In a world where many organizations are striving to make an economic impact, adding social impact to an organizations goals is helping improve their credibility. From small ideas within communities to large nonprofit organization projects, the opportunity to make a difference is enormous. Career driven employees are choosing to work only for organizations (for profit and non profit organizations) who conduct themselves in an honest and ethical manner. This trend is now forcing organizations to re-think the image they are portraying to their prospective employees.
Before going any further on this topic, it is important to define the term social change. What is it? And what does it stand for?
Social change modifies the social order of a society and this includes changes in social institutions (including non profit organizations), behaviors or relationships. With this definition in mind, we can go further by asking: How can organizations support social change?
Below are some tips on how organizations support social change
1) Organizations (For Profit and Non Profit Organizations) need clearly defined values: Defined values are a key factor when affecting social change. Organizations (for profit and non profit organizations) need to ask critical questions such as: What do we stand for? What difference are we trying to make in the world? To redefine values, organizations can use a collective thinking for this update. Organizations can also put together workshops where employees are encouraged to suggest values that they believe can reflect social changes.
2) Foster Healthy dialogue around social issues: Having a conversation around social change is not always the most comfortable thing to do, but it can be a great tool to have. In a bid to foster social change dialog, having a social change champion is a good tactic to employ. Find out the employees that are passionate about promoting social issues? Consider appointing them as activists to lead the conversation around important social topics. Being present in the discussion is how organizations support social change.
3) Create Volunteering programs: A good way to show your support for meaningful and impactful social change is to partner with organizations that are already making social strides in the community. Encourage your employees and partners to take part in volunteering by organizing events within your organization that introduce them to these social causes. Most people love the idea of giving back and by doing this you create a win-win situation in your organization. By establishing an environment where people feel that they are doing more than just building a career and helping with profit making.
4) Encourage customers to participate in social changes: This might work best for an organization with a large customer base but it is worth pursing regardless of the size of an organization’s customer base. Creating an engaging event around a social cause is a good way to kick-start an organization’s social change project. For example, Innocent drinks, a UK based smoothie making manufacturer started putting little knitted hats on their smoothies back in 2003, giving 25p to Age UK (A UK Nonprofit that promotes causes for the elderly) for every behatted bottle sold (These knitted hats were made by their customers).
Lastly, you can get to directly sponsor your employees to take part in social causes.
We hope that by reading this article you now have more ideas on how organizations support social change. And that you can adopt any of the tips we have given you and turn them into actionable projects.
As part of our social change vision, PACTMAN will offer a fundraising platform that will use technological change to help people give back to causes they are passionate about. If this article was helpful, please let us know. If you have any other further questions also, please let us know.
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