- Hi everybody, this
is Heather Nelson here. I'm from BridgeRaise. BridgeRaise is my consultancy
that helps charities and nonprofits raise more
money from companies. And if you are here to talk
about ESG and charities, you are in the right place. I have been at a number
of workshops lately and everywhere I go, community investment, corporate people are talking about ESG. And if they're talking about ESG, you my friends that are
doing corporate fundraising, need to know what that is, how that sho
ws up in your
charities and how that shows up in your corporate partnerships. And I am so thrilled to
have my friend Victoria here to talk about this with me. I'd love to see your
comments in the messages. So let me know you're here,
where you're here from. If you have any questions about ESG, pop those in the comments
so I can see them and know that you have joined us and are excited to learn more. So, as I mentioned, Victoria
is going to be my guest today, Victoria and I go way
back to the tod
dler days of BridgeRaise when I
was first out on my own, I worked alongside Victoria doing some corporate prospect research for her, some corporate strategy work for the Canadian Women's Foundation. That was a great time. We aligned on so many
things and we've stayed in touch ever since. Fast forward to now, we've both done a bunch
of stuff since then and now we are here really bringing you into a conversation that
started with us over lunch and we started talking about these things and I really
felt that my community would learn so much from Victoria. So I'm asking her to join us today. So here we go. I'm going to bring her into the stream and we are going to have this chat. Welcome Victoria. - Hi Heather, how are you? - Yes, I am great. I am so glad you're here and
I thought we would get started with you introducing yourself
and telling all our viewers and people watching on record who you are and why you are the
person I want to talk to about ESG and corporate partnerships. - Sure.
So, hi everybody. It's so nice to be here. So thanks Heather for having me. That was such a nice
introduction and it's true. We go back way back and we can actually, we were just saying earlier, we could literally talk
for hours on our subject. So, this is a great opportunity. So a little bit about me. Last 20 years, I've been
on both sides of the coin. I've been a fundraiser for about 12 years and kind of honed my skills in the corporate philanthropy side. That was sort of my passion. And then
I've also worked with companies on their foundations, specifically like social
impact foundations on the for-profit side
for about eight years, nine years now. So I've done a little bit of both. And last year or the year before actually, as I was in corporate philanthropy, I really started to have a more
of a passion and an interest and wanted to learn about ESG. So I actually signed myself
up for the graduate program at St. Mike's at U of T
for the sustainability and social responsibility progr
am. So it's a year and a half program. So I just graduated from
it this past November. So that really helped me to
kind of round out my knowledge and my expertise around that. So just a little plug,
it's an awesome program. If anyone's interested in doing it, do it. And the network and the people
that you're going to meet are absolutely amazing. We still keep in touch to this day. And yeah. And now I'm currently at
Ontario Power Generation and I'm working on modernizing their community investmen
t strategy. So that's a little bit about me. - That is such a good intro 'cause it does really
cover off all the pieces and I love that you did go
back to school in that area. I get people ask about
that program all the time and, you know, it is a unique opportunity to certainly delve into that space. So I love that you're bringing that. And, spoiler alert, I will remind people at the end of this, but Victoria did send me a
number of awesome resources, I imagine some of which they
talked about i
n your program and some you've come across since then. So if anybody is interested
in some more resources on ESG and charities, I have some for you and you
can DM me and ask me for them. But let's get started on the conversation. I've been throwing around this term ESG, and I just want you, let's
start with the basics. What is it and why is it so important first for the business sector? - Yeah. So yeah, that's a good
way to sort of level out all of our understanding of what ESG is. So basically
what it is, there's a lot of different definitions, but the main definition is that it's a, it's a vital business
strategy and framework. So that pertains to a company building a sustainable business. And there's three main
areas that they focus on, which is the environmental, the social, and the governance aspects of a business. So the idea of ESG is that
if you look back in time, the idea was that
companies were more focused just on their profit or their
profitability of the business. Whereas
this ESG framework,
it supports people, the planet and the business equally. So you're taking the focus away
from just the profitability of the business, and now
businesses are understanding that they need to look
at these three things in order to be sustainable
and to be profitable and to be equitable. So the three main pillars,
yeah, the E, the S and the G, the E refers to environmental factors. So those could be like
environmental impacts or the risks that a business might have
or their resil
iency towards, like climate risks, like
flood supply, fires, that sort of thing, or what
their carbon footprint might be. The social pillar refers
to their relationship with their stakeholders. And so when we talk about stakeholders, what that means is that
anybody who has a stake in the business, so that
could be their employees, their customers, their
suppliers, their vendors, those are the stakeholders. And that refers to anything
from employee-wise. Like it could be looking
at, you know, fai
r wages, how they treat their
employees, employee engagement. But it also comes, it also connects with
their community impact and how they impact communities. And it's actually, for some companies, it's even more broad than that. It even goes sort of into like
a more of a tertiary phase where they're even looking
at their suppliers. So what does that mean for their suppliers or their labor standards, for example, or what that looks like
in developing countries if they have operations there. And
then the T refers to
the governance aspect, so like how they lead and
manage their business. So that refers to like how
they manage their operations, what kind of policies they have. It refers to like their transparency, their accountability
within their business. And all of these companies
that are implementing ESG. So let's, I guess I
should probably mention not all companies follow an
ESG framework or use ESG, I would say, I think I
just read a stat about 90% of S&P companies are now implemen
ting ESG so it's very much for the sort of mid to larger size businesses
that are looking at this. But I would argue that
smaller ones will be doing so, it's just taking a bit of time. - Yeah, you know, as you
describe it, you know, you can really automatically
see like some emerging things that seem like obvious connections
to the charitable sector and to corporate partnership. But let's highlight
those for our listeners. When you think about ESG
frameworks in companies, what are some things th
at,
you know, you immediately say, and this applies to charity, or this applies to the
connection between the two. - Exactly. So really good point. So there's two things actually that really connect those two together. So as we were just talking
about the differences of the E and the S and the G, so keep in mind companies
more and more the ones that are establishing ESG
priorities or frameworks, they're being evaluated. So they are getting rated on how they do on each of those three. And more an
d more investment
decisions are being made on how they're rated,
like, so investments, like people that buy stock or, you know, that partner with a company and so forth. So they need to rank really high, right, on those three things, those
three things, the E, the S, and the G, it builds trust, it builds their brand, their reputation. It attracts new business and partners. It attracts their clients,
their customers, their employees that does the exact same
thing for charities. - Right?
