Hero's message to the business community explored new directions in corporate giving. He told a business breakfast hosted for MCF by the Committee for Economic Development (CEDA) and DLA Phillips Fox that there is a new style of corporate giving in the USA and that community foundations are at the forefront of engaging corporate giving.

He said that increasingly in American business corporate social responsibility - or CSR as it commonly described- is established as a corporate value which is included in a company's annual report. CSR is now part of business investment plans.

It figures in how business measures success and focuses on a whole range of opportunities such as volunteering, employee-advisor committees and loaned executives to the not-for-profit sector.

For corporates, CSR is an investment in community.