and medications to people who were, you know, sort of self-isolating. So it really was a kind of connector within our local environment. And it made me sort of really sort of think again about what you can give. So sometimes I think people think on CSR it's going to be a huge amount of money. It's not. You don't have to, it doesn't have to always be about money. It can be quite often about training and kind of imparting knowledge. And so, for example, for a Ford and Bridges events group, you know, we had a budget, but basically I've been involved with sorting out a logo. It's been a page or communications that has done the website for them for free, just stuff that they wouldn't necessarily, we wouldn't necessarily have thought of. Or we would have thought of what we wouldn't necessarily have known the right way to go about it or things that we need to be aware of. And so that training can sometimes be a real foot in the door for you to get involved with an organisation. And sometimes it can feel like you're giving absolutely very little. And actually the rewards that you get from it are massive because it will be an organisation that might not have a lot of money or really needs those skills. But just doesn't have an a way of kind of employing the right person to do it. So one of the things I would always say is if you are thinking about, you know, sort of doing more with CSR and CSI, have a look at those training opportunities to see what else you might be able to kind of share. That's how I got involved with my next CSI projects. So I'm a trustee at Babermay, which is our local community centre. And I ended up going in and volunteering some time to do some Facebook training with them and some content planning and getting something that they kind of knew they needed to do, but just didn't have a clue how to go about it or to make it more effective for them, bearing in mind that they are run with very, very small team. And then there's lots of different groups in there and it's kind of about how can we put things in place to make this more effective. So I worked with the Chief Executive also some of the team there to kind of give them some training and just get them to sort of think a little bit differently about how they create content, how they share content, how they work within that sort of social space. And also as part of it, we have been involved with updating their brand, which was beforehand very, very, very bad, very, very old fashioned. You couldn't really tell what they did. And so we've been working with them on that. And again, that's just us giving of our time, giving of our knowledge. I do tend to drink an awful lot of coffee with the chair. And actually from those conversations she said, look, could you be a trustee? And at that point, you know, things have moved on for me and my little person had grown a little bit bigger. And so I decided that yes I would. So the two things that I'm involved with now are very much kind of a local community organisations. And but again, that's the same philosophy of what can you share, what can you impart has been kind of underlying for all of it. The tables were turned, I have to say for me as well, about two years ago. So this is my delightful husband and business partner. He had a spontaneous CSF League, which is a leak of brain fluids two years ago. He's OK, I have to say. But for a while, we didn't know what it was. And, you know, life, we'd only been down in Fordie Bridge, not very long at all. And we obviously were running the business. And also we had Annie at the time she was four. And, you know, it was a very, very difficult situation. I found myself ironically in a caring position where I was doing all the caring because Jason basically was bed bound for months and couldn't stand up vertically. So I think, again, sometimes you can things happen in your life and you learn about them and then several years go by and all of a sudden you think, oh my God, I'm actually in that situation. And I would never ever thought I would have been. What actually happened with Jason was I thought, God, you know, OK, I'll carry on, we'll just do the day job, see how we go. And I think very much like you do get into a day-to-day how are we going to cope with it. But actually, I found I had a team. And in fact, at the picture you can see the lady on the left-hand side as you look at it. She is actually chair of Avaway, the community centre. And these are some of my committee members from the Forda Bridge Events group. And I had to say they absolutely rallied round and were a terrific support for me at what was a very, very difficult time. I not only have made some brilliant contacts over the years that I've been volunteering, but I've made some really, really good friends. And I think basically if you're looking for nice people to be friends with, then actually volunteering and meeting them through volunteering is usually quite a good start, because you don't meet bad people giving off their time and of their knowledge. So even if you just know people who are lonely, see if you can get them to do a little bit of CSR, CSR volunteering. And they will very quickly make some really, really good friends. So just some lessons learned from it and things to consider if you're thinking about moving and doing a bit more with either volunteering of yourself personally or actually as a business. The first thing is really be realistic about how much time you've got to give and how much time it will take. We, and I have to be very realistic now running the business with also a small person and, you know, I'm quite good at planning my time, planning my days and juggling lots of things. But volunteering particularly if it's something that you're very passionate about can be quite draining. It can be draining kind of emotionally. So you have to sort of build some time in for that as well. Sometimes, you know, it can be quite hard. But I would say just before you get involved or before you're thinking about it, just have a look and see how you might be able to fit it into your calendar and how much realistically you have got, how much time you've got to give. There are plenty of opportunities for you to give short amounts of time as well as longer amounts of time. But one of the worst things I think is if you promise an organisation that you're going to be involved and then you just can't be there, that when they are looking to lie on you is bad. So I think do some work up front and just be realistic and honest with yourself about that. It takes a lot of commitment volunteering and