An Action Plan Forces you to Decide: What are you Going to do About Your Cause, Exactly?

When companies nail the execution, they have an unmatched ability to scale solutions to the world's biggest problems. WEconomy Impact Engineering is devoted to helping businesses get it right.

Welcome to the second step: “WEconomy Impact Engineering, Step Two: Build a 360 Action Plan.” This chapter is meant to help corporate teams devise an execution strategy for their cause. Still, the advice can be easily adapted by individuals engaging in a personal purpose project.

We'll offer two lenses by which to develop a customized plan

• Fulfill corporate (or personal) objectives
• Own an outcome for your cause

Fulfill Corporate Objectives

Think about your reasons for getting into the purpose game. Of course you want to feed the hungry or preserve the rainforest, but you also have business targets and professional goals. In most cases, corporate donors are seeking a business return on their purpose investment in addition to positive social impact.

Before we go any further, allow me to add an important note on purpose and profit priorities. If you want to be in the business of making the world better, you'd better start with a real desire to better the world. Any malintent will be weeded out by savvy shoppers. Earlier, when we talked about inspiring brand fanatics, we touched on authenticity and cause washing, and how consumers have access to near limitless information to fact-check purpose claims. Charitable organizations will also vet potential partners to ensure the pairing will create real change.

As I hope is evident by now, we believe that profit and purpose can make the greatest positive impact in the world. Done right, cross-sector partnership is among the best ways to achieve this. Companies and social enterprises with the genuine intent to combine these two principles should be rewarded for making purpose-driven choices. This is the profit aspect of purpose and profit. When good companies thrive, they have an incentive to scale even more social good. It starts a flywheel of positive impact. (See the box in this chapter titled “The Compatibility of Companies and Charities” for a discussion about priorities and authentic intentions in our own charitable partnerships.)

Building a 360 Action Plan requires hyperawareness of the desired outcome, both in terms of the impact on the cause and the impact on key corporate outcomes. Knowing what you want to achieve will give you clear architectural scaffolding to build the ideal project. The cause always benefits more from a purpose project that delivers social value and financial returns. Corporate benefits mean more investment of funds and resources in the cause, attracting more attention across departments. Companies can reach beyond modest CSR budgets to leverage other funds earmarked to achieve specific outcomes. If purpose also serves an HR or marketing function, for instance, why not draw from those funding pools to support it? All of this adds up to even greater social change.

In the WEconomy, more and more corporate leaders understand that purpose and profit reinforce each other. Progressive leaders are baking purpose into the DNA of companies as core functions instead of as add-ons.

All of this is to say: vocalize your company's desired outcomes at the blueprint phase of a purpose plan or charity partnership. Take a look at the business and personal goals that will ensure your cause becomes a priority, one that will unlock the necessary level of investment and cross-department engagement. If your sales team needs more face time with clients, this year's volunteer initiative could bring sales and customers together. If your company needs to reduce shipping costs, a packaging redesign can help minimize transport expenses while eliminating environmental waste.

To create a 360 Action Plan with our own partners, the WEconomy Impact Engineering Team meets with four internal stakeholder groups—HR, Marketing, Product, and CSR—to identify opportunities and pain points. Though it takes more time, we hold sessions separately to isolate and identify challenges unique to each team. We ask each department to hold nothing back as it discusses needs, challenges, and incentives. Our team compiles the answers to build a cause-activation solution to drive both business and charitable goals.

Individual employees can also reap benefits and job perks from the corporate cause. It would be great if your sales team drew in new leads with a purpose halo, or your recruitment team was flooded with resumes from candidates attracted to your culture. Or, if you could take time out from your workday to give back with your boss' support. Submit your departmental needs to a corporate CSR committee. Or, even better, volunteer to join the committee. I guarantee you'll get recognition, and likely some face time with senior leadership. You can use the questions listed below, even if you're doing your own professional assessment.

Through a series of open-ended questions, we hone in on each team's priority.

For companies, here's a list of sample questions by department:

Corporate Social Responsibility

• Can customers, employees, and other stakeholders articulate your company's social impact?
• How much closer are you to your social goal? Can you measure and track progress?
• Does accountability for CSR impact live outside your department? Have you created a system to engage the whole company?
• Do staff know whom to contact and how to engage with your purpose?
• How do you incentivize employee volunteerism, philanthropy, or other forms of service?

Human Resources

• Do you need a recruiting tool to attract new employees?
• Are you trying to bridge generations and get your socially conscious millennial employees more engaged, or retain baby boomers looking for purpose at work?
• Was there a recent merger or departmental reorganization, and you're seeking to build a stronger shared culture and bonding experiences?
• Is employee morale low after a rough quarter?

Marketing

• What is the reputation of the company? Are you trying to rebrand, rebuild, or redefine?
• Are you a parent company trying to grow your master brand by creating a cause that links together all of your subbrands?
• Is there a special stakeholder group (government officials, community leaders) you are trying to influence with a message, or to gain positive credentials from?
• Are you seeking a high-profile celebrity partner or cause ambassador?

