Unit 3: Define your impact mission, vision and values

[Alicia_Schmidt]

Defining a social impact vision and mission is an essential step in your organization's efforts to make a positive difference in the world. This vision statement serves as a guiding beacon, outlining your long-term goals and aspirations for creating meaningful social change. 

Your vision should focus on the desired future state or long-term goals of an organization. It is forward-looking, outlining where the organization aims to be in the future. And it is aspirational and inspirational, providing a sense of direction and purpose.

Your mission focuses on the present purpose and core activities of an organization. It is practical and action-oriented, guiding day-to-day activities and decision-making.

Try using this outline as you draft your vision and mission statement.

Prompt	Example
State Your Purpose - What social problem or issue do you aim to address?	Our purpose is to enrich the food experience for all  and create a healthier, more sustainable, and equitable world. -Toast.org
Define the Desired Impact - What impact do you want to make? Be specific.	"Checkr is committed to our mission of building a fairer future by designing technology to create opportunities for all." -Checkr
Identify Target Beneficiaries - Who will your efforts benefit?	"We invest in and support the organizations and coalitions who are committed to improving economic, financial and social inclusion of immigrants and their families." -Remitly
Consider the Timeframe - How long will it take?  Do you aim to make a significant impact within a few years, a decade, or over the course of several generations? Be realistic and ambitious but also practical.	"By 2030, our company pledges to provide access to clean water for 1 million people in underserved communities around the world." -generic example
Make it Inspirational - Your vision statement should be inspiring and motivating to stakeholders, supporters, and team members.	"We believe business is the greatest platform for change." -Salesforce
Align with Core Values - Ensure that your social impact vision aligns with the core values and business objectives of your company.	"We're on a mission to build a safely connected world where everyone can belong and thrive." - Okta for Good

But we are getting a bit ahead of ourselves. To position your company for long-term impact, there are a few steps we recommend before you finalize your vision statement, mission and objectives. 

Photo credit: Okta

Audit Your Existing Charitable Commitments or Community Priorities

For many companies, charitable giving and community engagement is already a part of your culture, and you may not need to build a program from scratch. The Pledge 1% framework can be a great opportunity to pull all of those activities and values together, formalize your program, and grow your impact. If your company (and leadership team) are already engaged in giving back in any way, then it is a good idea to audit those existing charitable or community focused activities as you bring together your vision, mission and objectives. It can also help you identify resources, find potential program champions, and outline what you need to get started.

To conduct an audit, consider these questions:

Audit input category	Questions	Your responses
Executive impact experience	• Are my executives, founders, or other team members already involved with a nonprofit? Find out which causes they are passionate about. If you are a smaller company, this might be a great place to start.
Employee impact experience	• Are any employees already working with nonprofits or participating in crowdfunding campaigns or holiday events as a team?
Policies (for impact)	• Does my company have any volunteer time off (VTO) policies (even informal) in place? • Are there any existing employee gift matching programs already in place?
Philanthropic history	• Does my company sponsor any community events? What marketing campaigns have involved the larger community or nonprofits? • Has my team rallied to support any recent disaster relief efforts? These usually present a one-time opportunity for people to give and/or volunteer. • What is the scope of existing cash and non-cash contributions and how will those be managed and structured in light of the new commitments and strategy?
Operating practices	• Does my company have an advisory board or any external stakeholders in the community I should engage?
Product or services (for impact)	• Does the company currently issue product grants? • Do any of my company’s products or services touch nonprofits or social impact organizations? • Do we already have nonprofit customers? • Does my company or product target a specific underserved community or social challenge? Your product may open up a whole new path to giving back.
Geography	• Where do our company employees (and potentially customers) live and work? • What are the local issues and are there any pre-existing affiliations and/or expectations to give back in these regions?

“When Okta joined the Pledge 1% movement in 2016, it was a natural extension of values and practices that we had instilled in our organization from day one. Strong company culture and social impact work were important to our founders, Todd McKinnon and Frederic Kerrest, and Okta furthered that commitment when we launched Okta for Good. Over the last five years, we’ve launched a broad range of programs, spanning from employee-driven volunteer events and product donations to deploying long-term philanthropic funding via the Okta for Good Fund.”

Erin Baudo Felter VP of Social Impact & Sustainability

Conduct a Company Self-Assessment and Community Needs Assessment

In order to understand how your company is uniquely positioned to drive meaningful impact, you will want to consider several reflective practices. This can be done sequentially or in separate stages, but the goal is to approach your impact strategy with a well-informed and researched understanding of: (1) the interests and goals of your stakeholders; (2) the unique assets and value you have as a company; (3) community needs, challenges, and opportunities.

Step 1: Solicit key team and stakeholder input

Your impact model can reinforce your culture, values, and brand, so it’s important to dedicate time early on to interview, listen, and gather information from key stakeholders. It’s likely that at least some of your social impact program goals will be rooted in employee engagement, satisfaction, and retention.

Employee insights will help you design your plan. Early engagement of your peers is also a great way to surface potential interest and resources, and to secure buy-in and support as you bring this plan to life.

Step 2: Take inventory of your available assets

One of the most important things you can do is assess your company value proposition and evaluate if there is a clear alignment with a pressing issue area or community need. Rather than create something new, take stock of your company assets that can be leveraged for good, and don’t be afraid to get creative!

