This study investigates how different activities of corporate social responsibility influence financial performance in the bank sector. In a sample of publicly listed French banks, we use a fuzzy set qualitative comparative analysis to show that financial performance is dependent on the type of activity. The results show that various combinations of corporate social responsibility activities and bank characteristics determine the level of financial performance. Overall, our findings support and extend the recent contingent perspective, which emphasizes the interest of examining the conditions under which banks are more profitable.