The Debate About the Business Case for CSR Is Over. The Hard Part Starts Now.

A recap of our webinar with Steve Rochlin on new research from Project ROI, and what it means for corporate social responsibility leaders trying to defend and grow their programs in 2026.

Most CSR conversations in 2026 start with the same anxious question: how do I keep my budget? Teams are being cut. Targets are being walked back. Some companies have gone quiet about commitments they made publicly two years ago. The political environment in the US has exported a chill to Europe, Asia, and beyond.

Steve Rochlin, CEO of Impact ROI and a 30-year veteran of this field, joined us last week with an answer many CSR leaders have been waiting for. After reviewing more than 640 peer-reviewed studies, work he co-authored with Babson College, he and his team have concluded the academic debate is over. For a researcher who has spent three decades hedging carefully, that's a strong statement.

Corporate social responsibility creates financial value for the business. Higher firm valuation. Higher sales. Lower employee turnover. Lower cost of capital. But only when done well.

This recap covers the three things every CSR leader needs to take from the webinar: the data behind that finding, the four-part framework Steve uses for "doing it well," and how to apply both to your skills-based volunteering programs.

Part 1: The data CSR leaders need to know

Trust is the value-creation engine

Why does CSR create financial value at all? Steve's answer is that the engine is trust.

Stakeholders no longer trust advertising. Only about a third of consumers find corporate advertising credible. The third-party institutions that used to broker trust have lost authority. So how does a customer, an investor, an employee, or a community partner decide whether your company is worth believing? They look at what you do. Specifically, they look at how you treat the communities you operate in and the social challenges you take on.

Social impact and skills-based volunteering have become the most credible signal of trustworthiness available to companies right now. That signal moves every downstream business outcome: purchase decisions, employee retention, investor confidence, the cost of debt and equity. Social impact builds trust. Trust drives behavior. Behavior shows up in financial results.

The research-backed numbers behind the business case for CSR

This is the section to send to a skeptical CFO. Every number below comes from research aggregated across 640+ peer-reviewed academic studies. Steve presented them as ceilings: the demonstrated outer edge of what companies that execute well can achieve relative to peers who don't.

Financial performance findings:

• Firm valuation up to 36% higher

• Profitability up to 21% higher

• Share price up to 6% higher

• Sales up to 20% higher

• Financial and market risk reduced by as much as 30%

• Lower cost of equity and debt

Workforce performance findings:

• Employee turnover down by up to 57%

• Employee productivity up by 21%

• Employees willing to accept a 12% lower salary to work for a company with strong social impact and sustainability

These aren't promises every program will deliver these numbers. They are what's possible when companies execute well against the framework in Part 2.

High-performing companies invest more in CSR during downturns

The most useful finding for anyone defending a budget right now: the financially best-performing companies are increasing investment in social impact during this moment of uncertainty, not pulling back. The companies cutting CSR teams aren't the leaders. They're reacting to short-term cash pressure with a short-sighted move. It will hurt them in the long run.

Steve's research and his field experience point to a few reasons this pattern is so consistent. In competitive industries where margins compress and competitors look interchangeable, trust becomes the differentiator. Top performers double down on the work that builds it. In a down cycle, companies that maintain their CSR investment retain stakeholder confidence on the way down, which is exactly what positions them to come out stronger when the cycle turns. On the talent side, with employee turnover savings of up to 57% on the table, cutting your CSR program during a tight labor market is an own-goal. The companies that hold steady keep the productive employees their competitors are about to lose. And there's a memory effect: customers, employees, and investors remember which companies stayed committed during hard moments, and that memory shows up in market share for years afterward.

Steve has seen this pattern repeat across food and beverage, retail, consumer goods, and aerospace and defense. The household names that read the same research you just read are holding firm or modestly increasing investment. If you're heading into a budget conversation this quarter, that's the data point to bring (and if you need more, make sure to download the full Project ROI study).

Part 2: The framework — Fit, Commit, Manage, Connect

The data tells you the business case is real. The framework tells you how to actually capture it. Steve's research identifies four behaviors that separate companies seeing the financial returns from companies that aren't.

Fit. Align your CSR work with what your stakeholders actually expect of you. That means both business stakeholders (investors, customers, employees) and community-based stakeholders. Most companies skip the rigor here. They build programs based on internal hunches and are surprised when nobody outside the company notices. Real fit requires going out and asking, not guessing.

