8 Best Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) Software for 2023 (Free & Paid)

» What is CSR Software? 

CSR (Corporate Social Responsibility) software is a specialized system to manage all your organization’s philanthropic and volunteering activities. CSR software automates all admin work and repetitive tasks like creating volunteering campaigns, matching donations, approving applications, etc. The software also helps you track your efforts and increase the impact of CSR initiatives. 

» How To Choose The Right CSR (Corporate Social Responsibility) Software For Your Organization? 

Choosing the right CSR tool isn’t easy, especially as no one size fits all. Every business has unique needs, so you should first see whether the solutions meet your industry’s needs. The best CSR platforms provide high customization capabilities so that companies can customize them as per business requirements. Another thing you should keep in mind is the ease of use. Employees don’t need other software in their learning list. Hence CSR solutions must be intuitive without a deep learning curve. Thirdly, since you will also need to track the ROI of most CSR initiatives, reporting and analytics are other critical features of CSR software.

Last but not least, price is another factor that must be considered. Although most corporate social responsibility platforms charge per employee, some have flat fees and require you to pay at once. So choose wisely. In this article, we have listed the top CSR platforms to select in 2023. 

» List of Top CSR Software & Platforms

1. Submittable

If your organization has ever managed to volunteer programs, you know just how challenging it can be to collect applications, review them, release payments, etc. That’s where Submittable steps in. It is one of the best corporate social responsibility software that makes it easy to do good programs. Whether collecting applications through well-designed online forms or collecting and releasing payments, Submittable handles it all. 

› Submittable Features 

• Reminders and notifications feature facilitates communication between reviewers and submitters. E.g., the software reminds the team of incomplete submissions. 
• Eligibility screening helps screen applicants before they reach the form. 
• Allows organizations to develop and run employee-driven volunteer programs to deepen community connection.
• Submittable integrates with several industry tools like Salesforce, Google Sheets, Quickbooks, and Zapier for API Integration. 
• Reports are intuitive and help understand your program’s overall impact so that you can improve your results in the future. 

› Submittable Benefits 

• Fraud prevention method through Knowledge Based Authentication and Identity Verification (IDV) reduces any fraud risks that are common with social responsibility programs
• Submittable handles the majority fund distribution process so that companies don’t have to micromanage the budget. This not only saves time but also reduces errors. 
• Anonymous submission is an excellent feature that hides names and emails to reduce reviewer bias. 
• Automated reviews are another feature that is worth looking at. With the help of technology, the software reviews the application and applies automated scores. 

› Submittable Pricing 

Submittable plans are divided into three levels. The cost of software is based on custom requirements. Kindly contact Submittable for a custom quote. 

• Starter: includes unlimited application limits, support, standard reporting, multiple round reviews, etc. 
• Pro: consists of an Eligibility screening, Real-time collaboration, Advanced reporting, Automated assessment, etc.
• Enterprise: has funds distribution, custom branding, project management, and Premium support and implementation.

2. EcoOnline

EcoOnline is a leading CSR (Corporate Social Responsibility) platform that automates and consolidates data collection to track metrics around corporate social responsibility. The platform is highly configurable so that organizations can use it their way. Popular features include log activities, total hours worked, budgeting, etc. Businesses also get a summary of the overall social impact and social ROI achieved for that activity. EcoOnline is trusted by over 20,000 brands, including Siemens, Johnson and Johnson, Saint Gobain, and others.

› EcoOnline Features 

• Employees can find local volunteering opportunities through the Volunteer database. This helps them make an impact directly.
• Machine learning features automate many repetitive tasks, such as report creation.
• Provides configurable options to help you fit it. 
• E-learning features to train employees

› EcoOnline Benefits 

• Mobile functionality provides instant access to critical information anywhere, at any time.
• Customizable workflows make it easy to work.
• Data reporting is top-notch to help in decision-making processes.

EcoOnline Pricing 

• Software pricing is based on custom requirements. Please contact EcoOnline for more pricing information.

3. Spark By Benevity 

Founded in 2008 in Calgary, Canada, Spark by Benevity is on a mission to help organizations improve their CSR activities through its well-developed CSR software. The software allows you to do more with less effort and build a true purpose-driven brand to use your power to do well. With Spark as your CSR software, your employees will not have to worry about finding a nonprofit. Spark does that for you by providing over 2 million vetted nonprofit organizations. Moreover, gamification features add fun to volunteering and giving programs so that employees truly enjoy the giving culture instead of just being a part of them for the company’s sake. 

› Spark By Benevity Features 

• The industry benchmarking feature is an excellent way to see how your program compares to other purpose-driven businesses.
• The peer matching function allows employees to match their coworkers’ donations to do good together.
• The gamification options allow employees to see their contributions while tracking how they rank against other workers.
• Employees develop their initiative in local communities through grassroots giving features.
• Integrates with third-party systems like Okta, Workday, etc.

