Making Good Happen at Work on #GivingTuesday

The Common Impact team had the pleasure of spending #GivingTuesday in Boston with Harvard Pilgrim Health Care Foundation for the first-ever Making Good Happen at Work conference in Boston. The conference brought together leaders from the corporate, nonprofit and public sectors for an interactive conversation on creating and tending an effective employee service and giving program. Throughout the day, we learned ways to build an employee service and giving program from scratch, measure the value of our programs, how to engage and develop talent through skills-based initiatives, how to engage internal stakeholders to navigate complex systems, and how to tell our story of impact most effectively. We walked away feeling inspired, energized and excited for the work that is ahead.

Here are our five key takeaways from the event:

• How do you build an employee service and giving program from the ground up? Find friends, make a business case, recruit a "champion", work with HR, communicate…constantly, report, reward and repeat.
   
• Measure early and measure often. The first – and most crucial – measurement step: forecasting impact (i.e., who, what, how much, when). Build measurement into your program planning so you can strive towards measuring outcomes vs. outputs to understand the true social impact (i.e. how much are we solving the social problem we care about?).
   
• Relationship management is invaluable to anyone striving to be a corporate intrapreneur. It is about making connections between all business functions, employees, and nonprofit partners. Being able to mediate and connect all the dots can be the key to success, especially when you are working with stakeholders who have conflicting needs.
   
• Skills-based volunteering can support the development of both functional workplace and leadership skills for corporate employees. Define your talent development goals and think about building skills-based volunteering into existing leadership programs to provide employees with a way to develop their skills while giving back to their communities.
   
• The three key elements to a compelling story? Character. Conflict. Meaning. No story is fully complete without all three of those elements. Experiment with ways you can connect the dots and alter your story for various stakeholders - both internal and external - to showcase the impact of your work. 

Interesting in learning more about our work? 

• Check out Harvard Pilgrim Health Care Foundation's photo album from our event to see us in action!
• Tune into our Pro Bono Perspectives podcast, as our CEO interviews leaders from all walks of life to learn about their personal and professional backgrounds and explore what drives them to create positive change through their careers and daily lives.