How to Choose Your Impact Area
Tips to determine your organization’s impact areas and score them from good to potentially transformational.
By Caroline Barlerin
Hooray! You want to make a positive difference in the world through your business. Now, what exactly will you do?
Social good can touch almost any impact area you could imagine. If you need inspiration, I suggest reading about the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals, or SDGs. These 17 ideals were selected by all UN Member States as the blueprint for achieving a more peaceful and prosperous world. Capitalism can—and should—play a big part in moving the needle.
With these in mind, take a hard look at your organization, no rose-colored glasses allowed. What are its latent negatives? You don’t have to be actively dumping oil into the ocean to be producing negative externalities.
In my wheelhouse of tech, for instance, I’m concerned with how advancements are isolating us from one another (which connects to SDG #3, among others tangentially).
When I was at Eventbrite, I loved (and still do!) how it brings people together to form connections through events. …And that’s a great opening for CSR programming!
Think about what types of programs could counteract your organization’s or industry’s latent negatives.
On the flip side, what are the best things you bring to the market, and could they be shared with more people in need? What is your product or service best known for? For example, companies like Salesforce and Okta offer their products and services to non-profits for free or at reduced prices to help them improve their operations and accelerate their impact.
Another consideration: Do you want your corporate impact to be aligned with your product/service or be more orthogonal? Sephora promoting inner beauty: product alignment. TOMS’ stance on gun control: unrelated to shoes.
“What are the best things you bring to the market, and could they be shared with more people in need?”
In my opinion, either strategy can be worthy, as long as it’s genuine. It comes down to: What do you want to be known for when it comes to making a difference?
Finally, don’t forget to ask: What do our employees care about? I discuss this topic more in this article.
Once You Have Some Ideas…
I put every CSR concept through a five-prong test that separates the good ideas from the potentially transformational.
Score each idea on a scale of 1–5 with regard to these questions:
Does it address a real problem?
Is it aligned with our brand or purpose?
Can we harness the power of our product/service/platform to achieve it?
Can it satisfy local and global reach (is there a good authentic partner)?
Is it ownable (is the whole world doing it)?
With the high scorers in hand, you’ll be well on your way to choosing your company’s impact area.
