On Building More Socially Responsible Organisations - from Spend Donate Invest

Episode Transcript

Claire  00:00

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Claire  00:26

Hello and welcome to a new episode of Narratives on Purpose, or should I say a new episode of Spend Donate Invest. As you already heard in our previous episode, we are changing things this month by swapping episodes with other podcasts. You won't be listening to me and my guests, but to fellow podcasters who are creating amazing content that I also really want you to listen to. Today, you will hear from Genet Gimja, who also goes by GG. GG is the host of Spent Donate Invest, a podcast at the intersection of social justice and personal finance that covers questions of how we might spend, donate and invest our money more in line with our values. In this episode I am sharing with you today, GG talks about how to build a socially responsible organisation. She gives an overview of the six decisions you need to take as a founder in order to be aligned with your values. Take a listen.

Genet  01:42

Welcome to Spend Donate Invest. This is a podcast about lining up your politics and your money. For a lot of us, we vote, maybe we even protest, we might have organised people in our community, but I wonder sometimes if there's another untapped source of power that we have, specifically, our money as individuals. That's really what this podcast is about exploring that untapped power that we might have. So typically, on this show, you'll find short episodes that are clear, with gentle suggestions on ways that we might be able to gain a little bit more alignment in terms of our values and our money, whether that is how we shop, how we donate our money, how we invest, how we work, how we earn our money, it's really about all of those topics. Most episodes come from listener letters, and today is no exception.

Genet [introduction - part one]  02:42

I received a letter from a listener asking how to build a more socially responsible organisation. And that can apply whether you're building a business, or you're building a nonprofit or any other type of organisation. So there's a lot to talk about. I don't think we'll get through all of it today, I like to keep the episodes 'Short and Sweet' on this show, so let's see how far we get today, and then we'll pick it up next time. When I was growing up, I was thinking about this, as I was researching for this episode, I was given the impression by the predominant culture in the United States that if you wanted to do good, you work for a nonprofit. If you wanted to do business, you worked for a business. And these were two completely separate paths you had to choose. Are you going to try to do good? Or are you going to try to make money? Now this was in stark contrast to the way that I had observed my grandparents in Eritrea doing business, which was a little bit business, a little bit community development. At least that was the impression I got as a kid was that if you were building something in your community, it was a member of the community or a part of the ecosystem. Whether you were building a nonprofit or a business, you were just building a part of the community. So giving back was automatically baked in, sustainability was automatically baked in also, in part because that was the predominant culture. But you know, this felt like a different planet at that time. This was a whole continent away. These were "mom and pop" businesses and at the time, I didn't realise that most Americans also work for small and medium sized businesses, and that there could be parallels in the way that we get things done.

Genet [Corporate Social Responsibility]  04:40

And so I grew up in America feeling like "okay, well eventually I'm going to have to make a choice whether I want to pursue making the world a better place, or working for a business." Then in my early 20s, I discovered another option, a way to work for a business but also to make the world a better place, that concept was called CSR, it stood for Corporate Social Responsibility and the marketing was very attractive to me. So the concept was that businesses obviously exist to make money, but could they also consider how they affect the world? Do they give back? That was how I mostly heard that concept being discussed at that time. Although that technical definition of Corporate Social Responsibility is definitely wider, it's more encompassing. I personally just did not find a lot of companies who were deeply engaging in their actual responsibilities to society. What I found, what I was reading, what I was seeing, who I was interviewing with at the time, were companies who were committed to "giving back". And that meant making donations, sometimes encouraging employees to also make donations. Sometimes that meant that company was giving away money. Sometimes it meant giving away products or services. Sometimes it meant having employees go out and volunteer on the company's dime.

You know, when I was researching for this episode, I remembered, and I hadn't thought about this in decades, that my dad's company used to set up these Habitat for Humanity volunteer days. And I remember attending some of those and working with my dad and his co workers, on some of those, like volunteer days. So that was kind of my introduction to CSR, sort of like an add-on to the business, you know, the business is out here in the world making products and services, and then they kind of, on the side are trying to give away some time and money. As soon as I got a job at a big corporation, I started to look around and find out more about my company's corporate social responsibility efforts. And I was so excited, it just seemed like the best possible scenario for me. I would still be able to create some financial stability for myself, also be able to benefit from amazing professional development opportunities, but I could also finally get to do some of that good in the world. And what I realised pretty quickly, and it was so heartbreaking, was that...I mean, so this was a huge corporation, there were probably, let's say, 100,000 employees. And in my memory, there were about five people that worked in the Corporate Social Responsibility office. And out of those five people, I want to say three of them were support staff. So of the two employees that were leading the work, they were both older gentlemen, you know, they had been successful in building the business in other departments. And then as a reward, as they approached retirement, they got to do this corporate social responsibility work for the final, like five years of their careers. And so the guidance that I got, as a young professional, was to continue to grow and to continue to build my skills and build the business. And then in about 40 years, I'd be able to join the company's social responsibility efforts. For someone in their 20s, I mean, it was unimaginable to think about waiting 40 years to get to do that type of work. I even went back to school, I got a master's in a field that 100% lined up with the work they were doing. And still, the attitude was "No, this is a reward position. You can't jump into it as a young professional." Not that the work required some kind of highly complex skills that I didn't have yet, but that it was a reward for a successful career at the company.