› Spark By Benevity Benefits 

• Spark is available in over 22 languages, an added bonus for global teams. 
• The software automates the majority of administrative tasks, which helps save employees time and lets them focus on essential matters.
• The software provides ready-made campaigns so employees receive instant information about acute crises.
• There are also ready-made volunteering opportunities available from all over the world. 
• Time tracking feature automatically tracks employees’ time once they start volunteering.

› Spark By Benevity Pricing 

Software pricing is based on custom requirements. Please get in touch with benefits for more pricing information.

4. Quentic

Quentic is the leading CSR software used by several small-scale enterprise businesses. The software is designed to fit the needs of several industries such as manufacturing, healthcare, automotive, etc. Numerous functions help organizations document, evaluate, and control CSR initiatives effortlessly. Quentic saves time and ensures that your organization stays within legal compliance while ensuring that every employee contributes a fair share to CSR. Pirelli, Phillips, Porsche, Pfizer, Adidas, and Vaillant are prominent clients.

› Quentic Features 

• The Quentic module makes each business process easy for employees to follow. 
• The report’s features let’s organize, analyze, track long-term trends, visualize data, and much more.
• All essential information is gathered from different departments into central locations where it is structured and validated systematically, which ensures swift decision-making.

› Quentic Benefits 

• Quentic allows you to place all the critical information regarding organization, dissemination, and tracking in one place to access all information within a few clicks. 
• The mobile-friendly interface allows information entry through a browser or app.
• Quentic tracks the consumption of material sources while helping you in defining your individual KPIs and monitor their development. It’s the perfect software to monitor the efficient use of resources and uphold your corporate responsibility to both society and the environment. 
• Quentic ensures that every activity undertaken by your organization is in adherence with current laws so that liability is reduced to a minimum. The system also notifies you in case there are changes in the law. 

› Quentic Pricing 

Quentic pricing depends on your company’s requirements. Please get in touch with the Quentic team to learn more about pricing.

5. Alaya 

Alaya is one the best CSR software to motivate employees to participate in a good cause. The software is easy to use and helps organizations with everything from estimating the impact to tracking volunteering sessions. It’s also easily customizable so that you can put your brand at the heart of the platform. From employee volunteering, sustainability, and well-being challenges, to donation matching and funding Alaya handles all the aspects of the CSR program. Nestle, Cognizant, Loreal, and PWC are a few organizations using Alaya to power their CSR initiatives.

› Alaya Features 

• Provides customization options to include company branding
• Easily monitor each program’s participation, volunteering hours, and donations made on individual and company levels.
• Effortlessly create events, invite coworkers, and manage registrations.
• Employees can vote for causes they would like to support.
• Donate in over 150 currencies. 

› Alaya Benefits 

• Employees can share their talent with others either online or through physical volunteering. So, employees have a choice.
• Purpose challenges are excellent at promoting purpose through sustainable action, such as well-being and empathy challenges.
• Instant reports help track the impact of CSR activities. The reports are shareable with stakeholders and team members to display the program’s success.
• Integrated pulse surveys help organizations gain feedback from employees regarding CSR activities.

› Alaya Pricing 

Alaya provides three plans based on features. For pricing information, please contact the Alaya team. 

• Impact starter: This plan provides all the essential CSR features such as donations, fundraising campaigns, standard reporting, online volunteering, etc. 

• Engagement booster: Includes purpose challenges, activity creation, advanced reporting, etc. 

• Purpose leader: Includes advanced features like carbon offsetting etc. 

6. Millie

Completing your social responsibility doesn’t have to be tedious and costly. Millie provides fun ways to include CSR initiatives in the organization so that all employees can enjoy participating. Millie also helps create a giving culture regardless of your budget. The software centralizes all the data and processes instead of tracking it through multiple spreadsheets and dashboards. Another helpful feature is the ability to partake in a matching program regardless of team or location. Companies can invite their overseas team to participate in their giving initiatives. Millie has around 1.7 million registered 501c3 nonprofits in its database, which keeps growing. So there’s no shortage of nonprofits to volunteer for! 

› Millie Features 

• Millie provides gamified giving events that engage employees. The company has to choose 16 nonprofits, out of which employees would vote for their favorite. 
• Millie integrates with Slack effortlessly to help your organization build a community around giving back. Other integrations include Microsoft Teams, Outlook, Google Calendar, etc.
• Millie connects employee donations with charities no matter the amount. Additionally, the company maintains budgets by controlling the amount.
• Campaigns are fully customizable. Millie also provides campaign templates as an inspiration. 
• Employees can track their hours when volunteering for events.

› Millie Benefits 

• With a database of over 1.7 million registered charities, employees have many options to choose from.
• Millie eliminates the need to track employee donations individually. The software centralizes all the giving and matching information so you can approve requests with a single click.
• Employees can choose from several affinity groups available in the organization.
• Another excellent program, Dollar for Doers, involves volunteers gifting charitable dollars to donate to causes they care about.
• Organizations can develop a yearly calendar of events to notify workers of all the relevant events and dates. 