if you were to do it seriously, I think, and I'm one of these people that I don't like doing a bad job. I don't like doing something kind of half baked. So just be aware that you need to maybe choose something that is going to work for you. It's going to work for your life. It's going to work with your business if you're going to do it as within an organisation. And I would say spend some time beforehand actually sort of thinking along with the time kind of how committed are you. Is it something that when the go and get stuff, you're going to just think, actually, God, I wish I hadn't done this. And not necessarily not to do it, but just make sure that there is kind of a there is an exit route. So for example, well, at City 1 CA, if you're a trustee, you were a trustee for three years. You know, that's it. You knew you were going into it for that amount of time. So just when you're looking at your opportunities, just be aware of that so that you don't feel bad when you eventually if you have to step out. And the other thing I'll say is find something that you have some affinity with or that you are passionate about. You know, I've been very, very lucky in the organisations that I've got involved with over the years, but particularly with young people. I mean, I trained, as I said, as a teacher before I worked in comms. I didn't really ever think that I liked hanging around with young people as much as I do. But I really do like them and I think they get really bad press. So, you know, that actually those two organisations kind of were fun. They were tough times. They were fun to sort of get involved with. So yeah, and then my local focus with my community with the events group and with Avenway. Avenway, you know, they have got a cares hub within the community centre. So again, there's kind of a real kind of lying through about why they are different. The work that they do means a lot to me. I just think sometimes you have to find things that, you know, feel like they sit right with you because otherwise you're going to not get out of it what you could. And also I think it needs to be something that sometimes kind of aligns with your if you're doing particularly as a business with your kind of business philosophy. So for example, we are about to sponsor some books for a school in Surrey because, you know, content and communication and education is important to me as a business owner and as a person. And so sometimes it's finding the things that make you tick that you think, yeah, actually, this is what I want to want to be involved with. There are hundreds of opportunities out there. So don't think actually you're going to be sort of sidelined into one. And I would say also when I'm saying about that kind of like time and the commitment, don't think I'm going to be doing this and I'm going to be doing it forever. Because actually sometimes you can, you know, do something for maybe three years and then switch something else and you bring that much with you. And a lot of it is that kind of sharing experience and sharing, you know, your experience personally and also professionally. And I always think it's a shame if you get a really, really fantastic person with those skills, but they basically just end up in one and not really giving as much as they would want to. So what have I learned personally by basically, as I say, stepping into other people's shoes. And I think that really has been one of my key learnings actually. You know, I would say that my business as an agency is a little bit like the old school words or gummage where you used to take a head off and then put a client's head on and think like that. But actually, particularly with the content side of things and thinking about the different audiences that we write for for our clients and being able to have a certain level of empathy or understanding of different kind of walks of life of not being too scared to kind of research and find things that aren't my path. And I haven't been the journey that I have been on personally and professionally have been really, really, and that's been a really valuable thing for me that I've taken personally, but also that has fed into our business as well. So for example, you know, we've had clients that have worked within the housing space that have said, well, do you know anything about housing? I actually ironically say, yes, I used to chair a committee and I've been partly responsible for a new hostel being built in the Barbican. Just stuff like that, that you kind of get back, but that kind of being able to walk in other people's shoes has been absolutely key. It encouraged me, I think, throughout my life and throughout my professional life as well as the personal side of things, to keep open minded and to look at things with a fresh pair of eyes to think differently, to think creatively, to think a little bit more outside the box. And I think they are great skills, no matter what situation you're in. So sometimes I think, you know, volunteering for your time can give you those kind of key skills that you wouldn't necessarily get, particularly when you like maybe working in content and comms for nearly 25 years. Actually, that kind of fresh freshness is something that has come from I think my volunteering experience as much as from the, you know, jobs and the clients and the people I've worked with over the years as well. And it's also taught me not to judge or assume and because you never know what somebody is going through, you never know what their path has been to get them to be where they are, and you never know what kind of a crappy day they've had to start off with. So it's levelled me, I think, as a person. Sometimes when I could be quick to maybe judge or assume, it gives me the breathing space to stop and just take a moment and take things as they are. And again, I think that is a really key skill and it's something that I have learned absolutely hand on heart from volunteering my time and working with the organisations that I have done over the past decade. And I have to say that in a COVID world, I think it has given me more empathy and just being a bit more aware about particularly the content I create for clients and stuff like that. Having a bit more of an understanding of kind of the wider world has come, I think, from that experience and the CSR CSI work that I've done. I think for some people there is a real, as we're moving forward, it's going to be tough. I was saying to Phil before we started talking and doing this presentation that both organisations that I'm involved with on a community