Next Stage - Social Impact Services

Social good strategy to amplify your impact

Thought Leadership

Rumination, Reflection & Communities of Practice

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Community is a hot topic these days. After years of pandemic separation and responding to crisis after crisis, we’re seeing more energy and interest in collaboration than ever before. When we launched Profit & Purpose last year, we noted that nonprofits and companies alike were ready for more dynamic partnerships that tackled big community problems – and many of the projects coming from these partnerships are exciting.

In the last six months, we’ve seen collaborations around FAFSA and making post-secondary education more accessible, partnerships that invest in hyper-local education projects and groups imagining what a future workforce needs to be successful. While many partnerships are in their earliest days, we are having more conversations than ever before about collaboration and how we can build something stronger, more resilient and more community-driven.

The conversation isn’t limited to nonprofits and CSR divisions of companies. Our communities are facing some big challenges around education, housing, workforce development and more. And, nearly every community institution is reckoning with how to best engage and help work towards big solutions. I snapped to attention in my own church yesterday when the topic of community came up yet again and I found this line to be especially profound (thanks, Matt O’Neill!).

 “Alone we ruminate. Together we reflect.” 

Rumination is the act of thinking about a single idea, turning it over and over again in our minds. At its best, this is meditative and deep – but more often it is repetitive and crazy-making. Several definitions compare it to a ‘cow chewing cud’ – which is great for cows but not so great for innovation and productive action. (I went to middle school next to a cow field. Trust me when I say that cows are not known for their decisive action and quick thinking).

To reflect means to think deeply about something but I like this definition better: ‘to give something back, as light or sound.’ I think this is an incredible definition of collaboration done well. When we reflect together we’re able to see ourselves, along with different points of view with more clarity. We gain the ability to see the full picture – including things we couldn’t see when we were ruminating alone.

In the social good space, collaboration is a hotter topic than ever. We all believe that the way forward is together – so how do we do this effectively?

Communities of Practice

As we continue to build out the Cultivate platform, we’ve been more and more inspired by communities of practice. The term was coined in 1991 by Etienne and Beverly Wenger-Trayner, who described communities of practice as “groups of people who share a concern or a passion for something they do and learn how to do it better as they interact regularly.”

So simple – but so powerful. The heart of a thriving community of practice is the combination of shared expertise, community and active practice. Last week, Josh shared that we’re studying Impact Networks and putting this concept into practice on our Cultivate network. Here is why we believe that communities of practice are the way forward as we tackle complex, community-level challenges:

Communities of Practice break down silos. 

There’s been a lot of talk about silos in the last several years. Nonprofits, companies, foundations, neighborhoods and governments are all working on community-level challenges – but no one organization has all the answers and resources needed. Conversations about more collaboration and bringing more people to the table have rightfully been prevalent – but actually shifting to a collaborative model is challenging.

Communities of practice break the silos because the requirements for joining are so simple – a concern or passion for an issue and the regular practice of it. This means that anyone with both concern and credible practice can be ‘at the table.’ Once a trusted community has been established, it isn’t bound by the typical norms of a single entity setting the agenda and sending invitations.

Companies, large foundations, community leaders, day-to-day practitioners of the work, faith communities, academic institutions and more can work directly together. This is where reflection feels so powerful – when we sit in a community centered on a specific issue (vs. title or organization) we see the strengths, experiences and expertise of a range of people reflected back at us, moving us forward and giving us new ways to think about challenges.

Communities of Practice solve problems faster. 

Early in the pandemic, I had the opportunity to spend time with UCITY Family Zone, an organization that leverages a community of practice model. They work at a neighborhood level, bringing together grassroots leaders alongside local institutions to bring forward community-driven solutions across a range of issues, including health, food security, education and more. In mid-2020, they let me join a virtual meeting of neighborhood leaders who were responding to COVID crises that were outside the purview of any one organization. In one case, they discussed an apartment fire that had left several families without a home. In just minutes, a nonprofit, a church and a neighborhood leader had checked every challenge off the list and ensured that these families would be housed, fed and helped to find new housing – an activity that would typically have taken multiple calls to multiple organizations over several hours.

