Best CSR Software Platforms: Top 10 Management Systems 2023
Not all software review articles are about marketing, selling, ROI and profits. Sometimes we need to give back. That is where corporate social responsibility software (CSR software) or corporate social responsibility platforms come in.
This article will go over the best CSR software so you don’t have to waste more time doing the research and can spend more time serving your employees, your community and the planet at large.
We’ll break down 10 CSR tools, look at their pros and cons, and see which app is best suited for which purpose.
Best CSR platforms comparison chart (top 10 highest rated)
As you can see, there are no prices listed for any of these CSR solutions. It’s just not done. This is likely due to the fact that since CSR is all about charity and selflessness, it would be quite gauche to talk about costs and prices on their websites. In almost every case, you can request a demo or talk to a salesperson through the company websites.
So, here’s a quick table overview of our leading CSR apps.
Product | Best for | Pricing | Website |
Benevity | Best CSR software overall | Contact vendor | |
iPoint | Top CSR management system for sustainability | Contact vendor | |
Wespire | Great CSR platform for ESG management | Contact vendor | |
onHand | Good CSR program for volunteer management | Contact vendor | |
Deed | Good social impact CSR software solution | Contact vendor | |
Selflessly | Top CSR corporate social responsibility tool | Contact vendor | |
Goodworld | Great CSR platform for fundraising | Contact vendor | |
EcoVadis | Best enterprise CSR software system | Contact vendor | |
Salesforce Philanthropy Cloud | Good philanthropy platform for CSR | Contact vendor | |
CSRConnect | Top CSR tool for employee engagement | Contact vendor |
What is the best CSR software? Here’s our top 10 list:
From employee volunteering to corporate giving, each one of our picks for the best CSR software systems will be a good choice that will help you run social initiatives and will tell the world what a nice, clean and caring business you run. Are you ready to ‘app up’ your corporate consciousness? Let’s get started!
1. Benevity (Best CSR software overall)
Benevity is not just one CSR software solution, but the overall brand name of a number of CSR apps and social impact products, though taken all together, Benevity is surely one of the best overall CSR systems. Some companies that use Benevity products include Starbucks, Levis, UPS, Merck and John Deer.
Pros:
Benevity is a great software for managing employee engagement initiatives, and this includes tools to handle volunteering programs, donations and employee giving, as well as corporate giving. Employee well-being is front and center with Benevity.
When it comes to community investment and grants management, Benevity offers many features, including tools to streamline grant applications, nonprofit relationship building, brand loyalty, key stakeholder engagement, and sustainable investment.
There are some basic automations for these CSR programs, for example, you get automated donation matching and peer matching.
Cons:
As we’ll see, many of these CSR SaaS do not publicly display their prices, which is a drawback, but for this industry it seems to be normal.
Pricing:
Contact Benevity for prices.
Visit Benevity
2. iPoint (Top CSR management system for sustainability)
When it comes to product compliance and sustainability initiatives, iPoint is a super suite of apps. There are solutions for carbon footprint management, circular economy, and life cycle assessment.
Pros:
iPoint Compliance is a top sustainability management SaaS that uses automation to ensure extremely accurate adherence to regulations, as well as ultra speedy functionality to do risk management and remain compliant.
With iPoint, you can take your ESG efforts to the next level, standing for environmental, social and corporate governance considerations, especially when gathering and analyzing the data collection of CSR activities.
iPoint Product Sustainability is another separate software that can help organizations lower their carbon footprint with rigorous data analysis and automation.
Cons:
iPoint does not come across as the easiest CSR initiative system, with some of the dashboards appearing overly complicated.
Pricing:
Contact iPoint for pricing information.
Visit iPoint
3. WeSpire (Great CSR platform for ESG management)
WeSpire is an employee engagement and ESG management software solution that emphasizes a company’s roles and responsibilities in working in harmony with local communities.
Pros:
There are several solid WeSpire social impact programs, or modules, including ones for encouraging inclusive cultures, managing environmental sustainability, addressing the well-being and mental health of employees and stakeholders, and general social impact initiatives.
If you want to use WeSpire to help reduce carbon emissions and to have a positive environmental impact, there are work frameworks you can easily design to make sure your business processes, like your supply chains, are efficient and clean.
