How green is your conference, how ethically sound is your corporate event? In a recent survey carried out for the Meetings Industry Association (MIA) in the UK, event organisers were asked about the growing influence of corporate social responsibility (CSR) on their event planning. Here is what they said:

64 per cent of associations and 77 per cent of corporates think CSR will be extremely or somewhat influential in their event organisation over the next ten years. All corporate respondents said that it is already influencing some aspects of event organisation and only 34 per cent of associations said it was not influencing event organisation.

That is really significant. As you know, Activate Events is committed to promoting environmentally friendly corporate events in Scotland but the idea of doing good in a wider sense, where an event can fit in with an organisation’s CSR programme is very appealing.

Last month we reported on an event we are organising with a company based in Edinburgh helping a local charity as part of a team building event in Scotland. This surely offers many others a template for future corporate events.

The Digital Blue Global blog spotted the MIA survey and delivered their US take on these trends:

CSR is gaining a lot of momentum within US corporations - who set measurable and manageable goals that every part of the organization must work toward achieving. And concludes: Even if you have no demands for “green meetings”, it’s my feeling that it will become important on some level to be aware of and able to measure the impact of your events in terms of sustainability.

We could not agree more.

It is Blog Action Day and thousands of bloggers around the world are posting their thoughts and plans for improving the environment and protecting the earth for future generations. This is something we feel strongly about at Activate Events.

We have already talked about our commitment to environmentally friendly corporate events and our goal to reach the highest standards of the Green Tourism business scheme here in the office but we also take our commitment to the environment further by offsetting our carbon emissions via the Trees for Life campaign.

This is a conservation charity dedicated to the regeneration and restoration of the Caledonian Forest in the Highlands of Scotland and we donate money from every corporate event we manage in Scotland to plant trees through the Trees for Life organisation.
PS. Incidentally, this blog is hosted by a 100% carbon neutral hosting company which offsets carbon emissions from its servers and their administration.

Building a strong and productive team is always beneficial to your business; that is why companies come to us looking for well-organised corporate events. We are always happy to organise anything that will help teams gel and be more useful to the company. But, wait, how much better is it, if you can do something good for society at the same time as improving your company, help others less fortunate while building relationships between your own team and the outside community?

We are currently putting together a very exciting corporate event for Cairn Energy, one of Scotland’s best known and most socially-aware companies, involving Foursquare, an Edinburgh-based charity dedicated, amongst other things, to helping homeless young people move from the streets and into a stable living situation.

The idea is that eighty or so personnel from Cairn Energy will roll up their collective sleeves for a few days and get busy on the charity’s various venues in a sort of Changing Rooms meets DIY SOS - though without resorting to anything too hideous by way of colours and MDF.

As you can imagine, this takes some organising but it is going to be great fun and enormously rewarding for all concerned.

Everybody wins in this sort of situation, including the staff here at Activate who derive immense satisfaction from putting such a great event together.