Introduction
According to Giving USA, 2024 report, corporate philanthropy is growing as more companies offer a wide range of giving opportunities for their employees. According to research from Double the Donation, more small and mid-sized companies are getting involved in corporate philanthropy, and businesses are adopting more employee-driven corporate giving programs, like matching gifts. One such US-based global corporation, growing its social impact unit with 100B+ in revenue annually, wanted to increase their impact exponentially by reaching a significant number of additional participants tied to their employee giving program.
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This global corporation works in agriculture and the staff are experts in animal feed and nutrition as well as biosecurity standards across all types of livestock, as well as aquaculture. The corporation has offices all over the world where they either have their own offices or they work through distributors that both find the raw materials to source for the nutritious animal feed supplement the corporation sells, and they sell the feed into the local markets.
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Over the years, the social impact unit was established as a way for the global corporation to give back to the communities where they source and sell their feed, as well as to give the employees an opportunity to experience work in other contexts and at the same time, become part of the community inside the corporation that gives back to the more vulnerable populations around the world. The social impact unit began growing as more employees wanted to be part of the program and the corporation expanded into even more global locations. The corporation was committed to the social impact unit, however wanted to seek options to grow the reach and impact of the unit without continuing to utilize only internal revenue.
Opportunities and Challenges
The global corporation was already investing significant internal funds in the social impact unit. However, they wanted to expand the reach of the unit to show their clients that they have a significant impact on the world, and to have more opportunities for well-intentioned staff to participate in giving back. The corporation was already partnering with global non-profits by giving them funds to implement activities. The corporation was also organizing with the implementers for their corporate staff to travel to the activity sites and support the technical efforts.
However, this was still not enough to ensure the reach the corporation wanted globally. They sought a way to work on specific opportunities that would align even more closely with staff expertise and the corporation's core business. The social impact unit was a small unit of people who mainly donated funds to non-profits to implement activities, thus there had not been a need to set up a fully functioning office that would run operations, and programming and seek funds from external resources. The corporation knew that to grow the reach to the desired desired level, they would need to invest in systems, processes, and more staff. They wanted to find a way to grow the social impact unit without having to invest all of the funds internally, thus they were seeking a solution to leverage funds to make this happen.
NEXUS WIN Methodology
To tackle this critical issue, this US-based global corporation, with 100B+ in revenue annually, seeking to grow the reach of its social impact unit substantially worked with the consultants of NEXUS Strategy and Growth Partners to focus on building and implementing a new revenue model. After NEXUS conducted a discovery period to fully understand the global corporation’s desires, opportunities, and challenges, they moved forward with a strategic plan and its following initiatives that are part of the NEXUS WIN Revenue Methodology under the Pillar: New Areas and Expansion.
STEP 1
Reviewed the core business areas in which the global corporation wanted to grow the social impact unit.
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STEP 3
Worked with the corporation and the potential NGO partner to project five and ten-year impact of the partnership, finance needed and ROI, and geographical scope of the intervention.
STEP 5
As a result of the short-listing, Nexus supported the global corporation in seeking out consortium partners to join the effort in a full proposal submission.
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STEP 7
Recommended a management structure and processes for the global corporation that would allow for compliant and skillful management of the US government funds.
STEP 2
Supported the identification of an opportunity to partner with the US government on a competitive procurement that was seeking a private sector company to lead a consortium, and some of the same areas of focus as the corporation’s core business functions.
STEP 4
Facilitated the writing of a concept note for submission which was short-listed by the procurement committee.
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STEP 6
Managed the proposal development, writing and packaging the proposal to be submitted to the open solicitation that was compliant with USG regulations and honored with what the corporations and partners intended to implement and accomplish as a result of the proposal.
These strategic initiatives were implemented to identify the opportunities for this US-based global corporation to grow its social impact unit to substantially expand their impact. Nexus facilitated sessions to understand the highest return on investment (ROI) opportunities that the US-based global corporation had in which they could tie to their employee giving program. The highest return on investment was to partner with global non-profits, and bid on a project funded by an external donor but still within the core business focus of the corporation and what their staff could contribute in expertise.
Results
As a result of this strategic plan, the US-based global corporation expanded their work through their social impact unit, through winning a 30M+ USD award from the US government Global Health Security Program, along with a consortium of subgrantees from the global non-profit sector. The corporation expanded their impact into three additional countries and is developing market-driven solutions that improve animal health, ultimately increasing people’s access to safe, affordable animal-sourced nutrition.
As a result of winning their first multi-million competitive grant to expand their social impact unit, the corporation was able to build in opportunities for internal employees to use their expertise and volunteer to support different aspects of the implementation of the program. This allowed the social impact unit to establish a new Revenue model and expand, without additional cash investments by the corporation, and at the same time, give employees the opportunity to give back. Many employees took advantage of this opportunity, and it brought employee satisfaction to be part of the social impact activities globally.
These results exceeded their expectations and set a new standard for how they would collaborate with global non-profits and continue to grow their social impact unit through seeking to leverage external funding. They could now offer more opportunities for employees to give back through the social impact unit without taking on significant additional costs to the bottom-line revenue.
As a member of the global 20B annual revenue corporation, “Our consortium of private and public sector organizations are working to create shared value – for each other, our partners, and the communities where we work.”
Are you facing a similar challenge? Do you wish to make a breakthrough and achieve your most pressing goals like this global corporation with the goal to increase the impact of its social impact unit?
NEXUS Strategy and Growth Partners offers a free Discovery Session to help you gain clarity around your main challenges and how to solve them.
We can help turn your biggest challenges into results, just like how we helped this global corporation with an annual revenue of 100B seek opportunities to expand their social impact unit through partnering with global non-profits and winning an open US government procurement aligned to their core business expertise.