So this was the CSR era that I remember and I remember there being a lot of criticism about how it all just seemed like a big marketing ploy, and I kind of had to agree. I mean, I was shocked when I found out that such a big corporation only had a handful of people working on their corporate social responsibility efforts. And especially because of how splashy the marketing was. So I don't think they ever lied about how much they were doing at all, I don't even think they exaggerated. I think the impression was that the scale was just a lot more widespread. Because when we hear... So here's an example, I think that we have a challenge sometimes scaling things in our minds. So when we hear that a billionaire has given away $100 million. It sounds impressive, right? $100 million given away, what we fail to really understand because of this scaling issue in our imaginations, is that they probably made that much interest in a day, $100 million. So I think it comes down to that. I think the marketing agencies absolutely know that when we hear that a company has given away $100 million, or 100 million products, the marketing agencies know that sounds like a lot to us and they capitalise on it. I think that the criticism for Corporate Social Responsibility just started to grow and grow and eventually, it started to kind of fall out of fashion, to brag about your company's social responsibility, your corporate social responsibility.

Genet [Double and Triple Bottom Line]  10:54

And then around that time, I started to hear companies talking about their double bottom line, or even their triple bottom line. Does anybody else remember this? The bottom line for a company historically, is just how much profit they earn in a year. That double bottom line, or the triple bottom line is where they have another bottom line, which is focusing on our planet and our people. The reasoning being that what a company measures, it will focus on and so if the ultimate metric for a company's success is just profit, that's going to be the singular focus. But if the ultimate measure of success for a company, you know, is actually profits, and also impact on the planet, for example, then that's what they're going to focus on. And I think this was an improvement from the old days of having some CSR office where "about to retire employees" were doing that work. I think it's more holistic to say that "we have more than one metric for this company's success". I like that. But I feel like even that sort of fell out of favour in the lingo, and so the sense I get now and if you're currently in school at the age where you're starting to scope out your choices and make career decisions, I'd love to know if my observation sounds true to you. My sense is that nowadays, it's sort of a foregone conclusion, that, of course, workers in the community in general, we want businesses to reduce the harm to the planet, to do right by their employees to do right by the community and not to support crappy politicians, and in general, just to be decent members of our communities. And that, of course, if you're building a business, you want to create it in a socially responsible way. And that goes for nonprofits as well. I've seen a real scepticism about nonprofits, foundations, all of those sorts of organisations where, when I was young, the scepticism was "Are they really doing everything they say they're going to do?" Or "Are they wasting money on overhead?" For example. Nowadays, the type of criticisms or scepticism that I see about nonprofits or foundations are if they are actually perpetuating the same harms as capitalism, or colonialism, etc.

Genet [building an organisation]  13:25

So where are we today? And what can you do if you're building an organisation, whether it's a business or a nonprofit? or something in between? Are there any options to try to make an organisation that lines up with your values? So let's get into it. And thanks again to the listener who emailed asking for some suggestions on this topic. There's definitely too much to cover today, so we're for sure gonna have to pick up some of it on the next part, on the second episode. I think it can be tempting when you're starting an organisation to just try to get it up and running, and then wait until later to try to instil your values into the way that your organisation runs. But I think the issue with that is a lot of founders never really get to that moment where they can take that deep breath and reset and relax and take a step back and think about how to reset some aspects of how they're running their organisations. Usually, from what I've observed, it's a matter of survival for most founders, and by the time you can even take that breath to relax, and the organisation feels like it's going to survive. It's often very late in the game to try to make changes. Bad habits are very hard to break, it's easier to start the way that you intend to continue. When you think about hanging on during market shocks when the economy dips or when something else happens that shakes up your organisation And it seems to me that you'll be more likely to hang on to your principles, if they were baked into your organisation from the very beginning, from the foundation. So from a survivability standpoint of your culture and your values, I want to encourage you to think these things through at the very beginning stages of your startup.

