Evolution Factory

A Grassroots View on Building Corporate Partnerships and CSR

Jorn — Thu, 17 Nov 2011 08:24:17 +0000

Two weeks ago we attended the Sport for Good Global Summit in London organized by the Laureus Foundation. As you might know, apart from starting Evolution Factory, we have founded grassroots NGO El Desafío years ago and Laureus Foundation supports our activities. Project leaders from grassroots NGO’s from every continent gathered in London to join members of the Laureus World Sports Academy, such as Boris Becker, Michael Johnson, Hugo Porta, Mark Spitz, Sean Fitzpatrick and many more, to share ideas on using sports to improve the lives of young people. For all representatives from the different organizations it was a unique opportunity to share ideas and discuss common challenges. One of them I want to share with you: a shared feeling of disturbed relationships with the business world.

Generating enough income for a ‘non-profit’ organization is a challenging job. Especially in times of economic downfall NGO’s struggle to survive. Most of the attending organizations at the summit were relatively small, and I am writing this on their behalf. It was no surprise the workshop ‘building corporate partnerships’ was well visited; all organizations could use them.

The director of the CSR-department of one of British biggest banks shared his view on the topic. It turned out to become something of a workshop “How to play by the rules of big corporations, beg for your money, but don’t expect too much”. The big bank set up a whole framework an organization needs to fit into to even be considered as a social partner. Logical maybe, because the amount of applications must be enormous, but quite counterproductive. At least from a social point of view.

> Corporations look to minimize the potential risk of failure. So they look for trustees, which could be a ‘board of recommendation’ with people they trust. People they trust, but people who most of the time have no idea of social work and are often inaccessible for grassroots organizations.

> Corporations demand a huge load of reports on the impact and results of the social work to show their stakeholders. Since social work is not the corporation’s core business they ask quantitative information, so basically numbers. And since the Corporation is after maximizing profit, they want big numbers of social profit. A grassroots organization can’t often offer those ‘impressive’ numbers, since they are the specialists in changing lives at a local level and they know to create change is not a linear process.

> Corporations want social partners which have a PR and Comms Strategy they can align with. Not because communication plays a crucial role in the work of any NGO in order to share its efforts with the world, but to be able to use it in the corporate communications. Corporations want something in return for their ‘social responsibility’; marketing value. That’s why they want exclusivity as well. If the organization has support from a competitor already, the Corporation won’t be able to support.

> And corporations even want to able to adapt a social program so it fits their CSR strategy better. That’s interesting, because the CSR-director of the Bank admitted to lack the real knowledge of social work.

Not all companies are working like this, they won’t all demand the right to adapt a social program, but too often it does happen. I understand it’s challenging for a company to pick the right strategy when you have so many social organizations requesting help. You might even think that some of the corporations’ demands are quite logical. But I think it’s time to rethink this and respect the great work grassroots organizations do. If corporations sincerely want to take their responsibility they need to support grassroots NGO’s rather than make their lives more difficult. If they don’t do this you might doubt about the intrinsic reason of the corporations to have a CSR-department. Is it the company helping the social worker, or the social worker helping the company?

So with which organizations big corporations do work with? With organizational structures they understand; big NGO’s with marketing departments, ‘helping’ millions around the world, speaking the language of the corporation, maximizing impact. Those organizations ‘in the middle’ lack the grassroots experience, but claim the social results of the real grassroots projects. Organizations with a huge overhead costs, and managers behaving like it’s actually a corporation they are running.

We need to create a balance and a situation of mutual respect in which the grassroots organization can do its job: creating social impact. In this way we can cut out those ‘corporate’ NGO’s in the middle, which will create a much more ‘lean and mean’ structure. ‘Lean and good’ in this case.

Poverty is not only a Huge Social Problem, but also a missed Business Opportunity

admin — Tue, 11 Oct 2011 09:12:51 +0000

And we’d like to explain you why…

Evolution Factory – Changing the World through Responsible Business and Social Innovation

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William McDonough: Good Design is a Human Right

Jorn — Mon, 03 Oct 2011 15:01:18 +0000

William McDonough is co-founder of McDonough Braungart Design Chemistry and is a designer, thought leader, and co-creator, together with Michael Braungart, of the Cradle to Cradle® approach to design. He advises leaders across all sectors including venture capital, government policy, city and building design, product manufacturing, industrial systems, economic systems and new business models, energy and water systems, and material reutilization in biological or technical cycles.

During the fantastic PICNIC Festival last month in Amsterdam he gave the following keynote lecture at the Postcode Lottery Green Challenge Award Ceremony. A truly inspiring talk, in my opinion. I especially liked his opinion that good design is a human right. He also asks why there are people working five days a week on Wallstreet and investment banks destroying the planet, and on weekend they belong to environmental groups. In his opinion it’s guilt management. And we should not measure our CSR-programs by doing ‘less bad’. Zero as a goal (zero emission for example) just does not make sense. Instead we need to innovate and use a positive approach to make a serious positive impact on the world. Mr. McDonough, let’s do business!

William McDonough / Green Challenge Keynote Lecture / PICNIC Festival 2011 from PICNIC on Vimeo.

Re-thinking The Future

Jorn — Fri, 30 Sep 2011 10:38:42 +0000

There’s a world of opportunity to re-think and re-design the way we make stuff. The Ellen MacArthur Foundation created a video exploring how through a change in perspective we can re-design the way our economy works. The video explains well the basic principles of the Cradle2Cradle approach. Designing products that can be ‘made to be made again’, upcycling instead of downcycling and powering the system with renewable energy. Most important conclusion: “With creativity and innovation we really can rethink and redesign our future!”

Welcome!

admin — Sun, 28 Aug 2011 03:24:08 +0000

Welcome to our new website. We are currently working on the finishing touches, but you can already take a look around. Here we will frequently post on how to create responsible business and make a positive impact on the world through social innovation, as well as company news.