While this is a highly-localized example, this process makes responding to challenges faster and easier to reach. Because these organizations had taken the time to establish trust, they were able to quickly bring forward their resources and ideas together, rather than problem-solving on their own, creating wins for everyone involved.

Communities of Practice make the work bigger.
Nearly every leader we speak with right now has ‘system-change’ top of mind. This is true of grassroots leaders, institutional leaders, academic leaders and everyone in between. We know our systems need to be evaluated and revised – but how can we do this when we only have the power of our single institution? Again – alone, we ruminate.

When we work in communities of practice, the work becomes more than just the tasks we take on at our individual organizations. It becomes about the system as a whole and how collaboration can build greater outcomes. The systems are too big and too complex for any of us to tackle on our own – no one person or organization has the expertise, resources and network to tackle it all.

But when we reflect together we gain new perspectives, more creative solutions, more robust networks and a greater bank of resources. Working in community projects a stronger, louder voice and more robust discussion – making the work bigger than any one institution or individual and creating wins across the board.

Building an Intersection

We believe communities of impact – or impact networks – are a highly effective way to bring stakeholders together to tackle big community challenges. As we continue to build our Cultivate platform, we plan to build a space that offers a highly collaborative environment that enables stakeholders from across communities to come together around specific topics for learning, discussion and problem-solving.

We believe that meeting at the ‘intersection’ of our work is where the most effective work happens. Communities of practice are the act of building this intersection where we can come together, bringing our best ideas and resources forward to build the community we want – together.

The Social Determinants of… Everything

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Determinant (noun): a factor which decisively affects the nature or outcome of something; serving to determine or decide

Why are things the way they are?

As a strategist, it is often my job to identify leading factors influencing outcomes. I do this typically to help a group of people – a nonprofit organization or a company – come up with a set of activities to influence those factors to create a more favorable outcome. So as a rule, I’m usually trying to pick apart the underlying drivers of outcomes.

This can make it difficult to be around me sometimes. I am accused of making leaps of logic when really I’m just playing out scenarios in my head. And while that works pretty well when playing board games, it can get a little annoying half-way through a movie.

Some of this is about intuition and ‘a gut feeling,’ but most often it is a function of data. And when it comes to the underlying drivers affecting disinvested communities, the data is pretty clear – the deck is stacked against people experiencing poverty. Following more than two years of the pandemic, these factors have never been more pronounced or wide-ranging. That is why we’ve taken to calling it ‘the social determinants of everything.’

Risk Factors Influencing Health

If you are familiar with the term ‘social determinants,’ it is likely through its connection to health. The concept of the social determinants of health (SDH) existed more than 100 years before the World Health Organization’s Commission on Social Determinants of Health convened in 2005. The resulting report focused on the social factors that lead to ill health and health inequities globally.

One of the oft-quoted statistics from the report is that activities inside a clinical setting, like at a doctor’s office or hospital, only account for 20% of one’s health outcomes. Fully 80% of what influences a person’s health are factors unrelated to receiving medical care – things like food access, housing, education and environmental factors. As an example, if someone has mold in their home, that person will continue having respiratory issues a physician can only do so much to address.

SDH are a big part of the future of healthcare in America and are essential for driving down the cost of healthcare, particularly for disinvested populations. As Medicaid undergoes transformation in North Carolina to a managed care model, health systems are working to drive more community-based approaches that attempt to work upstream of health complications, tackling preventative care that avoids costly health interventions that lead to poor outcomes. It represents a costing model that aligns with the best interests of patients.

In short, we can’t just focus on healthcare if we want people to be healthier. We have to look at the whole picture, to understand that there are other factors affecting health. It requires thinking outside of silos.

It means talking about systems.

Determinants vs. Drivers

Some have begun using the term ‘social drivers’ instead of ‘social determinants,’ or else use them interchangably. A recent report by Ann Somers Hogg with the Christensen Institute makes a strong and well-reasoned argument for replacing the term ‘determinants’ with ‘drivers.’

Determinants do suggest a pre-determined path based on a set of factors. We stand behind the phrase ‘social determinants’ because systems have been built and perpetuated that produce these outcomes – they are not merely drivers but social constructs. Many of the risk factors that lead to poor health outcomes are the same for educational success, employment and economic mobility. And the reality is that many of these factors are driven by systemic frameworks.