Genet [understanding your values]  15:20

To start, I think it's a good idea to understand what your values are, what your priorities are, of course, you probably care about a lot of issues, you probably care about the planet, you care about workers rights, you care about social justice, you care about diversity, equity, and inclusion and accessibility. But I want to gently encourage you to consider choosing a more limited scope. As you're starting your organisation, this is going to help you to focus and communicate your vision to everyone that you bring in. So in order to create an organisation where everyone's on the same page, in terms of what your values are, you need to be able to very clearly point to exactly what those values are, with as little ambiguity as possible. When Google was getting started, their rallying cry was "Don't be evil". And it seems like it would really help to clarify all the decisions that the company would need to make, but it wasn't specific enough. First of all, what do you consider to be evil? What if your employees disagree with you about what evil means? It's just too vague. And we saw that play out in a lot of different ways with conflicts at Google. So I want to encourage you to start there, what specifically are your values that you want your organisation to rally around? And then from there, I think you have some fun decisions to make. I'm going to group them into these categories, there are six of them. So the first category of decisions are going to be about how you structure your organisation. Second, your employees, how do you hire them? How do you think about pay, benefits, and culture? Third is going to be your community engagement. Fourth, is going to be your environmental impact. Fifth is going to be governance, which really is just how do you make decisions as a company. And then finally, will be customers. So a lot of, I think, really exciting opportunities to be able to think about how to "walk the talk" in terms of your values for your organisation. In the next episode, let's go through those categories and go through some of the decisions that you can make, which might help to really incorporate those values from the very beginning.

So let's pause there for today. I think this is a great foundation to start our conversation on you and your organisation and how you're going to build it in a way that reflects your values. Whether you're creating some kind of a tech startup, or you're creating a childcare facility or even if you're thinking about building other types of organisations. In the next episode, in the final part of this conversation, we'll go through each of those categories. In the meantime, I'd love to hear your thoughts on this so far, or maybe there's another topic you'd like to hear on the show. You can email anytime spenddonateinvest@gmail.com - That is where most of the episode topics come from. If you want you can also check out the backlog of episodes for this show, there's almost 100 episodes, the website is spenddonateinvest.world. If you want you can also join the newsletter for this show, it comes out about once a month, maybe a little bit less than that there's absolutely no spam ever. Just like the podcast, the emails are concise, to the point clear, gentle suggestions. You can join the newsletter by going to the show's website spenddonateinvest.world, or you can send an email to the show spenddonateinvest@gmail.com. And you can get added to the newsletter distribution. Either way, I'd love to hear from you. If you want to support the show, the biggest help that you can provide is to share an episode with someone who you think might enjoy it. It turns out that podcasts still grow by word of mouth. It doesn't really matter if I recommend the show to other people. It matters if listeners recommend the show to other people, so I'd love your support in that as well. All right, well talk to you soon. We'll continue this conversation. Have a great day. Let's keep fighting for systemic change. That's obviously what we need. In the meantime, let's see what we can do as people on a daily basis with our money. Let's talk again soon.

Claire [interlude]  20:03

So that was part one. And I hope you enjoyed it. Now because I don't want to leave you hanging, you also get to listen to part two right here. Remember that you can catch all the other episodes of Spend, Donate, Invest on the podcast website at spenddonateinvest.world. As always, the link is available in the show notes. All right, let's get back to the second part of this episode, where GG explains how to "walk the talk", how to incorporate your values from the very beginning when building a socially responsible organisation.

Genet [introduction - part two]  20:39

Welcome back to Spend, Donate Invest. I'm your host, I go by GG that is short for Genet Gimja. This podcast is all about the different ways that we can try to line up our values, what kind of society we'd like to help build and what we're doing with our money on a daily basis. Most of the topics come from listener letters, and this podcast episode is no exception. So this is the second part of a two part discussion. A listener letter came in asking for suggestions on building a socially responsible organisation. In his case, I think he was talking about startups. But these suggestions really hold true whether you're starting a nonprofit or a for business company, really in any industry. Last time, we sort of laid the foundation or the groundwork for this conversation talking about how far we've come, I think as a society in terms of thinking about corporate social responsibility, which sometimes felt like an add-on, kind of slapped on to the side of a company, versus I think the more modern take on building an organisation, which is really thinking about how to embed the values into every aspect of how the organisation runs. So last time, in part one of this conversation, I think we laid the groundwork for this conversation, thinking about, especially how to start by really identifying exactly which values you'd like to stand up for, as an organisation. So if you miss part one of the conversation, tune into that.

