Nothing so gratifying…

…as when your efforts are being appreciated.

The gang at Maverick, the PR consultancy where Unspun works has for the past two year been putting their money where their mouths are in the field of Corporate Social Leadership.

Hang on, you say, shouldn’t it be Corporate Social Responsibility? Well, since the guys at Maverick are mavericks, they believe in questioning conventional wisdom. Doing that they hold that the “responsibility” in CSR is a bit of a bother since “responsibility” implies something you’re obliged to do, whether you believe in it or not. Many companies do not believe in their own CSR efforts so they often come across as hokey, even though they pile tons of money into it. Some mining companies come to mind.

Corporate Social Leadership, however, is different (credit to . It is using the assets you have as a company – such as your expertise, customer insight, ability to make decisions faster than government or civil society, money, location etc – to affect positive change in society. In Maverick, the guys have decided that their CSL program will be all about using the skills and knowledge of PR consultants to empower NGOs with media handling skills, i.e. how to talk to the media so that it is concise, short and memorable, what to say, what not to say etc etc.

They’ve been at it for two years and apart from adopting Mitra Netra last year, and Kelola for the Arts and Center for Better Education, for a 10-month course on how to do their own PR, have been media training about 15 other NGOs.

Today was very gratifying as one of the participants was so taken up with the training yesterday, he decided to show his appreciation by blogging about it in his organization’s blog Solidaritas Kebersamaan. Now if the Mavericks can only convince Corporate Indonesia to abandon their silly CSR initiatives and move into CSL instead…