“If you should ever find yourself sitting next to me on an airplane, have your purpose-related answers ready. Also, I apologize in advance.”
Part Three: Chapter 15 Weconomy Impact Engineering, Step One: Find Your Cause
By Craig Kielburger
If I could change one thing about the world, it would be _____________________
You know those awkward moments before takeoff when you suss out the person sitting next to you on the plane? You know that annoying guy who won't stop talking about his work? A friendly guy with a big grin who prevents you from pulling your sleep mask over your eyes on the overnight to Europe, the one who interrupts you when you're reading US Weekly or The Economist?
That's me.
Sometimes my frequent flier status gets me upgraded to business class, where I can determine if my seatmate will be subjected to my charity charm offensive by asking three questions: Are you traveling for business or pleasure? What do you do? Have you ever thought of starting a purpose project? Business class is full of business leaders, so many of WE's corporate partnerships are hatched at high altitudes.
A few years ago, I sat down beside a guy traveling from Toronto to New York. As he talked into his cell phone, I picked up snippets of his conversation about business dealings in Colombia. He was worried about a new enterprise, shipments getting through customs. I was sure he was either a Colombian drug dealer or a money launderer.
It turns out that he was moving a lot of green. It was kale.
Matthew Corrin had just started a company called Freshii that promised a healthy fast-food offering and an alternative to the greasy lunches he'd been eating in urban financial districts while working various office jobs. At the time, Corrin was in his late twenties, seeking both financial reward and positive impact from his work. He considered his business partly a social service to encourage healthy eating, but he still wanted to make money. He was very honest about his objectives: purpose and profit, with emphasis on the latter.
I asked if he'd thought about starting something charitable. We're too small, he said. His biggest issue during those startup days was getting tortilla wrappers consistently into his stores; he didn't have time to oversee a charitable program.
I pressed on. “What kind of impact do you want to make?”
He wasn't interested in short-term fixes, reasoning that he would rather do something to tackle root causes or nothing at all. He had admirably high expectations.
“I want to fundamentally solve the problem of hunger,” he told me.
So, to sum up, Corrin hoped to tackle an endemic social problem, but had minimal time to personally oversee operations for the charitable cause. As a busy CEO, that's entirely fair. I looked at my watch. Gate to gate, we had about 90 minutes. It was more than enough time to walk through the steps we use for all of our corporate partnerships.
We will go over each of these in detail over the next few chapters, helping you answer those fundamental questions that seem straightforward, but can come with hidden challenges. All in, there are three steps to WEconomy Impact Engineering (WIE). (Even our acronyms sound like “we” when you say them out loud.)
I asked a bunch more questions at a high level (30,000 feet, in fact):
What do your staff and customers care about?
How will you leverage your business assets to make the most social impact?
What does success mean for you?
How will you ensure your entire team is aligned on the purpose plan?
How will you measure your impact and report on it?
I should add that I have just as many conversations with families, youth, recent graduates—those outside the C-suite who feel compelled to make a difference, but don't know where to start. These people all have the same things in common: they care about an issue and feel overwhelmed. If you're among this group, and you're grappling with purpose on a personal level, think about how you might apply these steps to your own life. Impact Engineering was first designed for the workplace, corporate teams, and their families, though many of the tips we're about to share are easily adapted for use outside the office.
In this chapter, we'll review the first step: find your cause, using three key lenses—your why, your assets, and your stakeholders. In the following chapters, we'll build on that cause with an action plan, engagement strategy, amplification platform, and formula for social impact measurement.
If you should ever find yourself sitting next to me on an airplane, have your purpose-related answers ready. Also, I apologize in advance.
Charitable Mergers?
Not as crazy as it sounds
Chip Wilson is the billionaire founder of Lululemon, a Canadian athletic-wear retailer that's become a global brand. He applies the same business rigor to social causes.
