Emailed about 80 CSR contacts, got 5 replies. Is that normal or are we doing something wrong? Rural livelihoods org, first proper CSR push.
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I sit on the receiving end of these, so let me tell you what actually happens to your email.
5 out of 80 cold is roughly normal, slightly better than average. But the bigger problem is timing and target. Two questions: which month did you send, and did you email a generic csr@ address or a named person?
If you sent between January and March, most companies have already committed their 2% for the year and are in spending mode, not evaluating. April to July is when the new budget opens and CSR teams are actively looking. That single change matters more than your email copy.
If you emailed csr@company.com, assume nobody read it. Those inboxes get hundreds of these. Find the actual CSR head, reference the specific programme area they already fund, and say in the first line why you are relevant to that. My reply rate to those is very different.
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August, and mostly generic csr@ addresses. So… both mistakes.
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Both, yes, but they are the two easiest to fix and they cost you nothing. Redo it in April with 20 named, well-matched contacts instead of 80 cold ones. I would expect a meaningfully better result.
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Adding a practical point: check whether their CSR is routed through a foundation arm or done in-house. If there is a foundation, the company address is a dead end entirely.
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the rural thing is real too. we get told ‘we want visibility’ and a village project 400km away gives them none. We started offering employee volunteering site visits and it changed the conversation completely, they suddenly had a reason to care.
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