The effective communication of corporate social investment (CSI) is crucial for strengthening relationships between companies and their stakeholders. However, there is a general perception that CSI communication often lacks authenticity and fails to facilitate meaningful reflection or education on developmental issues.

Trialogue recently hosted CSI corporate practitioners to its quarterly CSI Matters Forums in three cities Johannesburg, Durban and Cape Town in July to share insights and stay abreast of CSI thinking. The topic was 'Should we be telling the public about our work in CSI?', practitioners were in agreement that CSI should be communicated externally, and the discussion focused on what should be communicated and how best to do this, as well as how to manage the relationship between CSI and marketing departments.

Kindly hosted at Volkswagen’s offices in Johannesburg, on 8 November and Sanlam’s offices in Cape Town, on 10 November

Effective communication is crucial for fostering an organisation’s positive public profile. Companies often prioritise the marketing and advertising of their products and services, but struggle to communicate their CSI work. The last Trialogue CSI forum for 2016 interrogated the appropriateness of and need to communicate CSI.