Social Impact in 2021 & Beyond

blog posts

Jun 23

2021 is still half full!

As the world reopens, it is doing so with a reinvigorated approach to social impact. After all, our connection to - and impact on - one another has never been clearer.

The work of our clients over this past year has been primarily focused on designing, building, and growing social impact work to ensure it is both meaningful and built to last.

From leading brands to family offices, and from renowned foundations to multinational NGOs, it has been our privilege to help incredible clients grow their work.

Read on for more about where they have been focusing their efforts, what we’ve learned as we celebrated 5 Years of Beyond, and don’t miss our Client Spotlight, Beyond in the News, and our Mid-Year Checklist that YOU can use right now to be sure you’re on track during this important year!

Where Focus Goes, Energy Flows!

Across our three primary categories of clients, we’ve seen a priority focus on the following:

Nonprofits
- Board Growth, Development & Engagement
  “Not every organization with a great board will achieve its highest and best purpose, but no organization will achieve its highest and purpose without a great board.”
  Leadership starts at the top! A right-sized, fully equipped, and regularly engaged board separates good from great with most of our clients. This work has proven so in-demand that we created a “hidden” part of our website where you can read more about our approach. Interested? Contact Us and we’ll send you the link!
- Operations with an Employee Engagement (and HR) Focus
  People still make the world, great organizations, and serious social impact go round! Supporting those people all day, every day, with the policies, procedures, and practices that may not be glamorous but are critically important to laying the foundation upon which great culture is built has proven time and again to be the key to success for the best and brightest organizations working to make the world a better place!
  Want us to take a fresh look at your approach and help you design, build, and grow for an even greater future? Drop us a note and we’ll be happy to do so.
- Program and Partnership Development
  Programs and partnerships are the lifeblood of every nonprofit. It has become increasingly clear to us that there is an actual recipe for success for growing amazing programs and partnerships. Let us know if you’d like to discuss how it might help your organization’s programs and partnerships.
Businesses
- Designing & Building for Impact Like Never Before
  Board, C-Suite, and Senior Leadership are more focused than ever on their current social impact profile, their desire for greater impact, and closing the gap between the two by starting where their stakeholders are and moving to where they all want to go together. “Vision drives mission” - and we’ve never seen a clearer private sector vision for impact than we have this past year. We’re helping those clients with our simple, scalable, 4-step approach to private sector social impact success. Reach out if you'd like us to help your business too!

Cross-Sector Partnerships
- Moving Markets, Making Impact
  Businesses working with nonprofits. Nonprofits working with businesses. Social enterprises designed for impact from the start. And governments engaging with each/all of the above drives dynamic results that scale. We love helping build these big, bold cross-sector initiatives. If you need help with yours, just let us know!

5 Years of Beyond!

As we celebrated the 5 year anniversary of Beyond last October, we looked back at top takeaways from our work to date (and the 15 years prior on which this work is built).
Here’s what we found:

Impact Matters More than Ever - Every business, organization, individual and dollar has impact. Being intentional about it is what matters most and is increasingly in demand.
Success Leaves Clues - There are patterns for social impact success. We’ve observed these patterns emerge in our work to help design, build, scale, and evolve the best of the past 20 years.
Simplicity Scales - Our approach is uniquely rooted in simplicity that emerges in the patterns produced by replicable systems, processes, and resulting outcomes.
A Beyond Simple Toolkit - There’s an actual toolkit that has resulted from our work. From Board to Operations to Programs to Partnerships, the toolkit supports it all and makes the hardest things simpler. From Governance to Compliance to Legal to Enterprise Support Operations, a systems approach that works for any and every organization is absolutely possible to predictably implement. It’s the same toolkit we deploy with our clients and one we’re working hard to get into a book so we can make it available to everyone. Stay tuned!

Client Spotlight

Leveraging Platforms, Profiles & Passion for Impact: The Will & Jada Smith Family Foundation is supporting youth book clubs with the goals of influencing young fans into finding a new love of reading, culture, self-expression, self-healing, and self-awareness concurrently with Will Smith’s upcoming book tour.

Cross-Sector Social Impact in Action: Tent Partnership for Refugees, a non-profit organization established by Chobani founder & CEO Hamdi Ulukaya, has launched its UNSTUCK initiative: a new, market-driven way for companies to create jobs for refugees through their supply chains. By making products that consumers love and buy, this new model creates employment opportunities for the most vulnerable people in our societies. Watch for the UNSTUCK label on products in stores soon!
Board Growth & Development: The Marguerite Casey Foundation has added seven new incredible Board members as part of its efforts to bring in new perspectives on fulfilling the Foundation’s mission. New Board members include Stacey Abrams, Rashad Robinson, and Ian Fuller.