As for broader community impact initiatives, WeSpire helps with fundraising campaigns, volunteering and event management, as well as grant management and employee assistance funds.
Cons:
There’s no doubt WeSpire can help your organization with a lot of workplace giving programs, however, without knowing the cost up front, it might turn some people off.
Pricing:
Get in touch with WeSpire for prices.
Visit Wespire
4. onHand (Good CSR program for volunteer management)
The praises for onHand have been sung by media outlets like Forbes, BBC, the Telegraph and the Evening Standard. This is one great CSR software for managing volunteering and other employee engagement activities.
Pros:
If you are looking to encourage partnerships or sponsorships between your company and charitable organizations or other nonprofits, onHand is a top system to help with those CSR efforts.
There are tools to manage both local and remote volunteering efforts, so that you can help your community or strive to have more of a global impact.
For ESG, you can arrange a pledge management system to make sure everyone in your organization and all your work efforts adhere to climate change pledges and promises.
onHand has great real-time data analytics and reporting with customizable metrics.
Cons:
While onHand is a decent CSR project management tool for volunteering and fundraising, it may feel a bit lacking when it comes to third-party customer engagement.
Pricing:
For onHand prices, visit their website.
Visit Onhand
5. Deed (Good social impact CSR software solution)
Deed is a near all-in-one CSR solution, with modules for employee donations and matching, and volunteering and skill-sharing. Indeed, Deed is a top system for overall social impact optimization.
Pros:
As an employee engagement tool, Deed lets you hire based on social impact awareness among your applicants, so your staff will be one that truly cares.
Deed lets you set up events that can be both IRL and virtual to foster more community spirit.
You can set up mini challenges for your employees and other gamification tools to keep them as engaged as possible when trying to help society for the better. There is also a great rewards program to let them know you appreciate their social spirit, which includes donation matching.
Cons:
For payment processing, you’ll likely need an integration with something like Stripe, which could at least help with multiple currencies.
Pricing:
Again, contact Deed for pricing information.
Visit Deed
6. Selflessly (Top corporate social responsibility tool for responsible investing)
Selflessly got off the ground in 2015 and since then this platform has been helping companies manage their volunteering and giving activities for a wide variety of companies and organizations.
Pros:
Companies concerned about how their investment activities are shaping public perception of their brand will do well to utilize an app like Selflessly to invest more responsibly and with great social concern.
Impact assessment helps you narrow down the right cultural types to match your social impact aims. It also collects employee-driven data to offer insights into ways you can better maximize your giving and investments.
There is a great mobile app with a clean dashboard and customizable metrics to stay on top of employee morale diagnostics and social impact returns.
You get a decent privacy policy with Selflessly, helping with third-party social media activities to protect sensitive corporate or community information when engaging in social initiatives online.
Cons:
It is true you get a lot of features with Selflessly, but if you want to build new tools on top of this platform, it does not appear that the API is accessible.
Pricing:
Get in touch with Selflessly for prices.
Visit Selflessly
7. Goodworld (Great CSR platform for fundraising)
Goodworld is a CSR software that offers separate packages, one for companies looking to improve their social impact and overall image, and the other package is geared toward nonprofits who need help with things like donations and fundraising.
Pros:
For nonprofits using Goodworld, there are a great many features. You can use the platform to create fundraising campaigns and monitor their progress, as well as organize events and manage ticket sales.
There are peer-to-peer fundraising tools with Goodworld, and you can also set up auctions or send eCards.
Companies can take advantage of a social impact suite of tools, like creating giving campaigns and running a rewards program for donors.
There are also a slew of features for employee engagement, including workplace giving and volunteering.
Cons:
If you are looking for a software that has clear benchmark data to help express how successful your campaigns are performing, then Goodworld might not be the number one choice.
Pricing:
For Goodworld pricing, inquire on their website.
Visit Goodworld
8. EcoVadis (Best enterprise CSR software system)
There are many CSR apps out there which are ideal for startups and small-to-medium-sized businesses, but when it comes to EcoVadis, we can say that this is the best CSR for enterprises and large businesses.
Pros:
If you want your enterprise to be more sustainable, then EcoVadis can help improve your supply chain practices, lower your unnecessary expenses and improve your social brand equity.