After considerable research, Wilson launched a charity for education in Ethiopia called imagine1day. Ten years later, imagine1day had built 43 schools and trained 12,000 teachers and leaders. It had government connections, a strong curriculum, and a local staff of more than 30 people. Still, Wilson realized that overhead was burning cash, and he was devoting much of his time to overseeing the governance of the charity. His time was better spent on his core expertise of building his businesses, generating profits to support high-impact philanthropy.
Learn about imagine1day and its incredible capacity-building for teachers:Click for video
Wilson asked WE Charity to establish a partnership, integrating imagine1day with our projects. WE had expertise in multiple East African countries, an existing fundraising structure, and social enterprise to scale impact—and a model that ensures project sustainability. Wilson had done 10 years of groundwork, developed a proof-of-concept model, and built a great local staff. Thanks to the merger, Ethiopia is now an official WE Villages partner country.
WEconomy Impact Engineering: An Overview
Section 1: Find Your Cause Use your why, your assets, and your stakeholders
Section 2: Build Your 360 Action Plan Fulfill personal and professional objectives and own an outcome
Section 3: Engage Your Network Including your team, your customers, and your supply chain
Too Much of a Good Thing
Before we give you a blueprint for impact—as a company or an individual—let's be clear about the difference between starting a purpose project and starting a charity.
Earlier, we looked at how charities are popping up like coffee-shop franchises. With the amount of growth in the sector, you'd expect the world's problems would be solved by now. Sadly, this is not the case. Most nonprofits don't grow much beyond a mom-and-pop initiative. In the U.S., just 1 percent of the country's nonprofits have annual budgets that top $1 million, and since 1970, only 144 charities have surmounted the $50 million revenue mark.1 In Canada, 40 percent of charities have no staff, while 37 percent have a team of five or fewer. Half of Canadian charities have revenues under CDN$50,000.2
I should mention that we have nothing against small charities. Grassroots initiatives can do meaningful work in their surrounding communities. But there is little opportunity to scale impact—and many of the most entrenched social problems need big solutions. In a world of scarce resources, there are inefficiencies with fundraising competition, mass redundancies in administration, and an inability to implement systemic change. In the private sector, redundancies are weeded out with mergers and acquisitions. Small players are scooped up by bigger, more efficient ones with more purchasing power, better supply-management systems, and bigger R&D budgets for innovation and product improvements. The market won't tolerate failure as customer preferences shift and technology speeds up change. Imagine something similar in the charitable world—nonprofits merging together, sharing learnings, and combining resources for savings on administration costs.
Let's be clear, I won't advocate for hostile takeover bids, but I would like to see more self-awareness on the part of charities, and more willingness to merge. Without it, too many charities duplicate the efforts of existing organizations. Jason Saul, one of the nation's leading experts on measuring social impact, writes: “Simple math tells us that, on average, there are over one thousand nonprofits for each type of problem.” There are, for example, over 700 charities supporting breast cancer research and prevention in the United States.3
Canada's 170,000 nonprofits add up to one for every 210 people. Even in a country renowned for being nice, 210 people is not enough to sustain a charity.4
Each new venture spends on administration and fundraising, with money that could have helped the cause had the founders supported existing organizations. Even those who claim to be selfless can get trapped in their own ego and the desire to put their name on an organization.
It's easy to see the upside to devoting your very own project to helping others. Rarely, if ever, do I hear people acknowledge that the downsides of starting a charity are similar to those that occur when starting a business.
No model is perfect at launch—that goes for charity, too. There is risk, a steep learning curve, and a huge initial investment of your own time and money. Running a charity means years devoted to intense learnings about the most effective intervention models, building networks among nonprofit partners, and understanding the governance and fiduciary responsibilities. The skill set is enormous.
A 2013 survey found that more than two-thirds of people believe there are too many charities raising money for the same cause.5
Why reinvent the wheel when you can build on something with a proven track record? Why not bet on a sure thing?