Product Team/Customer Success

• Do you need to differentiate your product from the competitor? Is there a new challenger brand emerging that's trying to take you on?
• Are you trying to convince a retailer to carry your product and provide coveted shelf space in stores?
• Are you seeking to create unique bonding experiences between your sales team and customers?
• How can you make your customer-appreciation gifts, holiday parties, and special occasions stand out?

So, what might this process look like? What kind of challenge or objective would emerge from this series of questions?

The German company Henkel, makers of Purex and Dial among other products, is parent to a huge brand family spread across three product categories and around the globe. Their problem was one of geography. Henkel's U.S. branch had operated from headquarters in Scottsdale, Arizona, for years. When the company acquired Connecticut-based Sun Products, teams from old and new offices were consolidated in New England. Those based in Scottsdale moved across the country to offices in Stamford, Connecticut—more than 2,000 miles away. Physically moving a large chunk of staff, nearly coast to coast, was a massive undertaking. Real estate agents and education consultants were brought on to help families find homes and pick schools. Offsite retreats were planned so teams could meet new coworkers in social settings, including the bowling alley. Gutter balls and rented shoes are a great outlet for team building and friendly competition, but the company was searching for a more profound solution.

Own an Outcome: Find a KPI you can take credit for

You wouldn't launch a product without knowing in advance what success looks like: market penetration, sales, revenue. And you'd be sure to have systems in place to capture data and report against those goals. An action plan to support a cause should not be treated any differently. Set up correctly, it can yield quantifiable data that will guide you through tough decisions. Every high-performing charitable model betters people and planet, but if you're clear on your goals, you can make a strategic choice about how to invest your scarce time and resources. Numbers let you know when to pivot and regroup.

How are the Top CEOs Putting Purpose to Work?

In 2016, the top brass from dozens of companies as diverse as Nielsen, Barclays, and designer brand Coach were asked about their strongest motivation for expanding social investment.³

Here are the top corporate cause objectives from global CEOs:

Within your action plan, define the success metrics for your social impact. We call this owning an outcome because it requires you to determine the change you are capable of creating and to take responsibility for it. It's more easily understood with an example. Let's say you've chosen to help the homeless in your community: that's your cause. Your team's corporate objective was staff engagement and professional development, so your action plan is regular mentorship opportunities at a local shelter. That's your program, but what are your social impact goals?

Consider carefully which outcomes are within your power to change, given your resources. As a general rule, the narrower the better. You might want to eradicate homelessness in Chicago, but unless you're the City of Chicago, that's probably not realistic. That said, you can work with a social services agency to promote life-skills development and workplace readiness for youth transitioning out of homelessness at one specific shelter. You can then track the rate at which program participants gain job offers, remain in stable housing for at least six months, or the rate at which they continue their education compared to their peers.

How the WE Movement defines success

Between 2012 and 2022, we set our goal to create the equivalent of US$3 billion in social value. We measure this by volunteer hours committed and funds raised by the WE community, which collectively benefit our programs and more than 2,500 charities.

*We calculate the value of an hour of volunteer service using federal government guidelines, and third-party reporting by companies and schools.

If the goal is focused, you can measure it to track progress. We all want to know whether or not our time, money, and efforts are making a difference. Measuring a targeted goal helps us answer those questions.

Measure the Outcome

Jason Saul once told me about an amusing exchange. His client, a pastor, was reluctant to submit to an assessment of his social work, saying, “God's work cannot be measured.” This was worrisome news for Saul, CEO of a company dedicated to measuring social impact. A spiritual man himself, Saul thought for a moment. After a pause, he replied that in the Old Testament, God made the Earth in six days and rested on the seventh, meaning that even God benchmarked success at six days.

One of the reasons charitable work is massively undervalued is because people are unwilling to attach metrics to it.

The truth is almost anything can be measured. Adding numbers to social impact can elevate it from a knee-jerk emotional act to a results-driven investment. Nonprofits and corporate purpose projects can use the same monitoring and evaluation (M&E) tools available to track business targets. Because each action plan is unique—with highly focused goals—I'll briefly review some general best practices.

Monitoring tools, or what you might call “business intelligence,” track your program's vitals. How were resources spent? How many participants signed up? How many team members were involved? Did participants experience the intended outcome? If these questions seem like no-brainers, you'd be surprised to learn I've encountered many companies that forget how to be well-run companies when they pick a cause. They don't track action plans because they don't expect to gain anything from them.

As a business, think about what you might include in an annual or quarterly report, and use the same mindset for your cause. All of this data is easily obtained while running the program. Ideally, monitoring is ingrained in daily operations—at event registrations that consider numbers and demographics. Don't mail out a survey two weeks after a program when you can hand one out at the end of a session. Think of monitoring as the fitness tracker of social impact. Looking at day-to-day progress, like stairs climbed and calories burned, will help you adjust your actions and behavior toward achieving your goal.

