It’s been called by many names. Some may know it as Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR), Corporate Sustainability, ESG, Triple Bottom Line, Conscious Capitalism, or simply social impact.
It refers to the way a business conducts itself, the impact it has on society, or both. These elements are frequently intertwined.
It’s applauded, promoted, sometimes distrusted, even ridiculed—everything in between.
One thing is for sure: you cannot do business as a big brand without it, or you risk the backlash of investors, activists, employees, and consumers.
What is increasingly apparent is that the possibilities for companies to have social impact are endless. And that’s good for everyone, including, and especially, businesses’ bottom lines.
CSR Through the Ages
The term Corporate Social Responsibility was first coined in the 1950s, but companies were practicing it decades before there was a term.
Milton Hershey (yes, that Hershey) began considering the health and welfare of his workers and their families as he built his factory in what was then rural Pennsylvania. While other industrialists of his time also built “company towns,” Hershey’s concern for his employees and their families was genuine. He funded schools, a trolley system, telephone service, and during the Depression, started an ambitious construction program employing hundreds of workers. This was known as the Great Building Campaign, which resulted in The Hotel Hershey, Hershey Theatre, and an impressive junior/senior high school still in use today as Catherine Hall. In short, he invested heavily in his community.
Since that time, there have been many examples of CSR in action. Patagonia’s commitment to environmental stewardship has been embedded into its business model since its founding in 1973.
Other companies have not been so fortunate. Although TOMS became widely recognized for its program of donating a pair of shoes to a child in need for every pair sold, the program became difficult to manage. It turns out that “giving” requires a lot of complicated logistics. Still, their intention served them well and was instrumental in building TOMS into a globally recognized brand.
More recently, Budweiser experienced backlash from its partnership with transgender influencer Dylan Mulvaney. A campaign meant to demonstrate support for the LGBTQ+ community, a social issue important to many consumers today, quickly turned into a Bud Light boycott. To make matters worse, Mulvaney felt threatened and abandoned by the brand when they failed to speak out sooner and more directly.
The Role of Public Relations
One of the most important elements of a successful social impact initiative is alignment with the company’s core mission and values. This is where PR agencies play a critical role. PR agencies work with businesses to identify which social issues are most authentic to their brand and align with their business goals. The authenticity part is key; consumers (and particularly employees) can see through performative activism or “greenwashing.”
PR agencies are also tasked with helping brands tell compelling stories about their commitment to social impact. Media coverage is an essential component. It doesn’t matter how strong the company’s commitment is to social impact or how authentic it is, if it is a closely held secret. Like the proverbial tree falling in the woods, someone has to hear (or read about) it for it to resonate with stakeholders.
The first memorable social impact campaign I recall seeing is Love is Not Abuse, the groundbreaking domestic abuse awareness campaign created by PT&Co and co-founders Patrice Tanaka and Maria Kalligeros on behalf of Liz Claiborne. It was the first time a major brand spoke out about domestic violence. It demonstrated how a brand could successfully align itself with a serious issue that no one was talking about at the time, drive awareness, and help women. The campaign met women exactly where they struggled. Doing good helped untold numbers of women, as well as Liz Claiborne’s shareholders.
Recently, I spoke with Jennifer Norene, founder of Beyond Brand Collective, a digital agency based outside Seattle whose mission is “to do good work for companies that do good.” Much of their work helps clients establish what Jennifer calls “give-back programs,” as well as building partner pages on clients’ websites that showcase the organizations they help. Beyond Brand Collective also publicizes the philanthropic and social impact work the client is already doing. In a refreshing change of pace, Jennifer sometimes needs to drag their good works out of them to tell their story in the most compelling and effective way. She educates her clients that doing good is indeed good for business, and also their communities.
In 2011, former reporter Christen Graham founded the social impact consultancy Giving Strong, based in Maine, on “the belief that there is always more to do in pursuit of a fair, healthy, and just world.” Amen, sister. Giving Strong’s longest-running client is Coastal Enterprises (CEI), a community development financial institution whose work involves listening to the needs of the community and delivering tailored solutions such as entrepreneurship and skills training. As CEI depends on federal and private funding, much of Giving Strong’s work involves communications around the real impact they are making. Graham’s agency has also worked for public companies like IDEX, which tapped Giving Strong to help enhance their formal giving. Giving Strong counseled them through the issues they wanted to be known for, ran surveys, set up benchmarking, and handled the important details necessary to make a bigger impact. The result: the IDEX Foundation.
