With the adoption of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development it is of high relevance to governments, companies and their stakeholders to track and assess the contributions of business to the achievement of the SDGs. This project is a partnership between the Principles for Responsible Management Education (PRME) and Wikirate, to support this need, engaging students in advancing the SDGs by proactively researching, analyzing and sharing the achievements of companies in support of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) as reported in sustainability reports and Communication on Progress reports (COPs) submitted to the UN Global Compact.

By researching and analyzing company performance and making new data available on Wikirate, students and researchers contribute to understanding corporate sustainability and issues of subjectivity, contextualization of data and comparability.

There are three main components to this exercise:

1. Collecting and adding data to Wikirate according to the set of metrics in your project for 1 company over 1 year.
2. Collecting qualitative information according to the SDGs and metrics researched. State additional context into the Comments box of each metric to help others understand how companies are reporting to the SDGs and different issue areas.
3. Peer review of data research. Review and verify data added by colleagues or other researchers.

Pre-research

• Create a Wikirate profile.

  To sign up for a Wikirate account click on the Join button on the top right corner of the homepage. Enter a username, email address, and password, then click submit.

  Note: You will receive a verification email. Click the verification link in the email to complete the signup process. Please beware that this email might get filtered into your Spam so check this folder if you seem to be missing this email. If any other troubles arise, please contact us.

• When you are signed into Wikirate, join your Research Group: by clicking on the link to your class (find your Research Group in the organizer list on this page), and clicking on "Join Group."

Step-by-Step

Once you have joined your research group, you can start researching. 

1. Find the company you have been assigned to research and hit the Research button.
2. Read the Question and Methodology section (at the bottom of the Question page) to make sure you understand what the question is asking and what you will be searching for within the company report.
3. Select the Year you want to add information on.
4. In the Source tab read the sources of information (company reports, annual reports, sustainability reports) to find the answer to the Metric question.
   • In this tab, you can view the sources that are already uploaded onto Wikirate.
   • If you do not see a source, remove the Report type filter or/and the year filter.
5. To cite your selected source, click on the Select Source button next to the Source view. 
6. In the Answer tab, add a comment to your answer detailing the page number of the source where you found your metric value (if applicable). You can also include relevant excerpts from the report. If you converted the metric value, explain how you did so including equations. 
7. It's time to submit your answer! Click the Submit button and check everything is correct.
8. Click on Next Question to continue your research.
9. Continue until you have added all the Metric answers for your Company within the research Project.

Further Guidance

Below are some frequently asked questions that might be useful for you if queries come up during your research. 

• What is a Metric? Metrics measure an aspect of company performance in a given year and each metric value must have a source. Researching metric answers is vital to supporting our work and growing a knowledge base on corporate performance.

• What is a Communication on Progress (COP) report? Communication on Progress reports, or COPs, are reports that companies participating in the UN Global Compact must submit annually to the organization.The reports show how much progress companies have made in 10 sustainability categories that cover a range of environmental, social and governance indicators.

• What do I do if the company I am researching doesn't provide the information I need? When you are trying to answer a Wikirate metric question but you cannot find the right information in a company’s report or website, answer the question with Unknown. This may be frustrating at first, but you should actually feel good about adding Unknown because you’re shining a light on a gap in that company’s reporting.

• What do I do if I enter a wrong value or year? Select the year of the value you want to update, it will take you to the Answer tab. At the bottom, select Edit Anwser. Update tha value, year or source and click Submit.

• What do I do if I encounter a technical problem? Email info@wikirate.org. Please include the URL of where the problem occurred and if possible, take a screenshot. This will help the developers fix the problem quicker.

  Once a ticket is submitted the Wikirate Team will try to respond as quickly as possible. We appreciate your feedback as the site is evolving and improving.