The day after my wedding, I met Warren Buffett at the annual Forbes 400 Summit on Philanthropy in New York. I probably should have been on my honeymoon—luckily I married the world's most patient woman. Buffett is a venerable businessman, consistently topping indexes of wealth, influence, and prestige. Those of us who don't regularly make Forbes rankings might be surprised to learn that he doesn't build companies from nothing. Even his most well-known holding, Berkshire Hathaway, was initially an investment in textile manufacturing; he bought shares until he took over the company in 1965. Buffett made his fortune with skilled investment techniques, instinct, and timing, snapping up bargains on the stock market. Buffett's area of expertise is scale and efficiency. Someone else does the dirty work during the initial set-up, and he comes in with capital and strategic strikes to make it bigger and better.
Buffett is a hunter, not a founder.
He applies the same strategy to philanthropy. Buffett pledged the Gates Foundation $31 billion with a series of stipulations akin to that of an investment—at least one of the Gateses (Bill or Melinda) must remain actively involved for payments to continue, for instance.6 Here's a guy entirely justified in starting his own foundation. At the time of the pledge in 2006, Buffett was worth $42 billion and named the second wealthiest man in the world.7 But he didn't start another charity. Buffett is an expert at making money, which is not the same skill set as using money to create high-impact change.
A Note to CSR Leaders
A few Corporate Social Responsibility directors have confessed to me that they're concerned that partnering with an established charity might make their job redundant. Starting a corporate philanthropy project from scratch proves that they're “earning their keep.”
The most successful CSR leaders embrace partnership because they understand that a charity partner handles on-the-ground project execution, while they lead a corporate team in customization, oversight, brand alignment, amplification, staff engagement, and achieving business objectives. Being the head of CSR is like being the Chief Technology Officer. You don't build your database or e-security system from scratch; you hire an external group that specializes in that function while you oversee the strategy and implementation. As a CSR executive, it is not your job to build schools or distribute food to the homeless. It is your job to set the company up for the greatest success in social impact and business outcomes.
If you're determined to launch a company-branded initiative, consider “white labeling.” Many charities are open to being the “silent partner” in the background implementing the project, while the company gets the public credit. Clearly express your intent when approaching a potential charity partner. Leave financial logistics and execution of the donation to them, and set terms to uniquely brand an event or campaign as your own.
It seems virtuous to start a charity; sometimes it takes more guts and humility to lend your funds and expertise to an existing organization.
So the first rule of cause-finding is: Be like Warren Buffett. If someone else is already doing it, partner or invest in them. (If you're an individual, that means volunteering or mentoring.) If no one else is doing it, and you really do have a game-changing idea, innovation is always welcome! Kiva was one of those game changers. Launched in 2005, on the crest of an upcoming social media wave, the global microfinance charity now has the average Internet user easily offering $25 loans to small business owners overseas. That technology platform was revolutionary. If you are the next Kiva, far be it from me to discourage you. Godspeed.
If you're going to pair up, you'll still need to determine which partner or cause to choose. Before you pick a cause, examine it through the same lenses you would use to launch a for-profit plan. These three lenses can be applied in any order, and might vary in relevance to your company needs, sector, and goals.
Lens One: Your Why
The first lens is by far the simplest, and can be the strongest cause-finding compass.
First, for companies: In Start with Why, Simon Sinek argues that all great leaders share this trait—they start with why. “People don't buy what you do, they buy why you do it,” Sinek writes, meaning that customers are more attracted to your mission and culture than to product attributes.8 He cites Apple's motto to “Think different” and challenge the status quo. People buy into aspirations and dreams that feel larger than themselves—not just what you sell, but what you believe. Think about your mission.
Why does your company exist? Or, from a needs perspective, what problems are you already solving and how can those be modified to fit a social cause?
Patagonia outfits hard-core outdoorsy types. Their mission? “Build the best product, cause no unnecessary harm, use business to inspire and implement solutions to the environmental crisis.” It's clear that this can also serve as a purpose statement for an environmental cause, and it does, with the company donating partial profits to grassroots protection efforts.
