Additional Services

Social Impact Compass

A guided service led by our team of social impact experts taking companies through an in-depth assessment of their social impact strategy. This includes a comprehensive review of the Planning, Implementation, Measurement, Reporting and Engagement to assess the maturity of a company’s social impact strategy.  

Our expert analysis provides access to a detailed results and management report, as well as a phased action plan with recommended next steps.
 

Third party expert guidance:

The Compass process is led by the managers of the global framework for managing and measuring social impact (B4SI) and it has evolved through iterative testing over three years (between 2019 – 2022) with input from social impact practitioners from +40 global companies.

Internal engagement and alignment:

Helps define social impact specific to the organisation in question, builds a common language to support internal management discussions and identifies gaps across planning, implementation, measurement, reporting and engagement.

Informs strategy and improves accountability:

A collaborative process involving representatives from across the business towards building a realistic roadmap for social impact leadership in line with the overarching business purpose and strategy.

Drive decisions for greater societal impact:

Social impact practitioners leading this initiative from within the business can learn how to improve and further develop initiatives through prioritising improvements in Planning, Implementation, Measurement Reporting and Engagement with the input and buy in from key stakeholders who have been involved in developing the roadmap as part of the process.

At B4SI, we have evolved our understanding of what a transformational Social Impact strategy is through extensive engagement with 40+ global B4SI members over a three year period from 2019-2022. We consolidated those characteristics into an in-depth assessment and created an engaging process to guide businesses through, resulting in the delivery of a bespoke action plan, based on the businesses assessment of itself. The Social Impact Compass assessment evaluates performance across fifteen sections organised in four main areas of corporate social impact activity: Plan, Implement, Measure, Report & Engage. 

Customisation

The Social Impact Compass service can be tailored to accommodate diverse team structures and needs. We build the service around each client’s specific objectives, needs, and expected timeline.

 

  • Strategy assessment / stress testing: Review of global strategy with social impact team members. Companies seeking to improve the effectiveness of their strategy might decide to engage with wider teams, using the Social Impact Compass as a channel for stakeholder engagement through the interactive workshops which we facilitate as part of this service.
  • Regional office engagement: Assessment of regional performance and establishing (or co-creating, in the case of newly formed teams or merged businesses), a shared understanding of the organisation’s social impact strategy. This can involve extended teams through virtual and in person workshops.
  • Executive engagement: Using the Social Impact Compass as the basis for executive engagement, we provide reports and other materials that are easy to share and support practitioners with presenting findings in a compelling way.

    Benefits & Outcomes

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    Structured assessment of a company’s social impact strategy looking at the strengths and challenges across multiple teams.

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    Comprehensive management report highlighting specific actions to improve maturity across each area.

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    Opportunity to build a shared understanding of the S in your ESG strategy.

    Report with confidence and improve your social impact data management and measurement.

    Contact us

    "

    In managing community involvement, we apply the same rigour as in other aspects of our business. This is why we use the B4SI Framework to measure our charitable contributions (cash, time and in kind) and ask B4SI to assure our use of the reporting methodology. It helps ensure we are reporting our charitable contributions accurately and provides learnings to continually improve management of our community investment.”

    Alexis Steadman, Global Community Manager, RELX

    "

    The B4SI assurance process was thorough and enabled us to report our first year of data using the framework with confidence. The management report and subsequent dialogue with our account manager gave us clarity on how to expand and align our impact capture across our three strategic themes."

    Donna Hunt, Senior Specialist Social Impact, Coventry Building Society