Commit. Explicitly state two intentions: to improve community well-being and to improve the financial performance of your company. Then build a strategy that does both. Many CSR professionals flinch at the second part. Pretending you're not making a business case is what weakens your business case.

Manage. Track community outcomes and business outcomes side by side. But also manage the soft side, which is where the research surprised people the most. Steve emphasized the key insight here: leaders in the C-suite make decisions about CSR emotionally, not analytically. The stereotype that the business runs on analytics and CSR runs on emotion gets the dynamic backwards. The C-suite leads with emotion when it evaluates CSR work, which is why bringing a deck full of analytics into the room sometimes makes leaders look confused or annoyed. You're answering a question they're not asking.

The research identifies six common leadership archetypes that shape how CSR decisions get made: sentimentality, anxiety, cynicism, brand and reputation, impact and purpose, and a sixth that varies by company. Most CSR professionals are wired toward impact and purpose. Many CEOs are not. One of the highest-leverage moves you can make is to identify your CEO's archetype before your next pitch, then build the case in their language. The full diagnostic, the implications for how you pitch internally, and case examples are in the Project ROI report and in the full webinar recording above. If you're preparing an internal case this quarter, that section alone is worth the time.

Connect. Communicate, even in a politically rough environment. Quiet CSR programs don't build trust because nobody knows they exist. The communication has to be two-way: listening to stakeholders, not broadcasting at them.

Part 3: Applying this to your skills-based volunteering programs

Steve was clear that skills-based volunteering has some of the strongest ROI in the social impact portfolio. The workforce returns alone (57% lower turnover, 21% higher productivity, the 12% wage discount) translate directly to finance line items boards pay attention to. But those returns only show up when programs are designed well. Steve walked through four traps that block the ROI, and gave practical guidance on each.

Trap 1: The wrong metrics

If your primary metrics are employee participation rates and total beneficiaries reached, you probably have the wrong metrics. Steve noted that the era of "100% employee participation" and "improve a billion lives" targets is ending, partly because of political backlash, and partly because of legitimate anti-greenwashing concerns (credible studies suggest 20 to 60 percent of corporate social and environmental claims have little basis). Vague targets don't survive either pressure.

A better starting point: what percentage of your nonprofit partners report increased capacity, expanded reach, or new digital and AI skills as a result of working with your volunteers? In one case Steve cited from a professional services firm, more than 80% of nonprofit partners reported expanded reach (with an average 20% increase in people served), over a quarter reported quality improvements, and 70% used the engagement to win additional funding. Those are the numbers a CFO and a community partner both care about.

Trap 2: Falling in love with the program instead of the problem

Dollars-for-doers participation is low. Matching-gift uptake is dropping. Leadership wants to cut. Before you defend the program, ask whether your community partners even know about it. Sometimes the right answer is to retire the program and redirect the resources to something that solves an actual problem the community has named.

Trap 3: Programs that aren't aligned with corporate strategy

If your skills-based volunteering portfolio could swap into any other company's CSR program without anyone noticing, the strategic alignment isn't there. Steve pointed to IBM (Corporate Service Corps), Pfizer (Global Fellows), BD, PwC, and Thermo Fisher Scientific as examples of programs deeply tied to corporate capabilities and target markets. The volunteering engages real expertise. It also lands in communities the company has a strategic reason to know better. Strategic alignment is what makes the business case visible inside your company.

Trap 4: Passive design that produces activity instead of outcomes

The "if we build it, they will come" model produces hours volunteered, not outcomes delivered. The companies getting real impact design intentional matches between volunteer capabilities and community needs, then build nudges that push volunteers toward the work most likely to create measurable change. The shift from activity to outcomes is the single biggest unlock most volunteering programs have left.

In Summary

The business case for corporate social responsibility is, again, obvious. Steve's research backs it with more academic evidence than the field has ever had. The hard part isn't proving the case. The hard part is winning the internal argument during a tight economic moment, when budgets are getting cut and political pressure is loud. The data and the Fit-Commit-Manage-Connect framework give you the tools to do it.

Watch the full webinar above. To request Steve's slides or a copy of the full Project ROI report, contact Steve directly through Impact ROI. And if you'd like help designing a skills-based volunteering program with the right metrics, strategic alignment, and outcomes from the start, get in touch with our team at MovingWorlds.