That is not to say that self-efficacy is not a significant influence on outcomes – it is the most important factor determining an individual’s success. But it would be unfair to lift up individual achievement in the face of such overwhelming odds and suggest that the underlying social factors that made it so difficult were just part of the equation. It shouldn’t be this difficult, and acknowledging that decisive factors were in place makes that achievement all the more significant. And too rare.

As we take stock of not only our community but the global consequences of the recent pandemic, we can see that a myriad of pre-conditions led to a weakened system of care and slow responses. We can see how everything is connected.

We’ve written about this before, this notion of overlap and ‘mutuality.’ With COVID-19, we now understand how community health affects commerce, for example. We can see the complexity of the systems in which we operate and how every social issue has a likelihood to impact you personally – your family, your work and your community.

Today, we’re asking you to apply that same understanding of mutuality to those who are least well-positioned to thrive when times are tough. If the factors influencing your own success over the last 2+ years were complicated and layered, can you fathom what it must be like for someone experiencing poverty even in the best of times?

The Future of Mutuality

At Next Stage, we believe we are at an incredibly important juncture in history. Our recent experiences as a society have the potential to create a rare moment of empathy. Not only can we see ourselves in the struggles of others, we also have had a glimpse behind the curtain and know that our systems are fallible.

What will we do with this knowledge? Of late, we have noticed in some a desire to ‘get back to the way things were’ before disruption was a part of the daily grind. This is a missed opportunity to use our newfound empathy and systemic awareness to rebuild stronger and more equitably. But to do that, we’re going to need to address some things:

Increased Collaboration – We all need to be working together, now more than ever. Nonprofits accustomed to operating in a sector like health, education or housing need to see that other program providers are not just creating wrap-arounds on your programming – their work is as important as your own. But nonprofits are just the most visible frameworks for collaboration. The much bigger need is for our municipalities to work in concert with the private sector to get to the root causes of inequity. Nonprofits, government and businesses have never been more aligned than in the climb back from the pandemic – it is time to demonstrate a new model in practice.

Stronger Advocacy Efforts – It has been amazing to see the repositioning of advocacy in society. Everywhere you look, efforts to drive ‘community voice’ and ‘trust-built philanthropy’ have renewed energy and context. Institutions that may have seen ‘flexing their voice’ as a risk are now building advocacy plans, and it heartens us at Next Stage. We believe this moment of empathy and system awareness will fade if it is not kept alive through advocacy efforts. We cannot afford to forget what we have learned together and we need more human-centered ways of unpacking how our systems create the inequity we are committed to overcoming.

Investment in Data & Analytics – The overlapping factors influencing someone’s success are myriad and complicated to map. As a people, we prefer simple equations that make it easy to understand how to move forward. A general lack of real-time data and analytics is partly to blame, with disconnected databases throughout our community unable to build a more complete picture for us all. We are living at a time of incredible computing and data access – it is time we pointed that innovation at helping us understand how these risk factors are linked.

Last year, we rebranded our firm ‘to work at the intersection of social good.’ The concepts of mutuality and social determinants suggested that our narrowed focus on strategy for nonprofits was only one part of the bigger story. That realization, a growing one over our eight years as a firm, led to an important juncture – either we accept it or do something about it. We chose the latter, and it has led to a new journey for us as a firm and for me as a professional. I’ve never felt more determined and purpose-driven in my life.

How have you been affected by all that we’ve learned together? How is it changing how your nonprofit, company or municipality operates? Are you similarly feeling called to ‘a different way of being?’

I sure hope so. The future of many people is depending on it.

What Movement Are You Leading?

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I’m back with another installment in our series unpacking how the shift from Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) to Environment Social & Governance (ESG) is transforming… well, everything. I’d encourage you to read our earlier primers on the differences between CSR and ESG and the role risk is playing in the ESG pivot as a preface to this article.

As Janet covered last week, we have spent the last year continuing our study of how social impact is evolving inside corporate America. We think it’s a pretty big deal, both for the nonprofit organizations we originally built our business to serve and to society as a whole. We’ve reframed our company’s entire theory of change as a result of this research and have constructed a business plan into the future to scale our new approach.

