Corporate Volunteerism as a Model of Impact: Women of Mattel

In the context of corporate volunteerism consulting, or corporate social responsibility programs, we leverage our Models of Impact map and database as a tool for understanding the areas of impact large corporations may be interested in engaging in, or further developing. We were approached by Women of Mattel to recommend some local organizations that could be beneficiaries of an upcoming volunteer initiative they were initiating. Launched in 2009, Women of Mattel acts as an internal source of leadership and insight for the women at Mattel. As a side note, this was also the first time we have been able to leverage Models of Impact as a tool for a Fortune 500-level Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) program.

When considering organizations to partner with in a corporate engagement, your Model of Impact should attempt to include all three (minimum of two) of our criteria for success: Employee Development, Brand Alignment, and Social Impact.

There are a number of emerging models within the corporate social responsibility space. In the past 5 years, we have seen a significant shift in strategic Corporate Social Responsibility from being solely seen as a tool for Marketing Divisions, to be seeing as an employee development tool, and a serious growth opportunity for Human Resources.

To begin our process for recommending the most relevant non-profit beneficiaries for the Women of Mattel program to engage with, we sent a brief list of questions to their team to understand their goals for external and internal impact, and to learn more about who the previous beneficiaries of the program included. We learned that previous beneficiaries have included Girls Scouts of America, Crown Jewels Club, and various local elementary schools. The goals for external impact include empowering women, fostering opportunities & self discovery. The goals for internal impact include getting involved in the community, doing good, and contributing to bettering the future for women.

Building upon these goals, and informed by the patterns of previous beneficiary selections, we leveraged our map to identify the models of impact that were most relevant to the organization’s goals.

Building a Model of Impact in the social business model laboratory… aka our conference room at verynice.

The result of our research is a selection of Impact Models that we identified as the most appropriate models of impact relevant to Mattel’s interests. Informed by these models, and by the goal for the program, we completed a search for non-organizations that leverage these identified models in order to make the most accurate recommendations for the program’s beneficiary.

The Models of Impact we selected to help inform the success criteria for our beneficiary recommendations

In addition to leveraging the Models of Impact map as a tool for identifying relevant themes to guide us in our search for the ideal beneficiaries, we also curated a list of models, and offered up recommendations that would be of interest for Mattel to consider as the program continues to develop and define the future of Mattel’s community work.

The top 3 Considerations for a successful Corporate Social Responsibility Initiative:

1. Impact: Will the engagement create tangible impact for the organization you are seeking to partner with? Is the impact significant, and is it immediately measurable? Because CSR initiatives tend to be short-term, the actual impact that is made for an organization or community is limited in scope, or even left behind.
2. Alignment: Will the engagement with your company goals and mission? Does the organization’s mission align with your brand and/or product offering? Many CSR initiatives are not successful due to a lack of alignment with what a business is already doing. If you are in the education space, for example, it can seem inauthentic to center your corporate giving and volunteer programs around issues outside of the scope of “education”.
3. Development: Will the engagement enrich the lives of your employees, and provide them with actionable skills/experiences they can immediately apply to their day-to-day work? For many businesses, the ultimate return on investment for an impact-oriented engagement or program is the impact that takes place internally. Be sure to remember that for this to be a win-win, there needs to be both external impact (impact on a community or organization or cause), AND internal impact (impact on your culture and employees).

In addition to our work with startups and small organizations, we are excited to continue exploring the various use-cases of Models of Impact within Fortune 500-level businesses in order to build upon the momentum we have found in the corporate social responsibility space. If you would like to discuss opportunities like these with us, please reach out! info@verynice.co.