What impact has COVID-19 and the racial justice movement had on corporate social responsibility (CSR)? The Association of Corporate Citizenship Professionals (ACCP) partnered with Rocket Social Impact to research just that. Join Carolyn Berkowitz, President and CEO of ACCP, on today’s episode to learn all about it and what motivated their research.

Topics Discussed in This Episode:

• What the ACCP does
• What motivated the research on the intersection of COVID-19 and racial justice
• What trends and data the research revealed on CSR budgets, importance to the C-suite, staffing needs
• Integration between CSR teams and other teams in companies (DEI, HR, ESG, Marketing)
• How to access the report: The Impact of Pandemic & Racial Justice Movement on CSR

Resources:

Carolyn Berkowitz

ACCP resources

The Impact of Pandemic & Racial Justice Movement on CSR

Quotes: 

“The expectations of CEOs and of senior leadership is significantly raising the game. They want to be reported to more frequently and want to have a greater hand in the [social responsibility] work.”

“There’s a heightened demand for measurement and there is not necessarily an increase in the internal resources to do that work… We’ve got to have the right people in the right places to do the volume of work that is expected and necessary to make change.”

“40% of companies in the survey said that they are making a long-term CSR focus-area shift. 64% of those are shifting or adding racial justice and racial equity as a priority.”

Federal grants complicate the budgeting process. You have to consider a lot of different scenarios, and you don’t have any room for error. In today’s episode, you’ll hear from Stacy Fitzsimmons and learn more about budgeting for Community Health Centers when grants are part of the picture. Listen in to learn about where to start with your budget, why you need to break costs into buckets, and how to get yourself audit-ready.

Topics Discussed in This Episode:

• The biggest challenge of grant budgeting
• Creating a realistic, achievable budget
• Where to start with your budget
• Using budget categories for your expenses
• Breaking down cost buckets
• Knowing how much money you’ve spent and how much is left
• The joint responsibility for budgeting
• Planning the budgeting cycles for different scenarios
• Putting guardrails in place
• How to set yourself up to be audit-ready
• Documentation back-up
• Having policies and procedures that support how you use your system
• Using budgeting and expense tracking to tie into performance measures

Resources:

Stacy Fitzsimmons

eBook: Set up Your Community Health Center for Federal Grant Success: https://hello.blackbaud.com/budgeting-for-community-health.html  

Whitepaper: Data-Driven Decision Making for Community Health Centers https://hello.blackbaud.com/Datat-Driven-Decisions-eBook.html

Quotes: 

“With this type of budgeting, you’ll also be setting yourself up for success and making sure that all of your funds are traceable within the accounting system by your grant award.”

“Why I recommend this is that you will then be able to report against your budget by these categories when you’re asked to report against it.”

“If you have documentation that supports that expense entry, upload it with your entry so that documentation is right there.”

What is corporate purpose? What are the current rules for corporate purpose? And why do we need to redefine them? In today’s interview with Judy Samuelson, Founder and Executive Director of the Aspen Business and Society Program, you’ll learn about her new book, The Six New Rules of Business, and why she’s been on a mission to disrupt economist Milton Friedman’s narrative about corporate purpose.

Topics Discussed in This Episode:

• Judy’s role at The Aspen Institute
• Judy’s campaign to disrupt Milton Friedman’s narrative about corporate purpose
• Why Judy’s proposed new rules are necessary
• How to start thinking about the rules
• Companies that are leading the way
• Advice for leaders who don’t understand yet that change is needed
• Where listeners can find Judy

Resources:

Judy Samuelson

The Six New Rules of Business: Creating Real Value in a Changing World by Judy Samuelson

The Aspen Institute

Quotes: 

“I like to say single objective functions, whether it’s about stock price or customers, rarely ends well.”

“In order to do very much, to last for very long, you simply have to be balancing the inputs that are critical to the health of the enterprise.”

“Sustainability is not an end game either, it’s a mindset.”

“Today the responsibility of companies is defined way outside the gate of the business.”

“To solve the most complex problems we need to bring people together, we need to bring these remarkably powerful institutions that we call business together to collaborate to go deeper into systems and change the norm.”

GivingTuesday isn’t a new or unexpected event, but some organizations struggle to make the most of it. Whether it’s learning how to better engage supporters or improving results over previous years, standing up a successful campaign may seem overwhelming. With 2021’s GivingTuesday coming up sooner than you may think, Sophia Latto joins the podcast to give expert advice on what organizations can do to seize the GivingTuesday and make it a repeatable success.

Topics Discussed in This Episode:

• What Sophia would tell organizations about starting their planning for 2021
• The importance of engaging imagery
• How to prepare in advance
• Communication cadence and frequency
• Strategy and segmentation
• How to improve past GivingTuesday performance
• Setting attainable goals
• Thanking your donors

Resources:

Sophia Latto

Blackbaud's GivingTuesday Toolkit

Quotes: 

“It’s important to connect a personal story about real people with your impact for GivingTuesday.”

“I always think of GivingTuesday as being the kickoff to end of year fundraising.”

“Keeping it simple will help you keep everything streamlined.”

“Think in terms of engagement and build that relationship and that goodwill with your constituents before you hit them with hard asks.”