What we’ve learned is that the work we have done with nearly 200 nonprofits since 2014 is ultimately not that much different than the paradigm shift we are navigating with private sector companies. Both are being powered by people, and helping lead movements of people is what Next Stage is all about.

The Shift from Sustainability to ESG

While it may seem like ESG came out of nowhere as a disruption to private sector businesses, it has been a movement two decades in the making. ‘Corporate charity’ existed for the better part of the 20th century, but the new millennium brought with it a greater degree of focus on environmental sustainability. Companies began to pay attention to their carbon footprint, particularly those businesses with complicated supply chains that required significant logistics. The debate over climate change may have raged politically, but many companies were quietly beginning process modification and change management. 

These efforts grew into what we now call ‘sustainability,’ and for many companies it became a significant part of their corporate cultures. The first Chief Sustainability Officers were seen in the early 2010s as companies sought to be proactive. As we covered in our last deep dive on this topic, the risk of regulation was a motivating factor for companies that began to see a societal shift on the horizon.

Running concurrent with sustainability inside the corporate construct have been other expressions of social consciousness. As previously noted, corporate social responsibility predated sustainability but rarely was directly connected to the strategic arm of the business. For most companies, this expression has lived disconnected from the rest of the business, not reporting into any of the departments it logically impacts like human resources or marketing.  

Related efforts arose in other areas of the business model. Initiatives to create increased diversity in the workforce began as expressions of human resources, eventually evolving into more mature goal setting around inclusion and equity that led to the creation of DEI as a strategic imperative. Some companies have recently added Chief Diversity Officers as DEI has taken on new energy in the wake of increased calls for racial justice following the murder of George Floyd in 2020. Identity has been a big part of the emergence of employee resource groups (ERGs) that have become expressions of workplace culture.

The challenge for companies right now is that they are applying what previously worked for sustainability in a new era of change that ESG is signaling. A combination of corporate counsel and sustainability leaders are being tasked with a new form of risk with regulatory implications. Except this time, the field of play is focused on new human-centered metrics that are more difficult to manage. If sustainability was primarily centered on operational change management, this new focus on ESG is more expansively reaching into all aspects of the business model. And at stake, more than ever before, is public perception driven by customers, employees and shareholders.

Leading the People Powering a Movement

We know that sounds sort of ominous. We have been wrestling with how to frame the opportunity that is in front of institutions of all types and finding that a little bit of scary-sounding rhetoric is needed to get the attention of decision-makers. Like the nonprofits we’ve worked with for so long, sometimes you have to talk about the downside risk of inaction.

But Next Stage is far more optimistic about what this change means for all of us, for a society that is increasingly becoming more plugged in to how we all have a voice through collective action. What has been termed as ‘generational change,’ of a Millennial and Gen-Z-led effort to bring values front and center, can no longer be compartmentalized. These young people are not aging into acceptance of previous norms. Instead, they are reshaping the world through a renewed focus on ethics and guiding principles. 

For a guy who has dedicated his career to advancing social good, it is hard to see this as anything but a win.

We believe this need not be seen as a disruptive force for the private sector. America is founded not only on democratic ideals but capitalistic ones as well. We believe in a free market, and that market is increasingly declaring itself. How will your company (or nonprofit) respond?

We liken this paradigm shift to others that have come before it, to the industrial revolution, the rise of digital technology, the advent of the Internet and the emergence of social media. Each of these advancements challenged leading institutions to make a choice – to either fiercely protect the status quo that had worked so many years, or to make changes to stay contemporary to a new reality. For every Sears that refused to make those changes fast enough there is an Amazon, a new company that seeks to harness the paradigm shift into a powerful expression. 

This movement has the potential to help solve problems that have long plagued our communities, if we can harness the power of collective will and ownership. 

The New Realities of Collective Ownership

We use the word ‘collective’ intentionally. Social media, the most recent paradigm shift, has changed society in ways both good and bad. One way it has been used effectively is in galvanizing people to action in service to shared values. 

In this way, we believe all of the brands we engage with are collectively owned – we either feel they express us or they don’t – and increasingly that determination is being made not only through regulatory processes but in the court of public opinion. 

