Analyst, Social Impact at EVO Advisors | Surveying Trends in Corporate and Traditional Philanthropy & Corporate Social Responsibility | RPCV
There were once active governmental institutions set up to advance #socialimpact in this country, such as the Office of Social Innovation and the Social Innovation Fund. How closely do we as CSR practitioners align with the work they began 15 years ago? In the international development arena, often the gov’t interventions are the first step, with national objectives being set, regulatory agencies put in place, cross-sector partnerships pursued, and fiscal incentives added to encourage investment and innovation. Do we align ourselves in this model or do too many of us go-it-alone? We should pursue relationships with the long-standing stakeholders in the social impact space like gov’t, nonprofits, academia and foundations. To inform our efforts, we should seek collaborations with traditional innovators at universities. How many of us are leveraging the research, faculty, visiting professors and students at Indiana University Lilly Family School of Philanthropy? Some of our conferences can also expand to include not just social innovators in the corporate space, but leading social researchers from academia, like the Stanford Center on Philanthropy and Civil Society (Stanford PACS). Networking events are great, but where are the brainstorming rooms where we work across sector to develop new models of giving? And the discovery rooms to research how other countries and cultures implement social impact strategies? There’s a bifurcation happening in #CSR, with focus being split between workforce engagement and social impact. If we’re asking people to take our claims to the latter seriously then we’ve got to evolve our efforts.