Evaluation is more involved, with a study conducted to assess a program's performance and efficacy, to provide insight into bigger changes that might be required. This is a more time-consuming and expensive process, sometimes involving outside experts, but a formal evaluation is helpful every three to five years. Enlist an expert when the action plan fails or plateaus, or whenever your goals, resources, or commitments change. Keep track of your action plan to make sure it's working for you.

Finally, if you want to get really granular, look at the cost per life changed by your social impact. I realize the vast majority of people give because a family member has cancer, or photos of a smiling sponsor child make them happy. Those are valid reasons for picking a cause, but there's nothing wrong with also adding a bit of rigor when it comes to impact. Everyone wants to know if their money is making a difference. When you give your monthly donation, how much good is actually achieved and how much does it cost to deliver the social outcome? For those who are curious, it's possible to objectively review achievements in terms of input (donation dollars) and output (cost per life changed or impact delivered). This answers questions like, “Which charity will distribute the most food to shelters using the same amount of funding?” With some back-of-the-napkin math, any donor should be able to find this out after asking charities a few simple questions.

We're not advocating where to spend your donation dollars, only that you consider the investment carefully. Fair warning that there will be a little bit of math in the next section.

Buy an Outcome: Costing Out Social Change

Much like purchasing carbon offsets to mitigate the impact of company travel, you can purchase social outcomes. It's not as simple as ordering from a menu, but you can buy a better world—in increments of social change. Companies will have the infrastructure to be more rigorous about this process, but individual donors also should consider efficacy and impact.

WE converted its service actions into metrics. Between donations and time invested, WE Schools volunteers generated approximately US$220 million in social impact in the 2016/2017 academic year.

A while back, Allstate approached us, wanting to buy election results. Hold on, it's not what you think. For the insurance firm, the cause is youth empowerment. One of their desired outcomes is for youth to be civically active, and to vote. Of course, the company didn't push any particular candidate or issue, but the civic duty of engaging with the system itself.

With some research, we discovered young people are more likely to vote if they see themselves as agents of change. News consumption, self-confidence, and leadership skills all get young adults to the polls. This demographic is more likely to cast a ballot if, first, they believe their vote matters and, second, they care about a cause: tax rates, the environment, the armed forces—anything.

WE Schools is built to achieve these outcomes on a large scale. Our service learning program gets kids involved in causes for school credit. In 2016, the program expanded through a partnership with The College Board, the nonprofit association of colleges and universities that offers Advanced Placement (AP) courses, allowing high school students to take college-level classes. Together, we launched AP with WE Service. Certain AP courses are now taught within a framework of service learning. For instance, in AP Computer Science with WE Service, students learn to code by developing apps for nonprofits.

See how youth are making a difference through service learning: Click for video

WE Schools Alumni become Good Citizens

Independent studies found that WE Schools students are more actively engaged, self-confident, and aware of social issues because of these activities. The same studies also found that when they reach voting age, alumni are in fact more likely to cast a ballot. Surveys of our alumni in 2012 show that 79 percent had voted in the most recent Canadian federal election—double the turnout rate for their peers.⁵

WE Schools decided it could, in a sense, buy the youth vote (no felonies were committed, I promise). We could calculate the cost of our program, count participating students, and measure the program efficacy and reach. And with such a specific goal, we could break it down further, measuring the cost to civically engage one student that would determine the Cost Per Result, or the price to achieve that particular desired social outcome. When Allstate invested funds to scale WE Schools across America, the company could predict that it costs US$34 per student per year to successfully increase civic engagement. And this, in turn, is one key motivating factor to vote.

Why is this relevant to a business or individual donor? Because when you develop your action plan, you should consider multiple solutions, strategies, and potential charitable partners. It makes fiscal sense for a company to look at unit costs and returns when they are considering CSR budgets. Similar to comparing the costs of any service, it's worth calculating your best charitable ROI, determining how to achieve the greatest impact in the most cost-effective manner. We acknowledge that this is a more rigorous process than many individual donors want to undertake. But you work hard for your money, and you should understand how it's impacting lives. The formula below still works, if you're really keen.

WE Schools Students are Rock Stars

In the 2016–2017 academic year alone, they:

Here's how you can calculate cost per outcome, or return on investment, for any corporate sponsorship funding or charitable donation.

Charitable Returns: Cost per Social Outcome

Calculating the cost of results is one way to measure effectiveness of an action plan in terms of it producing a desired social outcome for your cause.

• Budget: Cost of your program (e.g., total cost of a six-week seminar)
• Participants: The total number of people who experienced the program (e.g., the number of seminar students)
• Success Rate: The percentage of participants who achieve the chosen result, outcome, or KPI (e.g., the rate at which seminar students move on to the next grade)