Today, what we're going to talk about is the questions that you can ask yourself, as you're starting your organisation, I think there are a lot of opportunities in here to really walk the talk in terms of your values. So let's start with the first category, which is the structure of your organisation. So we're going to talk through structure, employees, community engagement, environment, governance, and customers.

Genet [organisation structure]  22:49

Let's start with structure. So the first, probably, one of the first decisions you're going to make for your organisation, after you've established exactly what your values are, is the structure. If it's a for-profit company, you could decide to set it up as a co-op. For example, a cooperative can come in many different forms, the point is just that it's owned by a broader set of people than just a single founder. So you might have the ownership be spread out across employees. So it could be employee owned, like King Arthur Flour, or it might be consumer owned, like REI, you might set it up to be producer owned, like Ocean Spray, or maybe some other cooperative structure. I pulled these examples from a website, which is just really clear and concise on this topic. I'll include a link in the show notes. But you know, then again, you might choose a different structure for your organisation, maybe a co-op doesn't make sense for you. And that's definitely okay. There are other structures you might consider, which can help you to really "walk the talk" in terms of those values that you outlined for your organisation. Everything starts off with knowing what values you're really trying to stand up for.

Genet [organisation and employees]  24:06

Second category of decisions to make where I think you have an opportunity to really live out your values, is thinking about employees. So first, let's think about the hiring process. How are your values integrated into your hiring process? Of course, if you're open and really upfront about your values, that is going to weed out some prospective applicants, and I think that's great. But you can go even further than that; you can incorporate a values-check before you hire someone. So in addition to evaluating a candidate's hard skills or soft skills, you can also have a third component that you look at which is whether or not their values align with your organisation's. It is an extra step. It's going to take a little bit more work, but I definitely think it's less effort to do this upfront, when you're thinking about hiring someone, versus realising you've introduced some toxicity into your organisation, and needing to deal with that situation after the fact. Once you've hired the right employees, I want to encourage you to think about the pay and benefits that you're going to offer to your employees that help you to really live out your values. So are you aware of what a living wage is in your area? So not a minimum wage, but a living wage? How do you stack up compared to that? Are you scoping out the role so that it's an appropriate amount of work for one person? How are you going to set it up so that you're caring for your employees wellbeing? So that can mean different things in different organisations. What is the benefit package? Especially if you're operating in the United States, that's huge. Not just to be competitive, and hiring people, but as an expression of your values. How are you thinking about creating a safe and healthy working environment for your employees, those are the first two; The structure of your organisation, and then the employees.

Genet [organisation and community engagement]  26:17

Now let's talk about your community engagement. So when I think about the community and how your organisation is really interacting with it, I start to think about some of the old ways we were talking about corporate social responsibility, you can check out Part One of the discussion, if you miss that. I think about literally giving back to the community; cash, products, time, access. So your philanthropy, you might decide, as you're founding your organisation, that you want to give away some percentage of your profits, maybe you say like 5% of profits, we're going to give that away. And I know it can sound difficult to do that when you're just starting out and resources are tight. But I still want to encourage you to try to think about doing that from the very beginning, it can be easier to give away 5% of your tiny profits today, or non-existent profits today, if you're just starting out, versus giving away 5% of your much bigger pile of cash someday. And I'm using 5%. As an example, here, the decision is obviously yours, you can go higher, you can go lower, whatever makes sense according to your value system. And you can change it. But I would encourage you to start with your ideal percentage that you're giving away, and then adjust downward if you need to, I think it's easier to go in that direction than it is to start small. And then to try to increase that percentage that you're giving away later on. When it comes to community engagement, I'm also thinking about all the ways that organisations will try to get their employees involved in the community. For example, in the last episode, I was sharing the example of going to do Habitat for Humanity builds with my dad in his job and as I was researching this episode, I was reading in the Harvard Business Review about a campaign at the Savings Bank of Walpole, they call it the Pay It Forward campaign, and what they do is they were giving teams of employees $700, to go out and to perform random acts of kindness in the community. And then the team's would report back and share with their colleagues what they did with the money. And so I think there, you also start to get a little bit of that culture building that we talked about before, too.

Genet [organisation and environment]  28:35

So we've talked about structure, employees, community, let's talk about environment. So this is the next category of decisions about the environment. This can include all kinds of decisions, like the sustainability in your own operations. So whatever kind of organisation you're starting, I mean, it could be a beauty shop, right? Maybe you're cutting hair, or you could be starting a tutoring company. The questions you can ask yourself are "Do you really need that office?" For example, can you share an office space with another company, another organisation? How are you thinking about your office materials, whatever that means for your industry? Your power usage, your water usage, etc? We have so many chances to make a decision that's aligned with our values. You can also think about the sustainability of your suppliers. So let's also think about the ripples out from your organisation. How sustainable are your suppliers? Is that another opportunity for you to make some decisions that really align with your organisation's values? So we're talking about the environment here, but you can imagine how, let's say you had chosen your organisation's overarching value is diversity, equity and inclusion, you could just as well be looking at your office space in your suppliers within that lens as well. So it all starts with investing the time upfront to know what your specific values are going to be.