basis have massively been challenged this year because of COVID. And we're having to rethink things. We've had more meetings as a community centre than we normally do. So it's that people are needing. They're going to need help. They are going to be looking for volunteers. They are going to be looking for people who want to give up their time and their knowledge freely because money is going to be tight for some people, particularly for charities and not for proper organisations. So if you are thinking about sort of stepping onto the CSR CSI journey, now is a really good time to do it. But just be aware of the time, the affinity and the kind of, you know, the how much commitment you've got to give. But hopefully you'll get as much out of it as I have done over the past decade and a bit. That's great. Sorry, many thanks, Nicky. What an amazing story and some great advice there as well. We're now going to go to a short Q&A session. And as a reminder, you can still submit your questions via the chat box in the Q&A panel, which you'll see on the right hand side of your screen. Should you wish to do so? OK, Nicky, our first question is, as an SME, what would you say are the initial steps to start CSR within an organisation? Yeah, I think probably try and see if you can get, if it's just one person or a group of people, what affinity, what brand values have you got as an organisation? And whereabouts are you based? And then just doing some research as to kind of who's around that you think you've got some skills to give and, you know, who else could benefit from those. So I think it's sort of a blend of, if you like, where you are, what skills you've got and who's around and who might be needing. And you might find that actually there's two organisations, for example, that you could get involved with. So for example, one of our clients, they are doing some work with Mind, but they're also doing some more community-based work with the MD's daughter's school. Because he's really focused about girls and STEM and tech. So sometimes you can, you know, particularly if you need to get buy-in from kind of, you know, sort of management, make sure that it aligns with the company's values or company's ethos is key. Sometimes you might find that actually just as a starter in, you find something that is, you know, a more of a kind of fun initiative that's part of a sort of team-building thing. And once you've actually got several people in and you've got a little bit of local media coverage for it, you may well find that actually there's a bit more interest from kind of the powers that be as to kind of what direction they might want to do. And it might be a bit more formal than a bit more formalised. Yeah, so Nick, this is just like a related question. Our MD is a Luddite. How can I get him on board with CSR? Yeah. So I would say again that from a local media point of view is probably a really good way to kind of change somebody's mindset about it. And also if you find out what your competitors are doing from a CSR point of view, I always think, you know, MDs who are Luddites, quite often they don't like having their nose rubbed in it while their competitors are doing better than them. And sometimes you have to be clever to use that kind of competitive side of things. But yeah, seeing that the business is going to get credit for the CSR initiatives can sometimes be a way of opening up, you know, for MDs to sort of think, well, actually, yeah, I can see that you might want to give some time, but we get some credit for it, rather than just thinking that you're taking time out of, you know, what they're paying you for. Okay. How do you measure return on investment in CSR? Well, I have to say from us as a business, we've never really done it as a kind of ROI as in have we got kind of leads in or we've done it much more in a kind of what, you know, we feel like we're doing the right thing, you know, as part of our kind of, I suppose, our ethically minded business. But I think for other businesses, if you really do need to see, okay, hang on a second, these people are out volunteering and they're going to be out so many hours and you need to track it. Then maybe you could look at kind of, yeah, if you've managed to get media coverage from it, you know, sort of how much that would be worth if you had to kind of pay for it so that you can see. For others, it might be that actually you've just got a bit more awareness. And again, as things move on, being able to show and explain who you are as a business and what you've done as part of your kind of values and who you are particularly post COVID. I think there's going to be more of a focus on, you know, sort of what companies stand for, how they treat their employees, how they treat their partners. And having a kind of very strong CSR message about you being a basically good company doing good stuff will be valued within that. I don't know if you could put a number on that, but I'm pretty sure you would, you know, actually get more awareness or be able to kind of get more leads and within that as a profile building thing than not doing anything at all. Okay. Okay. Next is what benefits should nonprofits offer to corporates when seeking CSI? So the other way round, do you mean? Yeah. So what benefits should nonprofits offer to corporates when seeking CSI? Well, I think a lot of it is kind of a little bit of communication. So, and some of it needs to be, I've always found it's been better to be a bit more kind of structured, but there's still be some fluidity within that structure. So quite often an organization might have an idea of what they want. So for example, when I was doing the work with Avenway for Facebook training, they just knew that they wanted to be on Facebook and that they wanted to be doing something a bit better. But actually it was only when I went in and had a conversation with them that they then started thinking about a website. They started thinking about kind of who could manage stuff. They thought about stakeholder communications with the groups and the organizations that use the building. So I think having a kind of wish list of what you want, but at the same time, be aware that actually once you start talking to somebody who is an expert in that space, they will come up with a whole load of other things that you might not have considered. And again, that then is the communication and kind of balance of getting how much time is available, what's going to work for both parties. Because it is a relationship, you know, you have to be, sometimes you have to be fairly