It is a space Next Stage knows very well. We have long championed the 501c3 nonprofit as a collectively owned construct, powerful in the ways it leverages mission, vision, values and guiding principles to build buy-in toward tackling society’s toughest challenges. It takes care to knit together the many constituencies that make up the nonprofit business model including board members, staff, volunteer, donors, and perhaps most importantly, the people served by the nonprofit. Ensuring all feel ownership in the model creates the sense of belonging that fuels the nonprofit. Without a shared belief in the nonprofit – in its virtuousness, deep commitment and strategic savviness – it would be entirely ineffective no matter how many resources it has. The nonprofit model is collectively owned.

The new reality for the private sector is that we believe their business model is also collectively owned – not because the IRS designates it as such, but because customers, employees and shareholders have decided that it is.

A New Private Sector Paradigm

Next Stage has arrived at a moment of clarity about what we are here to do. Our new brand manifesto is in the final stages of development and I could not be more excited. It speaks to our work in helping our clients lead movements, of “building a less lonely path for the visionaries and changemakers” who aspire to reshape the world.

There is a critical need for business leaders in that matrix. Social impact will always be a small expression if we think of it as belonging solely to nonprofit organizations. We believe fiercely that nonprofits can be effective and powerful partners to the private sector in unlocking their pent-up potential, but the much bigger movement we want to be a part of is dependent upon the business sector.

We see so much potential in our private sector clients, to not only ride this wave of social change but leverage it, letting it fuel a transformation that translates into bottom-line results. Without profitability, this movement will not be successful. As with every paradigm shift that came before it, capitalism must find a way to create a new status quo that is infused with new standard operating procedures.

We want to do our part. We look forward to sharing more about the future we see in the weeks and months ahead, including how your company or nonprofit can harness this paradigm shift to advance your goals. Because a movement is meaningless without an effective call to action.

We will be sharing more about this at SHARE Charlotte‘s Fifth Annual Nonprofit Summit next Tuesday, focusing specifically on how nonprofits of all sizes can center their corporate partners’ customers, employees and shareholders in their private sector activation plans.

Intrigued and want to explore how to harness this paradigm shift for your company or nonprofit? Reach out and schedule time with our team. We believe every conversation is another step toward the future we want to see.

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The New Landscape of Social Capital for Companies & Nonprofits

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Here’s the headline, folks: private sector companies and nonprofits have never been more disrupted, in roughly the same ways, by a shift in societal norms. Both are experiencing new stakeholder expectations that will challenge profitability, sustainability and impact for years to come. And it comes down to how social capital is built on both sides of public/private divide.

Oh boy, not that phrase again…

The term “social capital” in Charlotte has a checkered recent past. The need to increase social capital was a chief finding of the Charlotte-Mecklenburg Opportunity Task Force, the group that worked to address the city’s low ranking in a 2013 study on economic mobility by researchers at Harvard and UC-Berkeley. Since we reference it so often, we’ll assume you know all about it. If not, here’s a brief primer.

As we’ve noted before, we don’t much like how the definition of social capital was interpreted in the nonprofit-sphere – the idea that building one-way relationships of opportunity and resources through social networks are the key to driving economic mobility. Some short-handed the concept of social capital as people of affluence opening up their networks to disinvested people through education, mentorship and “a helping hand.”

In truth, social capital is a two-way street where well-meaning donors and volunteers are learning that “it takes two to tango.” It is constructed through “bridging, bonding and linking” that recognizes the provider and the consumer of resources must build a collaborative framework for that exchange that recognizes what each brings to the table. Here’s an academic paper on the topic if you want to explore it further. These ideas have formed the basis of our firm’s values and guiding principles.

We’ve written exhaustively on this in the past. It’s sort of our thing at Next Stage. So what’s changed?

Enter the private sector.

Oh, we think a lot has changed. A ton, actually.

Riding a Wave of Disruption

Oxford defines social capital as “the process and conditions among people and organizations that lead to their accomplishing a goal of mutual social benefit, usually characterized by interrelated constructs of trust, cooperation, civic engagement and reciprocity, reinforced by networking.”

We love this definition because it centers the concept on mutuality, which is what is guiding our firm in big ways these days. Mutual benefit is an essential component of relationship-forming and a critical ingredient to solving… well, everything. To paraphrase something I read recently, “if it doesn’t work for me, then it doesn’t work for us.”