One of the world's largest communications companies, AT&T operates with the mission, “Connect people with their world, everywhere they live, work and play . . . and do it better than anyone else.” For the wireless provider, the cause is leveraging technology for good, including support for STEM education (science, technology, engineering, and math) in schools, and addressing bad habits, like distracted driving. The company started a huge campaign to keep eyes on the road, not on cell phones.
For individuals, take time for self-reflection and consider personal values, cultural traditions, faith-based beliefs, and life experience. Many are motivated to run or walk or dance or bake for the cure, after losing a loved one to cancer. If you received life-changing mentorship from a great coach or teacher, consider paying it forward by becoming a Big Brother or Big Sister.
Picking a cause can be this easy.
Lens Two: Your Assets
Look more logically at your skill set. Are you a contractor or an architect with expertise in building homes? Think homelessness or housing infrastructure, and give your staff paid time off to volunteer with Habitat for Humanity. If you are the staff, ask for it—with a well-thought-out pitch. I stress these obvious connections because I've met with countless corporate groups to assess strategy only to find that the causes they've adopted are seemingly random. For companies, the purpose should be a logical extension of the business, both for ease of execution and for better customer response. ME to WE has commissioned studies with Mission Measurement and found that business–charity partnerships are perceived to be more authentic by customers when the brand and social mission are compatible, when it makes sense for the company to care about its cause. And a purpose that relates to the core business more directly drives further exploration of a company's products and services.9 One way to ensure compatibility is to make your business assets work for your purpose.
GoodLife Fitness, the largest health club chain in Canada, leverages facilities, equipment, and instructors. The GoodLife Kids Foundation funds free fitness classes for partnering schools through its Goodlife4Kids School Program. And their Jump! Child Minding keeps kids occupied and physically active, while their parents get in a workout. The purpose is focused; it fits the healthy lifestyle brand and core business model by adding value to the service, since parents without babysitters can still use Goodlife facilities.
Over in another industry, eBay “provides a global online marketplace where practically anyone can trade practically anything, enabling economic opportunity around the world.” So eBay uses its unique technology platform to hold charitable auctions, selling celebrity memorabilia to support various organizations and allowing individual users to donate partial proceeds from their own sales.
General Mills is parent to popular brands Cheerios and Betty Crocker, among others. The company feeds people, and its charitable arm, the General Mills Foundation, operates with the mission “nourishing lives.” Naturally, General Mills picked the cause of hunger.
In America, food security is concerning not only for the homeless, but also for the working poor, with many kids in low-income areas relying on government-run school lunch programs. Those free meals stop when the school year ends. Outnumber Hunger launched in 2011, with General Mills donating partial proceeds from product sales to support food banks across the country, in partnership with nonprofit Feeding America. The annual campaign runs in April, close to the end of the academic year, when struggling families need it most. General Mills used product assets by donating partial proceeds.
Finding Your Cause outside the Office
WE uses the equation: Gift + Issue = Change
Combine passions and skills—your personal assets—with an issue close to your heart—your why. Are you a graphic designer looking to raise money for breast cancer? Design a campaign website. A financial planner could offer workshops in women's shelters.
Each of these companies thought smart about what they had to offer, making the process of picking a cause that much simpler. Look first to your corporate mission and core competencies to support the cause.
Lens Three: Your Stakeholders
It's possible that your mission or business assets don't lend themselves so easily to a cause. Maybe you work for a general consulting or investment firm. Of course, you have infrastructure and offer services, but those things can defy sectors, making the asset or brand lens more difficult to focus. Companies that fall under this category might be more concerned with stakeholder feedback. For these firms, human capital might be the most important lens.
Ideally, a good company looks at all three, and dials certain lenses up or down depending on the sector and goals.
Now we're going to look at your team, customers, and community groups, and how to enlist them to identify your cause.
In other words: the third lens is to simply ask your people.
Team and Customers
These people work for you and buy from you; they are the ones on the frontlines who will amplify your purpose even more if they have initial buy-in. What better way to help your team and customers form an attachment to your cause than to let them choose it? Deploy surveys. Ask: What causes would make sense for the business? What causes do you donate to personally?
