Just got back from the American Chamber of Commerce's Third Annual CSR Awards. But if you can't wait to click that link, General Electric won the top prize.

I wish I could say this year's judging and selection for the CSR Awards was easy, but it was not. This is the Chamber's third year for presenting these exceptional awards and while certain processes have become smoother, the amount of company participants has doubled since last year, plus the depth to which they have executed their sustainability and CSR program has also grown. There were so many excellent programs.

This was my first year on the judging panel as chairman and I was joined by Thomas Gwyn (PR Consultant and Trainer) and Victoria Moy (CSR Partner), who both were judges last year and provided valuable insight to the proceedings this year. Li Zhiqiang (China Executive Leadership Academy Pudong) also provided very timely feedback on the award details and good notes on his selections. And because this award covers all of China, not just Shanghai, we were joined by Yinyin Nwe (UNICEF) and Bill Valentino (Bayer), who are both primarily based in Beijing and truly understand the needs of both companies and NGOs operating around China. And we were pleased to have Jay Wang, who is currently at Purdue University in the United States, to round out our stellar panel of judges.

We followed a two-stage process of first having independent appraisals by each judge and second, having a jury discussion to review the combined scores and to discuss finer points. Throughout all of our judging criteria, we focused not on the size of a company or the size of their monetary contributions, but instead on the impact those procedures and policies had on affecting real change. In fact, two of our top finalists earned their points not necessarily because they gave money to charity or visited one too many senior citizen homes, but instead because of their issuance of standards in China to help their particular business sector. And then they followed-up by monitoring those standards and raising the bar on ethical conduct. We focused on quality, not quantity. Plus, very importantly, we wanted to see how the companies and NGOs showed an impact via their programs.

I want to again thank our panel of judges who volunteered their time to this effort and to the companies who participated for sharing their best practices with our team.