This definition of social capital also suggests building blocks of trust, cooperation, engagement and reciprocity that we are seeing mirrored in all the ways we are engaging these days – building blocks that have been greatly impacted by three macro trends. If you’ve read any of our 2021 Social Good Report, we bet you can guess what they are:

COVID-19 – Probably not a big surprise here, but the pandemic has disrupted the status quo in innumerable ways. How we live, work and engage with each other has changed so significantly, it is no wonder how we form and maintain relationships has evolved. This is true for private sector companies and nonprofit organizations alike.

The Asset of Identity – The fight for racial and social justice sparked in 2020 has catalyzed a movement that defines one’s identity as a unique and critical asset. “Lived experience” has renewed value in society and institutions of business, social impact and philanthropy are wrestling with how this awakening is challenging built infrastructure and the rules of supposed “best practice.”

Generational Change – We’ve been talking about it for the better part of two decades – the disruption of the digital-age Millennial generation has evolved into a two-generation wave as the oldest Gen-Zers are aging into new roles as employees, investors, consumers, donors and volunteers. These generations are rewriting the rules as they mature into leadership roles and the result is a significant reimagining of standard operating procedure.

It’s a lot. We believe these trends cresting together have manifested a perfect storm of sorts, creating a wave of change that institutions can either successfully surf into a new paradigm or else be leveled like in a tsunami.

Embracing Mutuality as Survival

Why do we love mutuality so much? Because it is so fiercely human.

Mutual benefit is the building block of both democracy and capitalism. It suggests that all sides benefit from an exchange as based on perceived value of meeting needs, wants and desires.

For a long time, the exchange rate of goods and services was well-defined for companies and nonprofits alike.  A business enterprise would produce a good or service, price it to account for the cost of production and profitability, and market it to consumers who value the good or service on par with its offer price. Those companies that survived offered the best value on this exchange. Profits from that exchange allowed the company to grow its human resources, and for the most successful, further stakeholder investment would be driven based on expectations of future performance.

Nonprofits are really not much different, though the constituencies are varied. Nonprofits are public institutions managed on behalf of all citizens. But unlike government that is funded by tax revenue, nonprofits must compete in a marketplace of earned and contributed revenue. That marketplace is complicated, with the impact of the nonprofit leveraged by its network of relationships to secure investment. Like companies, future performance is a key to securing resources.

So what is different these days? The emergence of a collective social consciousness, louder and more defining than ever before. It has led to a big shift from “what” to “how,” with a focus on the ways identity assets inform outcomes.

The trends outlined above have changed the consumer and workforce landscape considerably. Customers, clients, donors, volunteers and employees alike want to align with values-centric companies and nonprofits. Choices are being made not only on the quality and cost of the product or service, but also based on how it is made, who made it, how it fits into a larger system of goods and services, and the unintended downside impacts of its creation.

The private sector and nonprofits have new considerations as it relates to mutuality and “doing it the way we’ve always done it” simply isn’t working anymore. Rather than fight shifts in consumer norms, smart institutions are embracing them as trends upon which to build new infrastructures, not unlike advancements in technology.

It’s the new way of doing business.

Redefining Social Capital

So that brings us back to social capital.

If we agree that the world is changing – nay, has changed – and mutuality has shifted to a more socially-conscious form of value exchange, then it stands to reason that the way relationships between institutions and constituents are formed is changing as well.

Against this backdrop, Next Stage offers a new definition of social capital, one that extends well beyond the aims of economic mobility to suggest a new framework of mutual social benefit. Social capital is the individual and institutional embrace of mutualism, in all of the complicated and often messy ways it manifests. To increase social capital is to center mutual benefit as a defining characteristic for all involved, helping to ensure an outcome that “works for all of us.”

With this definition in mind, we’d suggest the following as critical tools:

Community Voice – It is hard to create a mutually beneficial construct if the voice of key constituents is absent. Institutions are finding that “designing with” yields much better outcomes than “designing for,” and that means deeply exploring the perspectives of a wide variety of constituencies. That also means leaning in to the squeakiest wheels and sourcing feedback from even the most reluctant.

