Good Intentions Aren’t Enough
Tips for Crafting a Career with “Real Impact” from California’s Senior Advisor on Social Innovation
Do you want to change the world? Well, welcome to the club.
Most of us want to leave this place a little better than we found it
Last year, 60% of ‘Gen Z’ teens said that they wanted their careers to have a positive impact on the world, and that number is up from 40% of ‘Millennial’ teens in 2010. This past summer, nearly 200 CEOs signed a statement affirming their commitment to corporate responsibility beyond shareholder value. And at the Stanford Graduate School of Business, it’s literally our motto: Change lives. Change organizations. Change the world.
But talk is cheap
In the U.S., only one-third of registered public charities report annual revenues greater than $500,000. By some estimates, less than 30% measure the outcomes generated by those dollars. On a global scale, progress toward the achievement of the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) stalls — and in some cases reverses — even in the world’s most developed economies. Unfortunately, world-changing work requires a little more than great ideas and good intentions.
Enter Social Startup Success
The silver lining is that there is a literal playbook, written by Kathleen Kelly Janus (shown below). Janus is the Senior Advisor on Social Innovation to Governor Gavin Newsom, a lecturer at Stanford University, and a co-founder of Spark, a nonprofit organization that supports global women’s issues. Last week, she took a break from mobilizing the state of California’s response to the COVID-19 pandemic to share a few pages from that book with Allison Kluger’s class on Reputation Management.
From ‘Feel Good’ to ‘Real Good’
Kathleen has seen first-hand that good intentions can yield bad results. When the 2017 Northern California wildfires ravaged her hometown, Kathleen met with the Executive Director of Puertas Abiertas, a local nonprofit supporting the latinx community in the wake of the wildfires. She was shocked to hear that the organization had been receiving mountains of dog food.
These types of donations epitomize what Kathleen described as ‘feel good’ philanthropy. No one had thought to ask whether the community served by Puertas Abiertas needed dog food (Note: They did not. They didn’t own dogs. They needed cash.), and the potential for real impact was lost.
How do we move from ‘feel good’ to ‘real good’? Kathleen offers a three-part prescription:
- Educate students. Students (like me — help!) are graduating with very few tools to lead social change organizations.
- Educate donors. Donating dog food to people who need cash might scratch a philanthropic itch but offers little benefit.
- Invest in non-profit leaders. No one would walk into a restaurant and refuse to pay for the chef or waiter’s time, and yet this is exactly how nonprofits are funded. Poverty is not a prerequisite for a career in the social sector, but if you pay peanuts, you get monkeys.
6 Tips for Crafting a Career with Real Impact
Whether you aspire to be a nonprofit leader, be a forward-looking executive, or simply commit to cause, Kathleen’s reflections offer food for thought in crafting a career with ‘real impact:’
- Do the hard work. Show up.
- Networks matter. Build them.
- Relationships matter. It’s not just a numbers game; quality counts.
- Be generous. It’s about time (not just money).
- Connect the dots. You have to trust that it will all come together.
- The world only knows what you tell them. No else can tell your story.
Bonus Tip: Start Now
A final tip, from me: start now. We’re taught to hire slow and fire fast, but my decision to join the The Arena was an especially slow burn. The dots could only be connected in hindsight: a long track record as a volunteer, donor, and board member for other organizations, a personal connection to the mission, and skill sets from my time as a management and international development consultant.
I don’t expect that many of you will join a nonprofit after reading this article, but there are many ways of creating real impact. Whether you choose to donate to your favorite charities, volunteer your time, join a board, or enter the fray as a staff member, the problems we face are too large to wait — and good intentions are not enough.
Note: Kathleen has written a post on ways to support California’s COVID-19 response, for those of you particularly moved to action by the current moment. And Social Startup Success is available for purchase here :)
