Turn purpose into an impactful social mission

An effective social mission creates positive change in the world, enhances ROI in CSR, sustainability and philanthropy investments and inspires employees.

Your social mission sets the stage for your contribution and the larger WE problems you solve. It defines how you create positive social impact and how your brand engages with employees, customers and other stakeholders to connect them with something bigger. When a social mission (or impact statement) aligns with purpose, it enhances the return on your investments in CSR, sustainability, volunteer programs and philanthropy, focusing efforts on more meaningful impact and preventing “mission creep.” The most successful social missions are designed to empower employees and integrate on some level with business operations.

Whether it’s using your social mission as an employee engagement tool, embedding it into your business model and operations or anything in between, our process for defining it is collaborative—incorporating a wider systems lens and exploring how employees and key stakeholders define your purpose and relate it to social impact and the current corporate social responsibility, community engagement and sustainability issues they’re solving.

Workshop objectives:

• Using a systems perspective gain a clearer understanding of how your purpose relates to positive social impact
• Explore how employees/other stakeholders define your purpose in terms of social good
• Relate findings to identify your “something bigger,” to align and define your social mission

Workshop outcomes:

• An understanding of how you live within bigger narratives – those of your employees, customers other stakeholders
• Stress tested purpose statement of “why we’re in business” that’s inspiring, engaging and authentic
• Operating principles or pillars that support your purpose
• List of implications and next steps to begin taking action now