Bottom-Up Cultures – The larger the institution, the more likely it is that power is held in a top-down infrastructure. Shifts to social norms are perhaps most confounding for these institutions as the democratization of public will challenges leaders who are used to more one-sided benefit. Community voice is only as powerful a tool as the bottom-up culture that gives it a seat at the table.

A Focus on Trust  – The concept of trust is everywhere right now. Stanford Social Innovation has a number of whitepapers on the topic, including this one from 2019 that greatly inspired Next Stage’s work. This past summer, we talked on our blog about the important role trust plays in bridging community. The Foundation For The Carolinas recently had Shaady Salehi from the Trust-Based Philanthropy Project in town to facilitate a roundtable about “advancing equity, shifting power and building relationships” toward greater trust-based philanthropy. If your company or nonprofit hasn’t had a conversation about trust lately, we recommend jumping on that.

Informed Decision-Making – Next Stage believes that a focus on mutual benefit always creates better, more sustainable outcomes, but it doesn’t imply that everybody gets exactly what they want. It does suggest that the negotiated outcomes have factored in the buy-in of everyone involved. We are surrounded by difficult situations where the act of leadership is defined by making an informed decision that moves the company, the nonprofit or the community forward. It may not always be easy but considering all the perspectives first will undoubtedly yield better decision-making.

A Foundation of Equity  – To jump-start a focus on mutuality, we must start by recognizing that some in our community have been historically shut out of the conversation about mutualism. We must examine the root causes of outcome disparities within systems before we can fully realize mutual benefit frameworks. We need to build back stronger if we want to demonstrate a commitment to a brighter future.

Over the next few weeks, we’ll be unpacking how new approches to social capital are shaping the direction of area companies, nonprofits and philanthropic instituions leading to bold leadership and decision-making. We’ll feature case studies of “mutualism in practice.”

Interested in exploring how this updated definition of social capital impacts your business or nonprofit? Reach out and let us know. These ideas are guiding everything we’re talking about these days and we look forward to exploring it further with leaders in the communities we call home.

It’s Here! Download the Social Good Report: Profit & Purpose

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For the last year, Next Stage has studied the ways that businesses and nonprofits are intersecting in the Charlotte community. Our team studied a range of business and social good trends, interviewed more than 70 corporate and nonprofit leaders and conducted a study of 350 Charlotte-based Millennial workers. This report outlines the ways that nonprofit and corporate organizations are working together in the Charlotte community to build strong organizations and fuel community impact. You’ll learn how market leaders such as OrthoCarolina, Torrent Consulting and AvidXchange are building social good into their business models – and the ways social good is strengthening their businesses.

Companies have long had a role to play in the social good of a community – but what if social good has a role to play in the health of a business? 

Download the The Social Good Report: Profit & Purpose to learn how social good is strengthening businesses and building impact across our region.

The Value Prop: A Mindset Shift for the Private Sector & Social Good

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Check out a past What’s Next? episode that explores the intersection of the private sector and social good. This episode features Blair Primas, Senior Vice President + Marketing & Talent Management of OrthoCarolina and John Searby, the Executive Director of Catawba Riverkeeper Foundation.  You can catch the full replay by clicking here to learn how social good is already showing up in companies across the region.

Blair Primis photo

“Give back to the community in which you do business and don’t just put it as a slogan on your website. You actually have to walk the walk and I think if you do that you find that consumers or in our case patients will think about your organization in a way where we become essential to the things that may not necessarily have anything to do with their muscles bones or joints. And that’s ultimately what we want to do and I oftentimes in fast I think I’ve said it before to both of you in the past. I sometimes think to myself like why doesn’t every company want to invest in the community that they’re apart of because doesn’t it make the community stronger, which means that people who move here stay here and those that want to move here actually do so which makes everything better. “– Blair Primas

P.S. Next Stage is launching a Social Good Report this spring. Sign up here to receive a copy when the report is launched.

The study will take a closer look at how the nonprofit and private sector can forge meaningful partnerships that create real community impact – and how next generation employees want to create impact through the workplace. Next Stage will build the report through research that includes:

  • Interviews with 50+ corporate and business leaders
  • Input from nonprofit leaders
  • A survey of 500+ local millennial and Gen-Z employees