› Millie Pricing 

Plans are divided into two tiers. *All the plans are billed annually.

• Giving Madness: For every 100 employees, the pricing starts at $64/month. 
• Impact (giving, madness, and volunteering): For every 100 employees, the pricing starts at $195/month. 

7. Optimy

Optimy is the top corporate social responsibility (CSR) software designed to keep users in mind. Grant management, partnerships, and community investment professionals use this software to improve the impact of CSR programs on non-profit communities. Currently, Optimy powers over 1.5 million CSR projects worldwide. The CSR software boasts of reducing over 50% of the time that would otherwise go into admin tasks and manual work. Organizations such as Airbus, Michelin, and Air France Capital Power leverage Optimy for their CSR programs. 

› Optimy Features 

• The custom forms feature lets organizations collect data as they want, certification, documents, or media. 
• Dashboards provide an overview of relevant information such as status, documents, etc. 
• Optimy makes data collection effortless. The intelligent filter options help you rank, filter, and select everything based on your criteria. 
• Innovative tools help you make quick decisions with Optimy. Define your KPIs and criteria, and the system sorts them out to help with decisions.

› Optimy Benefits 

• Optimy is GDPR compliant. Due to strict data protection laws in the EU region, this is an advantageous CSR platform. So your organization doesn’t have to worry about data confidentiality laws. 
• Automated workflows handle most tasks, so you can spend more time developing a strategy rather than managing data. 
• Optimy gathers all your data in one single place. So forget about searching for information for hours.
• Optimy provides an inbuilt communication tool to keep in touch with everyone and discover feedback and messages. 
• Optimy allows you to customize reports according to your branding to easily share them with the board and the committee on demand. 

› Optimy Pricing 

Optimy CSR provides a free trial. For more pricing details, please contact the Optimy team. 

8. Selflessly 

Selflessly was started with one mission – to help purpose-driven brands give back to the community through time, talent and measurement. Giving back to the community empowers employees. The software brings all the essential corporate social responsibility programs into one place so companies can spend less time managing and designing culture programs that boost employee engagement and retention and benefit non-profit communities. 

› Selflessly Features 

• Focuses exclusively on its reporting features. CSR has one of the most comprehensive reporting features, from real-time data tracking to matching tracks. 
• Selflessly brings all the CSR functions into a single platform, so your company doesn’t have to spend hours importing data from other tools.
• Volunteering features help employees find remote and in-person volunteering opportunities to contribute to causes. 
• Employee matching program is fully automated. Managers must approve the requests, and the software does the rest of the work.

› Selflessly Benefits 

• One of the critical benefits that selflessly provides is understanding why employees want to support specific causes over others. 
• It’s hands down one of the most comprehensive CSR platforms that lets employees discover charities, donate on demand, track their contributions, and so much more. In short, employees maintain complete control. 
• The app and website are easy to explore and learn, which does not add a burden on employees to learn yet another software.
• It’s easy to track volunteer hours. 

› Selflessly Pricing 

Pricing starts at a flat rate of $2000/year. Please contact the selflessly team for more pricing information. 

» Frequently Asked Questions

1. Why is CSR important?

Thanks to activists like Greta Thunberg, employees today want to do more than work for a company. Employees today are more aware of their economic and social responsibility to better the world and thus want to work with companies with a larger purpose to help them make a change. 

2. What are the different types of CSR initiatives?

CSR initiatives come in many forms. Some of the most common initiatives are as follows:

• Helping local communities 
• Volunteering
• Donating for a good cause
• Using sustainable resources 
• Minimizing environmental impact

And so much more.

3. How does CSR benefit your organization? 

CSR initiative benefits organizations in several ways, including 

• Building loyalty. Customers want to support brands that work for a more significant cause and the betterment of the world.
• Improved bottom line financials. Since customers are loyal to the brand, this means higher engagement and more conversions, which in turn convert to a more extraordinary bottom line.
• Press opportunities. CSR initiatives attract the highest press opportunities as people want to learn more about brands working for good causes. 

4. How do we measure CSR success? 

Companies can measure CSR success by tracking the following KPIs:

• Higher employee engagement rates
• Higher employee retention rates
• Increased online brand sentiment
• Lower customer churn rate
• Increase in brand organic searches
• Increase in employee satisfaction

5. What are the best Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) Software companies?

Some of the best Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) Software companies are as follows: 

• Alaya
• Spark By Benevity
• EcoOnline
• Quentic
• Millie
• Optimy
• Selflessly

6. What do Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) Monitoring tools do?

Corporate Social Responsibility tools help an organization develop a purpose-driven and giving culture. The software is beneficial for managing, creating, promoting, and tracking a company’s CSR initiatives. It automates most administrative and manual work to reduce the burden on employees and managers.