In a bygone era, corporate philanthropy was a pet project. The CEO or their spouse loved opera or had a soft spot for endangered whales. When the CEO retires, pet projects are dropped, without investment from any other level of management. These causes of old were typically disconnected from the rest of the staff.
A top-down cause platform won't be as effective as one that engages the whole team.
It is mid-level management who will drive a meaningful purpose strategy, integrate it within their teams, build incentives around it, and monitor the activities. Junior staff will organize volunteer days and turn up to mentorship programs if they're invested in the idea.
When companies consider the whole social ecosystem, interested parties include your team, your customers, and the community.
As an aside, individuals who are really keen to make the most impact can consult with grassroots charity groups to determine where their skills or time will be best put to use. Find out if your local animal shelter needs dog walkers, donations of kibble, or something unexpected like a new technology platform for tracking animal adoptions. So many people consider charitable causes, yet so few consider asking first about specific needs.
For Allstate, linking a cause to their core business wasn't immediately obvious. What social issue fits best with personal insurance? With 160,000 employees and an existing array of social investments, from financial literacy for domestic violence victims to disaster preparedness, the firm's charitable endeavors were scattered. “We were giving on an ad hoc basis,” says Laura Freveletti, Allstate's Senior Manager of Corporate Social Responsibility. The firm hired social impact consultants Mission Measurement to probe customers about their cause preferences. Youth development emerged as one of the top concerns, more than any other cause the company had supported in the past. In retrospect, this made a lot of sense, since people tend to shop for more insurance coverage once they have kids. Many of Allstate's most invested customers were parents.
I met CEO Tom Wilson at the Aspen Ideas Festival soon after the firm was set on its cause, his team's feedback about youth empowerment fresh in his mind. Wilson was actively looking for programs to help reduce youth violence in Chicago, home of Allstate's headquarters, and promised me two minutes of his overly scheduled day. Over an hour later, we were swapping smartphones and watching our favorite charity campaign videos. Wilson showed me his photography collection, digitized on his phone, of images from civil rights struggles throughout history. The Burning Monk, shot in Vietnam. Police dogs attacking marchers in the Birmingham Campaign.
We bonded instantly as individuals who believe in massive social change. But Allstate is a big firm. Wilson introduced WE to his team; he wanted full engagement—total buy-in, so they vetted us in a process that took almost a year. We were part of multiple meetings with cross-sector departments to get all teams excited. Since then, Allstate has been instrumental in bringing our service learning and leadership curriculum to schools across America as title sponsor for WE Schools and WE Day, as well as coordinating thousands of Allstate team members in various cities to volunteer to support young leaders. It wouldn't be an overstatement to say that Allstate was instrumental in launching the WE Movement across America.
See Wilson's inspiring visit to a WE School in Chicago:Click for video
“We can't just depend on governments or nonprofits to fix the world. Businesses can and should help too. Companies are made up of people just like you. And they want to make a positive difference in the world. If we all use the resources around us, we can make the world a better place.”
—Tom Wilson, Allstate CEO and 2017 Chairman, U.S. Chamber of Commerce
Wilson himself became deeply involved with WE Day, delivering a speech he titled “Rise Up” to encourage youth to get involved in service. As our national WE Day co-chair, he helped to secure a place for the event in stadiums across the country, including in Allstate's hometown of Chicago at WE Day Illinois. During the 2015-2016 academic year alone, 200,000 youth from 650 WE Schools across the state volunteered more than 385,000 hours and raised more than half a million dollars for hundreds of charities.
The company's involvement with the cause of youth empowerment goes back years, with support for multiple organizations. One of these initiatives includes financial literacy lessons, taught by their advisors. Allstate volunteers run weekly classes or half-day sessions for kindergarteners and middle school students, regularly interacting with the community to promote financial smarts, as well as volunteer-based learning, catered to youth. The program is also a job perk, since mentoring is a form of professional development and the volunteering takes place on company time.
