A Critical Tool For Fundraisers
January 2005
A Critical Tool for Fundraising, Research and Investment
On January 31st 2005, a new database will be launched that will enable charities
and fundraisers to perform instant ethical checks on potential partners, suppliers
or sponsors.
Corporate Critic – from Ethical Consumer Information Systems Limited -
holds records on over 15,000 global companies – from large multinationals
to small independents.
A new Ethiscore numerical rating system has been designed to help users quickly
differentiate companies which have attracted significant levels of ethical criticism
from those attracting less attention.
As Michael Everard, Market Intelligence Executive with Save The Children says,
“For every relationship we enter into with a corporation, it is essential
for us to undertake research on its ethical behaviour. As Corporate Critic collates
and indexes hundreds of different information sources, we know we can find a
comprehensive source of Corporate Social Responsibility data on a list of possible
partners in one place, quickly and easily. It saves a lot of research time.”
The database rates companies and products by indexing publicly available data
produced by Non-Government Organisations (NGOs) such as Greenpeace and Oxfam.
It also indexes references from directories, government reports, and updates
on companies’ own Codes of Conduct, Animal Testing and Environmental Policies
Corporate Critic also allows users to weight, set and search for company information
and supporting stories by the ethical criteria that is of most importance to
an organisation.
A new facility which will be of interest to Corporate Relations’ personnel
in particular is the automatic `email me updates’ messaging service. Relevant
email alerts will be despatched as per the subscriber’s pre-set criteria
every time a company ethical rating changes.
With access costs starting at £25, ECIS has devised a pricing structure
that will appeal to cash-starved, not-for-profit organisations.
ECIS is a project of the independent, not-for-profit Ethical Consumer Research
Association (ECRA), the organisation responsible for researching and reporting
on the companies behind the brand names. ECRA has been researching on, and promoting
the ethical use of consumer power in its Ethical Consumer magazine for the last
15 years.
For further information regarding the Corporate Critic database and the work
of Ethical Consumer, please contact:
Helen Middleton or Rob Harrison
Ethical Consumer Information Systems Limited
Tel: 0161 227 9099
Email: helen@ethicalconsumer.org