strict and you have to be good at sort of saying, no, I can't do those days or I can look at that, but you will only get it at this time. Because we all have day jobs and we all have other things going on in our life anyway. So yeah, I would say a bit of structure, an initial fairly frank discussion usually about kind of just getting to know the organization. And sometimes I think if it's more on a personal note, you know, go in and have a look around, go in and spend some time in if it's a building or if it's a group. See if you can have, you know, have a look and sit in and some of the meetings. Just because some things will come up that might make you tick and think of suggestions that you can give. And those suggestions might seem like nothing to you, but they might mean an absolute world to an organization that just hasn't ever thought in that way. Okay. There's a specific one here from an environmental perspective and being an organization offering consultancy in reducing the carbon footprint. What would be the best approach within the local community? Having all your meetings with no transport, I'm guessing. I think, yeah, so basically I think from a carbon neutral, there are an awful lot of organizations that you can get extra information from. So one of the groups that we did with Avonway was a family. It's called Family Friendly Fun and it was a free play session held every month for families. Just so that there's somewhere to go that they could actually have a bit of space. But we managed to get some funding from Hampshire County Council for it. So sometimes it's looking a little bit outside the box and there are, I'm not an expert on this by absolutely no means whatsoever, but there are usually people within the organization, sometimes within the fundraising sort of space that can give you a bit of a lean as to a, you know, there's a bit of an eco focus in this area or we might be able to get funding or we might be able to get a bit of a steer on that. And so that's I've always found has been quite a useful thing for my local community point of view. Other than that, it's having, I would say use Facebook actually and see if you can get collectively some groups together that all have a kind of bit of a focus that you might kind of pull together and kind of the key kind of core if you like to make things happen. We've got one near us that's happened post well as the shops were sort of opening up and it's some of the business owners that have set up a campaign called Keep the Heart Beating and it's about supporting local shops rather than everybody just going back to, you know, shopping in big supermarkets or relying on Amazon. And sometimes it, you know, doing that kind of thing is about finding some key people within your community that you can then kind of start very slowly but surely building a bit of momentum. Yeah, I think Nikki possibly answered this next question. So where can I find out about volunteering opportunities near me? Yeah, so I did do this last week, actually, if you put into Google and just put volunteering opportunities near me, there are some websites that come up. But what I would say as well is have a look at charities local to you and also have a look at your, you know, sort of community community groups. Just do a bit of research online, make sure that you use social media because quite often they have a really bad websites if they have one at all. And also you have to kind of sometimes be a bit aware. So I would say go for local groups first, local community groups. My friend tried to do volunteering for Oxfam and this is several years ago and she thought she was based in Oxford and she thought, yeah, I'll do it for Oxfam. And when she sort of sent an email in, they sent her an application form and they have so many people, particularly from a charity point of view, where people go and get experienced because they know that's what's going to be needed if they're going to go down that route for a job. Later on, that she found it very, very hard to get involved with them. But her local school needed some governors. And so she's actually giving her time in a different way, but also, you know, sort of looking to donate her experience and, you know, and give her a knowledge kind of thing. So I would say, yeah, look online, look at your local community groups, look for local charities, and look at social media. And just ask about most people at the moment, I think, because obviously there's been this focus on community, know a lot more about their local community than they perhaps did before Covid. And yeah, you hopefully will get some opportunities come up. Cool. Just got one final question for you, Nikki. As an agency, do you apply any CSR type criteria when deciding who you want to work with or projects you want to pitch for? We don't, but I have to say we're very lucky. We work with some really lovely clients. And I have to say pretty much all of them have, actually, if they don't have CSR, they are, your ethics have been part of kind of what they're about. I don't think we would work with an ethical company. And if, you know, that came up, we would, I think, probably just price ourselves out of kind of the work. And we're lucky enough that we've been going, you know, as long as we have and that we've got, we were able to do that if it arose. I have to say from a new business development and companies that I would like to work with, it is something that I look at because particularly from a content point of view, if you've got CSR, you've got a whole other layer of content that you can basically build on and be talking about as part of your marketing. And so that's something that, you know, I do look at when we're doing research for kind of business. Okay, great. Well, thank you, Nikki. Okay, that's all the time we have for our Q&A session today. I'd like to say thank you to Nikki for today's presentation, to CIM Southeast Region for hosting the event, and I thank you to you for attending. I hope you found it interesting and worthwhile. Our next webinar express is on Thursday, the 10th of September at one o'clock. The topic is destination marketing and the impact of COVID-19. This event is hosted by CIM Northwest. You'll find it listed on the CIM website where you can register for the session if you haven't already done so. Once again, remind that as you will shortly be receiving a survey on today's event, I would really appreciate it if you could provide your feedback. On behalf of CIM, thank you very much for joining us and we hope you enjoy the rest of your day. Goodbye.