15 Ways for Businesses, Nonprofits & the Community to Engage

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The Social Impact Level Up Collective is a community of social entrepreneurs that connected on social media to cultivate a pool of thought leaders ready to change the world. We call ourselves "badass change agents" and we're glad you joined us.

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This chat is part of the Uplevel Your Story Challenge. The challenge ends this week! Last chance to get the challenge workbook, videos, and materials to transform your impact story.

We'll have Neshe' Conley back in March to finish up her live stream after a tech issue caused it to abruptly end last Monday.

15 Ways to Create Synergy Between Business, Nonprofit, & the Community

(This article is curated from tips shared in a recent blog post, get all the tips here.)

Over years of working with nonprofit and community organizations, one thing that was consistent across this experience was the absence of small businesses from social impact initiatives. Small business owners are missing a significant opportunity to connect with the communities they serve. This post gives examples of how small businesses can help the community through community business partnerships and how nonprofits and community organizations can engage small businesses in a meaningful way.

This post was sparked by a wonderful conversation we had on the Social Impact Level Up Live this Monday with Neshe' Conley. While the feed got off to a rocky start and ended abruptly, the conversation was rich with ideas on how we can better engage with the community while doing impact-based work.

If you're a small business owner, nonprofit leader, or community member- this article and the blog post with all 15 tips are for you! Make sure you head over to read the full post for a much more in-depth discussion about this topic.

Business Partners

Instead of “being the best-kept secret”, you can leverage the community work you’re already doing by establishing an impact mission and developing your own corporate social responsibility program. Creating your own CSR is easy and will help you take action to make a consistent change. Additionally, it will help your community partners engage you in meaningful work that needs your voice and support.

1. Identify how community impact work is good for your bottom line: Participating in community change can have a positive impact on your bottom line. By supporting community and social issues, you can build stronger relationships with your customers, employees, stakeholders, and improve your reputation and brand. The first step is to identify how having an impact mission and a profit-driven business can support each other.
2. Demonstrate benefits for your community: Participating in community change helps create a stronger community. By working to address important issues and support positive change, you can help to create healthier, thriving communities. The next step is to catalog how the work you are doing for the community or the work you aspire to do will benefit others and the community. 
3. Establish a formal impact mission: Creating a brand that has an impact mission equal to its profit mission is an important step towards committing to continued community support. Signaling to community partners that your business is in it for the long haul with an established impact mission will tell them how to work with you and the causes you support. 

Nonprofit & Community Partners

As a nonprofit organization or community coalition/partnership, you can make partnering with your organization a breeze to help attract businesses aligned with your vision, values, and work. Leveraging small businesses in your community to help you make a bigger impact is a great way to increase your sustainability. Public-private partnerships are sometimes required or preferred by funders and can put you at an advantage when discussing sustainability tactics with your funder.

1. Make it easy for businesses to support you. If you want to attract local businesses, make it easy for them to support you.
2. Always invite multiple businesses to community partnerships. Partners tend to be busy, but local businesses often have few representatives they can send to support your meetings or efforts. Offset this by inviting multiple business partners and asking them to please send an alternate if they cannot attend. This practice is common in business networking meetings and can be adapted for your partners as well. 

5 Best Practices to Follow for Community Engagement

The Social Impact Level Up Collective invited Neshe’ Conley, MPH CHES to join a live conversation about best practices to work with the community through impact storytelling. Neshe’ gave a wealth of advice for organizations to follow as best practices in community engagement.

1. It’s not about you. As the organization or partnership leading the work, the people you serve are always first and foremost.
2. Ensuring the people you serve are empowered to give feedback and be part of decision-making processes is key. Include the community in your quality assurance/quality improvement process.
3. Giving space for the community to lead you is important to ensure that power is actually being shared.
4. Make sure any information collected from the community is given back to the community and shared broadly.
5. Always segment the demographics to find the best fit for the solutions you want to propose to the community but do not assume the solution you choose is the right or only one. Allow the community to have empowered input into the solutions being offered and how funding is used.

Read the rest of the tips in this blog post: 15 Ways for Communities, Businesses, & Nonprofits to Engage

Get Support For Your Organization

Looking for new approaches to create strong community business partnerships? Not sure how to strengthen your public-private partnership? Interested in making a consistent impact through your business by establishing an impact mission? 

Reach out and book a call. Business and nonprofit consulting services give you access to expert advice and support to strengthen your approach to corporate social responsibility and community building. 

Small business owners get help with: 

• Establishing a formal impact mission
• Assessing your current impact work and aligning it with your business goals
• Leveraging your values and impact in your business marketing

Nonprofit organizations and civic groups get support to:

• Leverage community relationships to fulfill your impact goals
• Develop multiple streams of revenue, including leveraging corporate donations
• Demonstrate your impact to attract business partners
• Create a community participatory budgeting process

Book an initial consultation today! 

Social Impact Level Up Podcast

Stay tuned for Season 2 of the Social Impact Level Up Podcast, coming in March!

Hosts Wendie V. and Rodrigo Bravo are interviewing dozens of social entrepreneurs to find out exactly what it takes to make a sustainable impact. You don't want to miss this lineup!

Listen to a few episodes from Season 1. Subscribe, and give us a few stars wherever you listen to podcasts. We super appreciate your support!

Where Can You Find Us?

The Social Impact Level Up is about to take over a few spaces. We hope you'll join the community everywhere we hang out. For Season 2 we're sharing the video content on YouTube. More to come, be ready to subscribe and watch some amazing social entrepreneurs sharing their stories!

We're coming back in March for LinkedIn Audio events and we're still on the Clubhouse app transiting to a "house" with new events coming this spring.

Connect with your hosts Wendie V. and Rodrigo Bravo so you don't miss any upcoming events or announcements.

Connect with Rodrigo Bravo, Jr.

Rodrigo Bravo is a mediator and co-parenting coach. You can find Rodrigo Bravo, Jr. on social media

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Connect with Wendie V.

Wendie V. is a Social Impact Strategist and Executive Coach. You can find Wendie V. on social media

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P.S. Lead Photo is from the blog post 15 Ways for Communities, Businesses, and Nonprofits to Engage when Wendie V. visited the Lummi tribe in Washington State. The Project AWARE team showed how the whole community, including local businesses and civic organizations were working together with schools and other tribal agencies to support their younger generations.