What's the one thing you wish you had known?

[RoseSpitzer]

Welcome! We're all very excited to discover helpful tidbits from leaders who’ve created, operationalized, scaled, and
pivoted their own impact models and initiatives.  To start the conversation, I thought I'd ask: 

What do you wish you would have known when you first took the Pledge and started building your program? 

cc:

@melissablee @Miles_Procore @LaurenCoberly @Gabrielacrego @SarahFarris @Nisha_K @lkeeler @cruiseforgood @codywooten 

[Gabrielacrego]

Great question, Rose!

When we first took the pledge, it would be great to know better about:

• How to really make social impact into the company's DNA and not be "silo operation", that also connects with how to integrate impact programs indicators and metrics, with the company goals.

We are working and studying more about it currently (after 2 years of program), and we can see how important it is to look at it from the beginning. 

We can already see great results coming 🙂

[RoseSpitzer]

Hi Gabriela, thank you for sharing this. It definitely makes sense that building internal models that incorporate social impact would be key, right from the beginning. I know we also encourage our new pledge members to include their employee's thoughts and ideas while building out their program as it can help so much with engagement down the road. 
I would love to hear more about you've integrated social impact metrics into the company goals and how that has encouraged engagement and your success!

[melissablee]

Great question Rose! 

I wish I'd known that to track impact well, focus was key. 

When I first joined Atlassian, I ran a campaign that saw almost $200k donated to charity. It sounds good, in theory, but when I tried to assess the impact of all those donations to hundreds of different charities, I couldn't tell you what our impact was. And worst of all, I couldn't tell our Atlassians (who had personally donated) either.

After that, I remember doing an Atlassian Town Hall and promising to track the impact of our donations. I then surveyed our 250 employees (it was 2012) to ask them to decide on our areas of focus. Education, Youth and Disadvantage were at the top of the list. Almost a decade later, they still are. And the best part, we can track our impact.

[RoseSpitzer]

Hi Melissa, 

I LOVE that you selected your areas of focus by surveying your employees. Did you also see increased participation by giving them a voice?
How to track your impact is one of the questions that we often get. We're hoping to produce some additional resources on that topic this year. Especially around how to have that conversation  with your nonprofit partner and how to set them up for successfully tracking impact in an efficient way. If you're open to it, I might reach out as we start that project and get your insight/advice! 
Thanks for sharing your tips here on the community!