4 Steps to Changing the World Through Corporate Philanthropy
An evolution of inspiration is happening in corporate philanthropy. As head of corporate philanthropy at Delta Dental, I’m excited to see organizations like mine grow from good corporate neighbors to leveraging our resources for radical, systemic change.
Impact-oriented corporate philanthropy has been shaped by changes in the world around us, including the methods of venture capitalists, who use funding to launch big ideas into reality. In my article, “5 Ways to Elevate Your Corporate Philanthropy,” I shared how thinking like a venture capitalist focuses on outcomes and meaningful change.
Today, I will offer insight into how you can build a program that will position your organization to lead transformation to a better world using a simple framework.
#1 — Local Love
The basis of any solid corporate philanthropy program is what I call local love — charitable work in our communities. As much as our program evolves, local love will persist.
Engaging locally allows employees and leaders to support causes they have a particular passion for, which helps raise awareness for the company in the local community. At Delta Dental, we sponsor employee volunteer days, match employee giving, and run regional community councils that review grants to nonprofits in our local communities.
Focusing at a local level allows us to do good at home while laying the groundwork for impact on a much larger scale. It’s also been a valuable indicator of more significant, systemic issues affecting people and places nationwide.
The local love part of our social impact efforts is characterized by many small grants, like sprinklings of love around our local communities. Overall, our ‘local love’ accounts for 10% of our giving budget, benefitting roughly 200 organizations — around 50% of our partner portfolio.
#2 Look to your mission
If you want to amplify your organization’s impact beyond local love, your next step is a mission-aligned giving strategy.
At Delta Dental, our mission is to expand access to oral health care for all. So, we began looking for nonprofit partners who aligned with that mission. That’s why we strongly support Federally Qualified Health Care Centers or FQHCs.
FQHCs provide low-cost health care services and are among the first of our nation’s health care organizations to integrate oral care into their services. By working with FQHCs, we learned more about barriers to oral health care and developed strong partnerships that have led to further growth of our corporate philanthropy program.
For most social impact programs, this is where you will want to focus the majority of your funds and limit the number of partners more than what you give to local love. Today, our cause-aligned grant-making accounts for more than 60% of our overall philanthropy budget, with almost half of our partners.
#3 Invest in research and thought leadership
Once you focus your support on a cause that aligns with your business, you can expand your impact even more by investing in research related to your cause.
Investing in university research is a clear path to expertise and thought leadership and reveals new insights and opportunities for impact. At Delta Dental, we focus on several types of research funding: calls for academic papers, project-based grants, and multi-year grants.
Our oral health education grants focus on improving oral health outcomes, while multi-year research grants inform us to help lead transformative change over time. Currently, we dedicate nearly 20% of our philanthropy budget to support research at seven educational institutions.
#4 Develop your signature program
I like to think the journey to a signature program is a natural progression from local love, mission-oriented funding, research, and thought leadership — to make a deeper, more focused difference in the world by driving radical, systemic change. [Delta Dental Community Care Foundation launches multi-year funding program to address national oral health care crisis among older adults]
As our corporate giving program evolved, we learned that several at-risk populations might struggle to receive basic oral health care. One, in particular, is in a state of crisis — older adults.
The alarming lack of support for older adults presented a unique opportunity to impact significantly. Rather than contribute to a cause receiving a lot of funding and attention, we found a space where we could make a big difference. As you dig deeper into your mission-aligned giving, this strategy will position you for profound, lasting impact.
Remember those partnerships we cultivated through mission-aligned giving and university research? From those, we built impact-oriented coalitions and now dedicate 10% of our philanthropy budget to our signature program in which we are working together for real, scalable solutions to the growing health care crisis for older adults.
Create a Lasting Impact to Change the World
As more companies look for ways to impact the world positively, corporate philanthropists are in a unique position to make real, lasting change.
At Delta Dental, our journey has shown us that we make our greatest impact when we align to our mission and find like-minded partners with whom we can work to solve big problems and find solutions for beneficial systemic change and oral health equity.
As you evolve your organization’s corporate philanthropy — from local love to a signature program — I believe the relationships, knowledge, and expertise you gain will ultimately lead you to where you’re needed most.
Thanks for reading and reach out if you have questions or further ideas. Let’s start a conversation and build the change we want to see.