Beyond time, product, profit, and equity, consider your influence, ecosystem, customer/partner network, physical office space, extra tech equipment, voice, and more. Keep in mind that some of your best contributions to social impact can piggyback on the work that your cross-functional teams already do really well. If you haven’t already, gain an understanding of what each department does and how it operates so you can more readily figure out ways to integrate your program into the day-to-day operations of your business.

While certainly not all inclusive, take a look at the following questions to spark some initial ideas for how to leverage your existing teams and assets:

Pledge type	Questions to brainstorm available assets	Your response
Leverage your product or service	● What products or services do you offer that you can leverage for social impact? For example, many of our members offer free or discounted licenses for their software technology. ● Can your product be leveraged to support an underserved population (i.e. BIPOC entrepreneurs) or directly address a social need (i.e. food, climate protection, or medical supplies)?
Leverage your team’s time, voice, or platform	●What experts within your team can you leverage to help nonprofits fulfill their missions, serve their constituents, operate more efficiently, and/or raise funds? For example, we often see implementation partners offer free services to nonprofits or consulting firms that take on pro bono clients. ● If you don’t give directly to nonprofits, how can your company help raise support for causes through your network? What events can you leverage or how can you activate your team? Think about inviting a nonprofit partner to display at an event, organizing a crowdfunding campaign, or donating advertising to help raise awareness. ● How can you open doors for community partners to connect with key players and get the support they need? Look outside of your immediate team and think about your vendors, clients, customers, and wider community. ● What causes do your employees care about? What motivates them to speak out? Your company’s brand and leadership can help raise awareness of key issues in the community. Consider how you can exercise your voice and team to spread the word or advocate on behalf of local, national or global causes.
Leverage other resources like physical space	● What space do you have to offer the community? Often nonprofits need meeting rooms, event venues, and spaces to host programs. Your physical workspace is an asset to your community - think about how you can offer free venues for charity events, or if you can even adopt a nonprofit and give them desks on your workfloor. ● Have you recently shifted to a “hybrid” workplace enabling employees to work from anywhere? Do you now have extra desks, chairs, whiteboards, etc? Think about organizations who are in need of these supplies.

Step 3: Research top community needs and determine how your company is uniquely positioned to help

A critical part of developing an informed strategy is to conduct an external needs assessment to understand community needs and urgent social issues. Just as your commercial business likely builds products to meet consumer needs and solve problems, impact strategies should be oriented around real world needs, problems, and opportunities.

There are likely infinite issues and community needs you could tackle. Consider starting this process by delving a bit deeper into either the issue area most closely aligned with your core business (i.e. a fintech company might want to focus on financial education or economic equity) or the shared causes shared by your leadership, employees, partners, and/or customers. Here are some other tips to determine your cause or issue area:

• Leverage the Pledge 1% Member Community, programming, and resources. Connect and learn from Pledge 1% peers addressing similar issues or communities. Tip: As you’re just getting started, consider partnering with peer companies in order to accelerate the impact in the identified impact focus area.

• Read articles and/or consult with subject matter experts in your areas of focus. Solicit input from community stakeholders to refine your priorities. Conduct an informational interview with nonprofits addressing the needs you’ve identified to understand their challenges and listen to their goals and ideas.

• Ask your employees, partners, and/or customers who are passionate about these causes and nonprofits to share resources, articles, and subject matter contacts with you. Your own stakeholders can be a terrific source of information as you come up to speed.

• Reach out to your local community foundation and/or Community Development Financial Institution (CDFI). They will have a grasp on local issue areas and places in need of resources, funding, and support.

• Think of the nonprofits as partners rather than grantees, who will grow with you and help you evolve your work.

Important note: Most nonprofits are under-resourced. Be very careful not to demand too much time or put too much strain on limited staff. Minimize requests for custom reports, speaking engagements, site visits, and/or volunteer activities unless you are compensating them.

Once you understand the pressing needs, evaluate how your company is uniquely positioned to drive impact.

PHILOSOPHY
The world is a better place with more creators in it.

SOCIAL IMPACT MISSION
To empower customers and employees to make a more inclusive and sustainable world through education, jobs, health, and sustainability.

PLEDGE STORY
Unity was founded about 15 years ago as a platform for making video games. Since then, we have matured and become a platform for storytelling across almost every industry. I ran an EdTech company built on Unity and saw huge potential to create pathways to economic opportunity using the product. I joined the Unity team in 2017 as the General Manager and Vice President of Social Impact and Education. We joined the Pledge 1% community in 2020.

At Unity, we believe creativity can and should come from everyone–change happens when all voices are heard.

Our technology is being used to drive meaningful social change from creators who are reimagining what they want this world to look like and advocating for a better future. Their creativity can change the world.

The Unity Social Impact division was launched in 2020 at Unity's IPO with a donation of 750,000 shares. The shares are liquidated every 6 months over a 5 year period and fuel the social impact donations and investments. In addition to the equity grants, Unity also has an employee giving and responsive giving program.

Jessica Lindl

Vice President of Social Impact and Education

So you have your vision and mission. Now you are ready to select your initial impact focus area and line up some nonprofit partners.

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Next:  Select an initial impact focus area