Community Preformance results

LBG Australia & New Zealand is a business membership organisation whose members commit to measuring and benchmarking their corporate community investment contributions using the London Benchmarking Group (LBG) methodology.

Unilever Australasia has been a member of LBG since it commenced measurement in Australia in 2006 and has once again recorded outstanding results in the 2008 Report.

Refer to the links below for an in-depth assessment of Unilever’s Community Performance as measured by the LBG Model and for more information about LBG.

The LBG Model measures the:

1) Inputs - The LBG model recognises three types of community contributions:

* Cash
* Time
* In-kind contributions

They are categorised under three headings:

* Charitable Donations
* Community Investments
* Commercial Initiatives in the Community

2) Outputs: Three types of outputs are captured through the LBG Model:

* The Community benefit from the company’s investment / contribution - such as the number of clients / people who were able to benefit from a service or activity because of the company’s contribution
* The Leverage that was achieved because of the corporate contribution - This means additional resources that were attracted to the activity or community organisation as a direct result of the company’s initiative. This might include additional government funding that the community organisation was able to attract, or cash and resources from other sources drawn in by the program. 
* The Business Benefit that the company accrues from their community contributions. This could include enhanced employee morale, improved reputation, stronger relationships with key opinion leaders.

The LBG model assumes that community contributions/involvement should deliver both social benefits and business benefits.
Companies are encouraged to identify the kinds of benefits they seek, and to find ways to track and assess these.

3) Impacts over time: Making a positive impact on the community is a core reason for developing a community investment strategy.
Whilst impact assessment needs to be measured over a longer time frame, the LBG model encourages companies and their partner community organisations to be clear on the impacts they are trying to achieve through their programs, and to identify ways that they will measure this impact over time.