Social Impact / Philanthropy

How can you make the biggest impact out of your organization’s social impact resources? Impact can be characterized in myriad ways, but let’s start with two:

• Impact on the community

• Impact on your organization’s reputation/business

These should not be mutually exclusive. In fact, in powerful social impact programs, they should reinforce each other. It is referred to as “Shared Value.” Societal benefit = Business benefit.

There are many approaches to Shared Value, starting with communicating with your stakeholders to ensure they are aware of the resources you’re dedicating to building goodwill and solving problems your communities. This can enhance your reputation in pockets and places that will benefit the organization in the short and long term.

Here are a set of principles for corporate philanthropy, which serve as criteria for assessing grant-making and social impact strategies to reach an ultimate goal of Shared Value.

Corporate Philanthropy Maxims

1.      Align With Your Business Strategy and Purpose

Identify a few pillars that are aligned with your organization’s purpose. Then, focus on topic areas within those that are relevant to your business.

There are so many areas of need, therefore a strategic, focused approach helps streamline your grant-making. It’s the concept of “Fewer, Bigger.” Being choiceful also enables you to marshal more resources toward the issue. And it helps your narrative/storytelling. Pick an idea that is broad enough to encompass 2-3 focus areas.

If your purpose doesn’t sync with a broad topic (for example, you’re in business services) pick a focus area that resonates with your leadership or employees and create a marquis partnership with a nonprofit that can include volunteer opportunities.

2.      Create a Signature Initiative and/or Theme

Identify a theme or initiative that can bring your giving to life. A Signature Initiative is one program with one nonprofit partner that addresses a single problem and has a measurable goal as a solution. Invite the nonprofit partner to participate in program design and storytelling to help enable stories that resonate on a human level. These authentic partnerships can unlock creative solutions, amplify resources, and provide ongoing feedback for refinement and growth.

A Signature Theme is the broader topic area that encapsulates the work you’re doing. Try to choose a theme that can help you differentiate the work you’re doing. Something unique to your organization that you can own.

The Signature Theme is essentially your elevator pitch. It helps to have a pithy title for this. It’s what your foundation stands for and how it’s going to address the issue you’ve identified.

3.      Develop a Social Impact Communications Plan

What cohesive story will you be able to tell that will enhance your organization’s reputation? This starts with your Signature Theme and broadens out to an overarching narrative. From there, develop a series of compelling personal stories of the people/communities you’re helping. Chunk out the stories and results into short-form content that you can use on your website, social media channels and in executive media interviews. Provide case studies with measurable results. Lean into your nonprofit partners to help tell these stories and amplify the reach.

4.      Measure the Impact

Measurement is critical to demonstrate that your plan is working – impacting real lives, directly (lives saved or improved) or indirectly (through education, policy change or systems change, for example). As you determine what to measure, you’ll need to address this question: Do you want to help the most people or help some people the most? Answering this will help determine whether to set objectives on direct impact or indirect or the what the ratio is between them.

Either way, quantifying the impact is critical. It’s also necessary for your sustainability report (if you have one). There are nonprofit measurement agencies that can help you pull and compile results from your nonprofit partners.

5.      Support Communities Where You Have Employees

This approach works well for large organizations with operations in many locations in the U.S. and/or globally. It empowers local leadership and employees to address its community issues and opens up volunteering opportunities. This will improve employee engagement. It’s important, though, to keep the local/regional grants within your organization’s focus areas. Give them freedom within your framework but not an unlimited set of options.

6.      Have a Rainy Day/Disaster Relief Fund

Regardless of your theme and focus areas, you should always leave aside money for disaster relief. Natural disasters are happening more and more frequently due to climate change, and you’ll need to have some dollars available for disaster relief (for the community and potentially for impacted employees), especially in the locations where you do business or have employees.

With these rules of thumb, you can make your social impact as impactful as possible. It’s the right thing for your business and the communities in which we live.