In addition to offering an outlet to give back, the company's youth empowerment initiatives have also boosted brand awareness, measured by the advisory firm Reputation Institute. And, the company has received external accolades for its work in youth empowerment, including the 2017 Golden Halo Award from the Engage for Good Conference, organized by a cause marketing institute.10
What's the takeaway for Allstate's CSR leader Freveletti? “Research what is important to your stakeholders. A connection to the business is [also] really important. Allstate stands for safety and security, which is what we want for young people in the country. We believe that good starts young.”
As a large company, Allstate went through a formal process with a third-party advisor. A small business could easily replicate this cause-finding experiment with an online survey. Many companies I've worked with use free online survey platforms to determine what cause their employees and customers care about most. Staff engagement can be quick or comprehensive, depending on your goals. If you're small enough, a casual poll of customer walk-ins might suffice. Running the coffee shop on the corner? Have customers write suggestions while they wait at the bar for lattes.
Here is where individuals can weigh in as customers. Remember, you are the most important stakeholder for businesses. If you're concerned about improper waste disposal at your favorite fast-food chain, say something to management. Better yet, Tweet at them. When companies solicit suggestions, make sure your voice is heard.
Community Groups
One of the most innovative workshops I've encountered was with City National Bank. The American finance institution convened about 50 guests in its Los Angeles office tower. Most of them were not bankers. I remember the construction workers' union and steel-toe boots. An African American church group wore matching bowties and starched shirts. A Korean business association was there, along with local nonprofit representatives. The bank was hosting community interest groups to jumpstart an investment project focused on diversity and inclusion.
According to a Canadian survey, 86 percent of people surveyed believe that running a business is a good way for charities to raise money.11
I assumed the big ask would be for more capital—and it was, although the requests were much more creative and nuanced. Groups wanted skills training and apprenticeship programs or guaranteed loans to minority businesses. City National was left with a long list after the two-hour session. With it, the bank devised an $11 billion community investment program to roll out over five years. Launched in 2015, it includes just over $4 billion in small business loans and $80 million earmarked for supplier expenditures with minority-owned vendors.12
Before any big charitable commitment, companies can reach out to local nonprofits and layers of government, from the chamber of commerce to the mayor, to state or federal departments. These groups can help advise you on the best intervention strategy for your cause.
Touchdown
As for Matthew Corrin, I like to think he didn't regret his decision to speak with me on the plane that day. Twelve months after our high-altitude encounter, he was in Kenya walking through the sustainable gardens that provide schoolchildren with hot lunches, partly through Freshii's partnership.
Having launched a company inspired by his own frustrations, Corrin had a pretty strong “why” that also served as his personal mission. For founder-led organizations like Freshii, or small startups with carefully cultivated culture, the “why” will probably be your focal point. The purpose of the company becomes the social cause.
Don't Forget Your Extended Corporate Family
Retirees
Alumni
Employee families
Shareholders
Investors
Freshii is on a quest “to help citizens of the world live better by making healthy food convenient and affordable.” Corrin wanted to solve the root cause of hunger and turn a profit. So we connected Freshii's cause to product sales, with every “warrior bowl” purchase providing a hot lunch for a student in WE Charity's partner communities in Kenya. The quinoa and chicken bowl was named after the Maasai warriors. Freshii also leveraged a product asset, adapting menu items for the purpose.
It was a truly sustainable initiative that provided nutrition for students, and also food security for the region, fulfilling Corrin's requirement that the change be systemic. Because the school lunches came from locally cultivated school farms, product sales supported agricultural development education. Our school gardens serve as classrooms for students who learn techniques from high-yield growers, taking the lessons home to their parents, many of whom are sustenance farmers. The long-term impact is a new generation of farmers empowered to grow the food to feed themselves and their families, and to uplift their communities.
And there you have it: why + assets + stakeholders = cause. Parts of the equation can be dialed up or down, depending on your business or your goals. After you pick a cause, you're ready to start your action plan.
