CSR Europe General Assembly: New Membership Fees from 2024
On 20th June, the CSR Europe General Assembly convened to make critical decisions that would shape the future of the network. Among these decisions was the approval of the Board of Directors' proposal to increase the membership fee for corporate members and National Partner Organisations. This proposal was driven by two primary factors.
Firstly, it was motivated by the necessity to address the evolving EU sustainability agenda, which expanded beyond mere reporting and is now encompassing crucial areas such as decarbonization, supply chain due diligence, EU taxonomy, tax transparency, circularity, Just Transition, deforestation, and skills development cater to the needs of the network's members. To meet members’ needs amidst this new sustainability landscape, the Board of Directors of CSR Europe recognized the importance of allocating resources appropriately to effectively support members in meeting these new challenges.
Secondly, the proposal was influenced by the requirement to comply with Belgian law, which mandates automatic wage inflation. The soaring inflation led to a substantial increase of 11.3% in staff wages in January 2023 alone. While the membership fees have not been increased since 2015, the labour cost has progressively risen by almost 30%.
MEMBERSHIP FEES FOR CORPORATE MEMBERS
The new membership fee for corporate members will:
Be adapted annually according to the inflation rate
Align with the total turnover of the member company
Align with competitors’ fees
Figure 1: Proposal for corporate membership fee & rationale
MEMBERSHIP FEES FOR national partner organisations
The current process for collecting membership fees from CSR Europe’s National Partner Organisations (NPOs) is highly cumbersome and consumes a significant amount of time. Moreover, the system's fairness and reliability come into question when considering the diverse revenue sources of the National Partner Organisations. Thus, it fails to provide a proportional representation of revenue, creating an imbalance in financial contributions.
The newly approved approach and rationale is to simplify the process in order to catch up with inflation and link the membership to the total turnover of the previous year. There is also an incentive of a 50% fee reduction for 1 year if the National Partner Organisations can grow the CSR Europe network with additional new members.
Figure 2: Proposal for NPOs membership fee & rationale
The proposal was approved by both corporate members and National Partner Organisations (NPOs) participating in the General Assembly, receiving 22 votes in favour from corporate members and 17 votes in favour from NPOs.
Figure 3: Outcome of the voting
By approving this proposal, the CSR Europe General Assembly acknowledged the significance of these factors and recognized the importance of maintaining a sustainable financial framework to support the network's mission and operations.
The new membership fees will be implemented from January 1st 2024 onwards.
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