Catharine Montgomery founded the public relations agency Better Together in 2023 with purpose at its core: to drive social change and advocacy for a just world. With more than a decade of experience working for some of the most recognized agencies, Catharine found herself repeatedly leading employee resource groups (ERGs) for women and people of color. Along the way, she became increasingly drawn to cause and social impact projects. As a Black woman, she had also experienced more than her fair share of bullying, microaggressions, and, in the end, a particularly traumatizing ordeal with an overtly racist colleague. The intersection of her personal experience and her motivation to create social change became the cornerstone of Better Together. Two clients that have enlisted the help of Better Together speak volumes about its reputation, especially as a young agency: Fair Fight Action, the voting rights nonprofit founded by Stacey Abrams, and Girl Rising, a nonprofit working to break barriers to girls’ education.
From CSR to ESG
Not surprisingly, there are cynics (perhaps not in the Spin Sucks community) who accuse CSR of being largely a public relations ploy—a tactic to divert attention away from the real (or perceived) harmful practices a company has engaged in. Clothing brands that use foreign factories with child labor, oil companies that emit vast carbon emissions during refining, or big CPG brands that pollute oceans with microplastics all desperately need help to improve their reputations. Damage to a big brand’s reputation has serious consequences. This is why ESG is the more practical, powerful stepchild of CSR.
Issues once handled by CSR programs now fall under established, well-funded ESG departments, which are set up and counseled by large management consulting companies like McKinsey. ESG is charged with assessing risks, managing stakeholder interests, monitoring category trends, and internal/external communication, all with one end in mind: protecting the company’s stock price and valuation.
Idealists say that social impact is the real goal. Consumers and employees, especially millennials, care deeply about social impact. There is no doubt there is a huge movement to incorporate social impact into businesses of all kinds.
I call it mission. And while I have been accused of being an idealist, I see evidence of it all around, and I’m enough of a realist to know that it is good for business.
Women and Mission
What I see in my work is women creating for-profit businesses that have mission at their very center.
In an EY-sponsored study, researchers found that women entrepreneurs are more likely to focus on connecting their mission directly to their business goals. Women entrepreneurs are also likely to tap into lived experiences for inspiration in building their businesses.
Two brilliant young women building innovative tech solutions are perfect examples of this. Here are there stories:
Shanna Greathouse, founder of Pigybak, longed for some time to incorporate mission into her career. Working in the consulting field for the supply chain industry satisfied her intellectual craving to solve complicated problems, but not her craving for social impact. Perhaps because her family hailed from Appalachia or that some had worked in construction, she had always been sensitive to the disparity in opportunities, the cost of services, and the struggles of small businesses. After buying an old home that needed work, she had an aha moment, and the seeds of Pigybak were planted. Pigybak is a SaaS solution for communities that makes home services more accessible, affordable, and environmentally sustainable by enabling homeowners to “piggyback” on similar jobs scheduled at their neighbors’ homes. This model also allows small business service providers to “piggyback” on their scheduled work, allowing them to grow their client base more efficiently in a neighborhood. It’s like a mashup of Angie’s List, Nextdoor, and Facebook, but unlike social media that incites tension, Pigybak unites neighbors with the common goal of finding reliable services, improving home values, and maintaining neighborhoods. In a country currently divided, opportunities to bridge differences and strengthen relationships with neighbors are desperately needed.
On the other side of the Atlantic, Meral Griffith recently founded a tech company called Hello Nova with a mission that impacts future generations in profound ways. Using prompts, users record stories that are unlocked to beneficiaries after their passing. If you’ve ever wished to hear your mother’s or grandmother’s voice one more time, to know more about their lives, or to hear them tell you a story you hadn’t heard before, you know how much potential this app has for providing comfort and preserving legacies. Meral’s own story informed her mission. Her experience with a fractured family across countries, untimely passings, and a disabled parent inspired her to create a platform to foster intergenerational connections that transcend time and place. Stories that inform, inspire, and comfort have tremendous potential to heal trauma and grief. Hello Nova is an innovative solution to capture those stories.
Mission Helps Us All
Big or small, old or new, brands have an important role to play in the evolution of society. While many brands do not have the foresight to weave social mission and impact into their brand vision, it is never too late to start.
Tapping a PR agency with experience in CSR programs is a good place to begin if you want to align your initiative with your brand identity authentically. Anything less will look performative. It takes specialized expertise to do this work. Yes, it will require investment, but the ROI makes it worthwhile, both in the impact created and the business results.
Of course, we can also create a social mission at the center of our business models. We now know you don’t have to have nonprofit status to do good things. In fact, the complexity of starting and running a nonprofit due to the oversight required can take valuable time and energy away from the mission itself.
There’s something to be said about profit-driven social impact. It’s the best of both worlds.
Mission helps us all. So does doing good work. Let’s all keep doing that.
