UNGC Communication on Progress (CoP) 2025 Questionnaire Update

About the UNGC Communication on Progress (CoP)

Established in 2000, the UNGC CoP is a corporate ESG disclosure initiative aimed towards instilling Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) practices related to the United Nations' Sustainable Development Goals (UN SDGs).

Since its establishment, the UNGC CoP has grown into one of the world's largest ESG initiatives, spanning over 18,000 companies from across 160 countries.

Scope & Adoption

Companies disclose on Environmental, Social and Governance topics defined by UNGC. ESG reporting in the UNGC CoP is industry-agnostic, meaning that all companies disclose on the same topics and related indicators.

Companies participating in the UNGC commit to regular ESG reporting on their progress. The Communication on Progress is a disclosure statement that details a company’s implementation of the UNGC's Ten Principles. While there is no scoring system, the CoP serves as a public disclosure of a company’s commitment and progress toward sustainable practices.

The CoP questionnaire is public, meaning companies must be transparent with their disclosures. First-time responders may keep their actual answers hidden in their initial year, but they will be publicly shown as UNGC members.

How do companies report on UNGC CoP

Companies can report to the UNGC, once they are members, in the following ways:

The CoP Questionnaire

A set of questions on corporate actions related to the Ten Principles and the SDGs. All questions are of mandatory disclosure. In addition to answering the questions of the CoP Questionnaire, business participants can choose to upload a report, e.g. their sustainability report, in PDF format as an annex to their CoP.

Upload their Sustainability Report to the UNGC portal

A disclosure, publication, or other documentation that provides a comprehensive overview of a company’s activities and sustainability efforts, accurately reflecting on improvements, challenges, and progress made within the reporting period. While explicit ties are not mandatory, the report should cover topics relating to the Ten Principles of the UNGC and the UN SDGs.

CEO Statement of Continued Support (alongside Questionnaire or Sustainability Report)

A standardized statement expressing continued support for the UNGC by a company’s highest level executive or appointed representative.

Changes to the 2025 UNGC CoP Questionnaire

The UNGC CoP questionnaire has gone through several changes compared to 2024:

• Reduced Number of Questions: The questionnaire now has 66 questions (down from 76), with fewer mandatory and quantitative items, focusing on actionable insights for better data quality.
• Success Stories: The 2025 questionnaire introduces the ‘Success Stories & Future Priorities’ section, where participants can highlight their notable sustainability initiatives, projects and policies.
• Integrated Human Rights and Labour: These sections are now combined, reflecting their interconnected nature.

This year's disclosure window for UNGC reporting is from April 1st 2025 to July 31st 2025.

Top tips for ESG reporting on the UNGC CoP questionnaire

1. Align your existing disclosures to and from the UNGC questionnaire

UNGC interoperability with existing ESG disclosures is fairly easy to do given it covers a wide range of ESG topics. For example, many indicators on anti-bribery and corruption are also found in other disclosures such as:

• Benchmarks: WDI, EcoVadis
• Annual / Regulatory disclosures: CSRD, ISSB, SASB
• ESG rating agencies: MSCI, LSEG Refinitiv

2. Benchmark against peers who have done CoP for a number of years

Having a scope of how your peers have answered the questionnaire in previous years is extremely useful for many reasons, such as:

1. ESG Data Collection: convincing internal stakeholders who are contributing to your responses about why they should provide you with the data or make changes. For example, why should they add X statement into your environmental impact policy? Because your competitors 1, 2 and 3 have all done the same.
2. Quality-checking your responses: companies who have done the CoP questionnaire for many years are better versed in their UNGC statements, resulting in higher quality ESG disclosures overall. Benchmarking against them will enable you to more closely align with UNGC indicators at a qualitative level.
3. Competitive advantage: identify ways your responses can be better than peers in your industry will give you an edge on your competitors when it comes to how your responses will be compared by stakeholders.

3. Leverage a technology solution to enhance your ESG reporting to UNGC

In a world with increasing ESG interoperability, regulatory vs. benchmarking concerns, and ESG reporting burdens, leveraging an ESG reporting solution to help you achieve the above is increasingly essential.

The ideal solution for UNGC and other similar frameworks (e.g. CDP, WDI, EcoVadis) should help you to: seamlessly collect ESG data for UNGC reporting, identify ESG reporting gaps that could impact your ability to report on UNGC CoP, enhance your peer benchmarking capabilities, ensure your draft responses meet UNGC's disclosure requirements, and provides end-to-end integration with UNGC's platform (only available to solutions who are members of UNGC).

To find out more about Nossa Data's UNGC and ESG reporting solutions, begin your journey here.