Genet [organisation governance]  30:13

Let's talk about governance. This is really about how your organisation makes decisions. Depending on the structure that you chose for your organisation, this is really going to affect how governance goes and how you kind of decide to do that as an organisation. Because if you've set up a co-op, for example, then your members are going to be super involved in a much more democratic way. In governing your organisation. If you set up a different structure, you might think about governance differently within governance, I also want to encourage you to think through how you can use transparency as a tool for your organisation to be more socially responsible. And to really live out the values that you've identified for your organisation. I think transparency can be one of the most powerful tools in everything that we've talked about so far today.

Genet [organisation and customers]  31:07

Let's talk about customers, I think that's the last category here. So this is where you're thinking about how your organisation can live its values and really "walk the talk" when it comes to how you're engaging with your customers, your clients. So immediately, I'm thinking about businesses who engage in discrimination among some of their clients. The mortgage industry is well known to do this. I mean, the banking industry as a whole is infamous for this. I'm thinking about the tobacco industry, the lottery industry, the real estate industry, all industries that interact with vulnerable groups, I mean, the healthcare industry, (I'm going to stop pointing out examples here). My point is just that we have a wonderful set of opportunities here when we think about who we're targeting with our products and services, and how we're targeting them, we have a wonderful opportunity to really live out our values in a positive way.

Genet [measuring your success]  32:12

So for each of these categories, as you think about your decisions, I want to also encourage you to ask yourself, how will you know if you are successful? How will you know if you are sustainable in the way that you've planned to be sustainable? How will you know if your workers are paid fairly? If that's one of your values that you've outlined for yourself? Is there a regular review that your organisation is going to do? Are you going to self evaluate? Are you going to bring in a third party? Are you going to seek some kind of certification like applying to become a B Corp? Or signing a public pledge? And are there any specific metrics that you can tie to your goals? Also, how are you going to celebrate those wins, especially as a new founder, I think you'll benefit from building in some wins to celebrate some milestones that once you hit them, you can really cheer your successes and kind of give yourself more energy to go to the next stage. I love the idea of celebrating wins relating to adhering to your values that you set for your organisation. And in fact, if you are building an organisation right now, and you want someone to celebrate your wins, in terms of really living out your values, I'd love to cheer you on.

Genet [episode recap]  33:39

So to recap this two-part episode...  Starting an organisation is the perfect time to bake in your values. Start by deciding what specifically you want your organisation to stand for. And consider these six categories as areas where you can start making decisions today that are going to align with your values. First structure; you might decide on some sort of a co-op or another structure that makes sense according to the values you're trying to live by. Second employees; Can you add a component of your hiring process that screens for the same values you're trying to build? How are you going to pay your employees in alignment with your values? How are your employee benefits going to reflect that as well? How are you going to create a safe and healthy working environment? Community; How do you want your organisation to engage with your community? Is philanthropy a part of your practice? Employee volunteer type of programmes? Environment; Do you have an opportunity to practice green office strategies to reduce your organisation's environmental harm? Do you have suppliers that you can also engage according to those values? Governance; how will your organisation make decisions? Is there a way to Do this in alignment with whatever your values are? Can you use transparency as a tool? And finally customers; Who do you target and how do you target them? Is this in alignment with your values? How can you take a values-centred approach to engaging with your customers? 

Okay, I'll stop there. Thanks again to the listener who sent in the request for this topic. Welcome to all the new listeners that have joined in to hear some suggestions on building a more socially responsible organisation. This podcast is all about aligning our politics and our money. So if you're wondering about another topic, someone else is probably wondering about it too. Please drop an email anytime that shows email addresses spenddonateinvest@gmail.com If you want you can also check out the backlog there are about 100 episodes or so for this podcast. You can go to the website which is spenddonateinvest.world. You can also sign up for the monthly-ish newsletter, absolutely no spam at any time. You can sign up for the newsletter on the website or you can drop an email to the show and get added that way as well. If you are out there and you're building your own organisation right now, I hope that the conversation in this episode and the last one were helpful. I'd love to hear from you drop me a line anytime. That's all for today. Let's talk again soon.