SCALING SOCIAL IMPACT

CLIENT SITUATION

Our client, a Fortune 400 healthcare company with nearly 90 hospitals around the country, strives to make communities healthier throughout rural America. Supporting the well-being of their employees, their patients and the community is at the heart of what they do every day. The company faced a challenge in how to strategically make a significant social impact at both the local and national level that is directly tied to their mission. The client was focused on several key priorities:

• A cohesive strategy that incorporated their foundations, national corporate office’s efforts, strategic partnerships, and local hospital giving

• A 5-10-year company-wide giving goal

• Staffing needs, alignment and succession planning for the current social impact committee

• Technology needs to capture their current and future corporate and foundation gifts, employee giving and volunteering and local hospital giving

OUR APPROACH

The Change Agent·cy conducted a comprehensive assessment of the client’s current social impact programs and sought input from key members of leadership to determine the client’s core strengths as well as existing brand vision, company values and business and community relations strategies. We also interviewed liaisons from selected hospitals to gain understanding of current budgets, processes, giving strategies, community partnerships, employee engagement, tracking practices, and the challenges they face. All interviews took place virtually due to the global pandemic.

VALUE DELIVERED

Combining the insights gleaned from our in-depth assessment of the company, along with our 20+ years of CSR, communications, and nonprofit partnership expertise, The Change Agent·cy delivered a cohesive social responsibility strategic plan. It included the following:

• Peer company social responsibility practices

• Industry standards and best practices

• Streamlined processes (internal and external funding requests, giving calendar) and recommendations on types of technology needed

• Proposed structure and guidelines for overall company giving, including the foundations, employee giving (recommended employee match) and local hospitals

• Proposed national social responsibility strategy for hospitals focusing on addressing their local needs and the goal of making a larger measurable national impact

• Proposed process for connecting leadership with nonprofit boards and other avenues of community engagement

• Proposed strategic national nonprofit partners to tie in with local nonprofit partners

• Processes to encourage and manage employee engagement and volunteering across the organization

• Best practices for tracking, measuring and reporting in order to properly record their social impact, which had been grossly underreported. This will greatly improve the company’s national ranking in social responsibility.

• Proposed timeline of implementation of new social responsibility program

• Staffing recommendations 

The client appreciated that we prepared a carefully laid out road map with next steps, including different scenarios and options based on their budget and capacity.  They’ve already successfully advocated for additional staffing based on these recommendations, which will happen in the near future.