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Businesses Improving Customers’ Lives Through Social Impact

B the Change Jul 22, 2019
This article is deemed a must-read by one or more of our expert collaborators.
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Businesses Improving Customers’ Lives Through Social Impact Giving Compass
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Giving Compass’ Take:

• B the Change honors top corporations that are improving the lives of their customers and achieving high social impact along the way. Some of the businesses leaders share their approach as to how they accomplish goals for their organization. 

• How can other organizations emulate the same patterns and perspectives in order to achieve social impact?

• Learn about five inspiring social impact trends.


All successful companies put their customers first, but Best For the World: Customers honorees seek to improve their customers live in measurable ways. Honorees score in the top 10 percent in the customers section of the B Impact Assessment, which is administered by B Lab to qualify a for-profit business as a Certified B Corporation. Many Customers honorees focus on underserved populations or provide products or services that solve a social or environment issue.

We asked several Best For The World: Customers companies to share their insights into how businesses and business leaders can care for the planet while achieving business success. Below are some of their responses.

  • Guild Education: Guild Education pioneered an approach to offering education as a benefit, providing greater access to education for the 64 million U.S. working adults who have yet to earn a college degree. All of our certificates and credentials stack into college degrees and programs valued by the market and the workforce.
  • Caspian Impact Investment Adviser Private Limited: We work with a clear mandate to achieve positive social and environmental impact in our work. So, we provide equity and debt funding to companies that work in high-impact sectors and encourage them to track metrics of their social and/or environmental impact.
  • NorthStar Asset Management Inc.: As a socially progressive investment firm, we use shareholder activism to encourage companies to protect employees, communities, and the environment. Many of our efforts center on the intersection of environmental issues, human rights, economic inequality, and racial justice.

Read the full article about high social impact at B the Change.

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Corp Giving and CSR is a complex topic, and others found these selections from the Impact Giving archive from Giving Compass to be good resources.

  • This article is deemed a must-read by one or more of our expert collaborators.
    Click here for more.
    Why to Be Wary of Corporate Leaders’ Win-win Solutions

    Strategies for business-led “win-win” solutions to social and environmental problems—in which companies can promote social good and profit thereby—have gained wide appeal. Associated terms such as “shared value,” “circular economy,” “base of the pyramid,” and “reverse innovation” now pepper corporate reports and foundation websites. Corporate leaders, such as the members of the Business Roundtable, propose that they can simultaneously advance both profit and purpose. Famous academics contend that capitalism itself can be reinvented. The coauthors of this article have a long association with several of these so-called win-win ideas. Given our backgrounds, one would think that we would find the present popularity of win-win strategies heartening. Instead, we are alarmed. We know that these strategies rely on improbable mechanisms, promise implausible outcomes, and boast effectiveness that outstrips available evidence. We believe that they also inflict harm because they distract the business world and society from making the difficult choices needed to address pressing social and environmental issues. Their shiny appeal distracts us from adopting more effective strategies whose costs require careful weighing. The influence of these ideas is hard to overstate. They have reached the world’s biggest companies, informed White House strategy, shifted lobbying, and shaped international policy. In October 1993, President Bill Clinton unveiled his Climate Change Action Plan, which leaned on voluntary programs to help firms profitably reduce energy use and toxic emissions and design more efficient products. President Barack Obama’s November 2016 Climate Action Plan assumed that 20 percent of proposed CO2 reductions could be accomplished through “cost-effective energy efficiency.” The idea that firms could profit by solving social and environmental problems went, as business and sustainability scholar Andrew Hoffman observed, “from heresy to dogma.” Read the full article about the dangers of win-win solutions by Andrew A. King and Kenneth P. Pucker at Stanford Social Innovation Review.


Are you ready to give?

In addition to learning and connecting with others, taking action is a key step towards becoming an impact giver. If you are interested in giving with impact for Corp Giving and CSR take a look at these Giving Funds, Charitable Organizations or Projects.

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