For further sustainability power, there are a bunch of sustainable finance practice features, as well as a sustainability ratings module that uses real-time CSR data.
EcoVadis also has great resources, like the regular Sustain events which offer among many things sponsorship guides for companies wanting to pair up with a nonprofit organization.
Cons:
EcoVadis is not a lightweight app. This one is reserved for bigger players. That’s why the price tag is likely on the upper end of the pricing spectrum for CSR tools.
Pricing:
For pricing, contact EcoVadis.
Visit EcoVadis
9. Salesforce Philanthropy Cloud (Good philanthropy platform for CSR)
Forget about dominating the CRM, marketing, sales and support scene, because Salesforce has solutions for CSR, philanthropy and employee giving-back features.
Pros:
Salesforce Philanthropy Cloud has awesome dashboards to keep track of all your social engagement activities and monitor their success.
Use similar tools from marketing to organize fundraising campaigns that are most relevant to your team and community.
Get your employees even more engaged and ready to give back with a volunteer platform that is driven by purpose and organized around each individual’s skills and abilities.
Cons:
For some people navigating the innumerable Salesforce products, apps and solutions, it can get a bit overwhelming. Others prefer to have dedicated CSR software and not tools embedded in your average business SaaS.
Pricing:
Contact Salesforce for pricing.
Visit Salesforce Philanthropy Cloud
10. CSRConnect (Top CSR tool for employee engagement)
CSRConnect is the final app on our list of corporate social responsibility software solutions, but it is by no means the worst of the bunch, it’s just the luck of the draw that it finds itself at number 10.
Pros:
While almost all CSR tools are great for employee engagement among other things, CSRConnect is truly a top app for getting your team excited about giving back time, money and energy to those more needy.
You can organize multiple donation methods for your employees to give in the way they feel most comfortable donating their hard-earned bucks to better causes.
There are special modules for disaster relief giving, which you can be ready to use whenever unfortunate events occur like an earthquake, mudslide, sinkhole, or wormhole.
When it comes to individual skill-based volunteering, you can not only better organize your CSR efforts, but there are excellent volunteer data analytics and reporting.
Cons:
CSRConnect is part of a larger suite of products, which means that if you want features for grant management or nonprofit organizations, you’ll need separate products from the parent company called YourCause by Blackbaud.
Pricing:
Nothing different here, if you want to know the cost, visit YourCause and CSRConnect’s website.
Visit CSRConnect
What is CSR software?
If you haven’t figured it out by now, CSR software is corporate social responsibility software. These apps are solutions to make sure your employees feel good about themselves and their work, to make sure your company is not causing too much damage to your local community or the environment, and to help raise money for the causes you care about most deeply.
CSR software functions a lot like other SaaS, in that these programs run on intelligent data, intuitive features, and employ workflow automations to streamline all sorts of your company’s social programs and charitable initiatives.
What applications can a CSR management system have?
Here is a brief, but in no way fully comprehensive, list of the tools, functions and features of CSR management solutions:
Nonprofit operations management
Employee engagement
Volunteering program management
Donation matching
Event planning
Fundraising campaigns
Payment processing
Giving rewards programs
Carbon footprint tracking
Sustainability management
Supply chain optimization
Grant management
Corporate giving
Workplace giving
Sponsorship partnerships
Community investment
Environmental impact reduction
Risk management
Charity project management
Disaster relief aid
Mobile CSR apps
CSR data analytics and reporting
What is the best corporate social responsibility software for my company? Our takeaways
It is a nice relief to be able to write about companies giving instead of taking, for once. Knowing about the wealth of CSR programs dedicated to helping companies make a positive impact on their communities and the world can really reignite one’s hope in the goodness of our modern liberalized market-based economy.
So, which CSR is the best in our opinion? Well, Benevity managed to reign supreme this year, however, there were so many incredible CSR candidates who came close, like iPoint, CSRConnect and WeSpire. The choice is up to you.
Now, it is disappointing that we could not break down and compare prices for you here. No biggie. Just pop over to the websites and look for the button to request a demo or talk to an agent there. They will always be very eager to help you find the software and the package that is best for you.
Enough talk! Let’s go out and make the world a better place. Pat yourselves on the back now!