There is a growing recognition that business leaders have much to contribute to the work of social transformation. But non-profit, community and government leaders are often insecure about approaching business. “Why would business care?” they ask themselves. “What is the pitch that is most likely to succeed in recruiting them?” 

The Ford Foundation supported and evaluated fifty business/community collaborations in the United States between 1995 and 2003. Many demonstrated remarkable results. They found four main “drivers” that caused business to want to participate.

The first of those drivers are “market” drivers. They represent opportunities where the goals of business and the goals of the community are almost perfectly aligned. Locating in a low income community, for example, may provide businesses with access to affordable real estate, lower property taxes, government improvement grants, or a significant pool of workers. Supporting organic producers or engaging in fair trade practices may open up whole new market possibilities for growth and profitability. Developing a supply chain that includes goods and services provided by certain minority groups may provide opportunities for innovation or cost savings.

An appeal to business can also be crafted around “value drivers”. Many businesses have articulated social missions that their leaders care passionately about. More than half of all businesses include corporate social responsibility as part of their mission. So it makes good sense to approach a business or a group of businesses on the basis that collaborating for social change is the “right thing to do”. They may be interested in leaving a legacy to their community on purely altruistic grounds.

The Ford Foundation identified a third category of “intangible drivers”.  The business success of most companies is impacted by the health of the community around them. When a community has high levels of unemployment, or lacks affordable housing, or is characterized by violence, or poor air or water quality, companies located within that community suffer from low purchasing power for their products, additional costs to deal with the social ills, difficulty attracting talent to their community etc. A company that is seen as not doing its part to keep the community strong may lose workforce or market opportunities because of its poor corporate image. Like market drivers, intangible drivers relate to what a corporation has to gain from the social change initiative, but the gain is rarely immediate or quantifiable.

Normally, leaders seeking to collaborate with the business sector are best to look for “win- win” possibilities. Each of the drivers described in the previous three categories provide many possibilities for win-win solutions. Sometimes win-win is not possible. Even where businesses would like to collaborate on a social change initiative, there may be competitive circumstances that make it difficult to do so. In those situations a non-profit could pursue one or more “compliance drivers” to encourage businesses to work with them. Shareholder activists, for example, have been quite effective in getting companies to change their trade or environmental practices. Regulatory practices have often been used to “even the playing field” so that no one company suffers a competitive disadvantage from meeting demands from the community. Even the desire to avoid new regulations, or to prevent negative press coverage, can be motivations for businesses to collaborate on social change initiatives.

It is generally accepted that the most powerful drivers for business involvement in social transformation are the market drivers – the ones that address the immediate self interest of the businesses. That has not been my experience. My experience has been that businesses are more likely to collaborate because it feels like the “right thing to do”. What has been your experience?