- So what
's the connection between those two? And where you can look at
it even more closely is what corporate philanthropy does, is to think of it as you are the S, your work is the S of that
ESG, that's where you fit in. So you're exactly that S. So you are very much
tied to ESG strategies and frameworks for a company. And so we'll talk a little bit about that, more about that's- - Yeah.
- Yeah. And I do want to flag which
something you said offline before we got on, we are focusing today on the
part o
f this, which is like, how can a charity who's
talking corporate partnerships connect into the ESG
strategies at the company. And I want to focus there, but I also want us to just quickly mention that putting these ESG frameworks in place at our charitable organizations can also be an important
step in, you know, just maintaining authenticity. So tell me a little bit about
that from your point of view. - Exactly. So yeah, there's two main
points really that, you know, we wanted to highlight. And
of course, you know, today here we're going
to focus really more on corporate philanthropy
and community investment and what that means within ESG. But to your point, the other side of it that I just wanted to kind of plant the seed here because everybody here is
in the charitable sector, and I have been there as well. It is, I think, and more and more so super
important to look at it as a business strategy
for the charitable sector. So as we were talking about
the fact that ESG helps to build
trust, right? Trust is your number
one focus as a charity. If you don't have trust, if people don't trust
you as an organization, you're going to lose your donors, you're going to lose your funders, you're going to lose
your employees, right? So keep in mind that this
is a strategy that I think really should be looked at
within the charitable sector. More and more donors and
funders are paying attention to how your charitable organization or not-for-profit or whatever you are, how you do your wo
rk even almost even more so than your impact. - Yeah. Yeah. - So it's super important and I mean, it's been in the news lots, right? But I mean, I think it
just highlights the fact that funders and partners are looking for reputable organizations
that they can trust, that they know that they are
effective in their operations. And ESG helps to that effect. But anyways, we won't go there today, but- - Yeah. Yeah. Seed planted and I could not agree more. I think, you know, I think it also extends t
o the part where like there is going to be
increased expectations, I think, on the corporate side to
prove your authenticity on the charitable side. And one of the ways you can do that is by having your own ESG
framework and your own metrics that you're measuring as
opposed to just jumping in and helping a company with theirs, right? But let's talk about the jumping in and helping them with theirs. So you mentioned the obvious
place for the linkage to occur is with the S. How might a charity, yo
u know, figure out how to do that with a company that has an ESG framework in place? - Yeah, so we talked a little
bit about where you fit in. So consider yourselves as you're
the S in the ESG equation. So there's a couple points here that I think are really
important to think about when you're aligning yourselves
with the corporate sector. And, you know, like I
said, I've been there, I was doing that for years
up until very recently. And I know that's, you
know, some of you, you know, on this c
all, you might be
seeing more and more of, you know, a prospect or a current partner even that's focusing on ESG. So a couple things that
I want to highlight that are super important when
you're connecting your work to their ESG framework, one of them is highlighting the fact that obviously your work
is the yes in the ESG and to really stress the
importance of your work and how that relates to their framework. The next thing is the social impact data that you are able to provide. Think of it as
that helps them to create more business value. So just as we had mentioned earlier, the fact that companies that
implement an ESG framework are being evaluated and rated, that means they have very specific metrics that they're looking for. So the more you can do that,
even if it's just the basics, like I have been with
small not-for-profits, I have been with larger ones. I know the measurement
and the impact measurement and the evaluation is
sometimes super hard. Sometimes you don't even
have a
person to do it, but even if you can start to
pull some of that information, this is really, really
important for a company because that's what they need that data to connect those dots and
make the business case that their investment makes sense, right? 'Cause now they're using your data to show that their investment
is making that social impact. - Yeah, it's so important to have data and I know that is such a
challenge for our partners, for our charitable organizations. How comfortable do you
think most companies will be on sharing the specifics of their, like the data points they're
looking for in their framework? - Yes. That is such a good, that's a really good point actually, that was something that
I was going to bring up. You know, one of the things I
think that is super important, and I know Heather, you and I have talked
about this for so much. So many times, is the fact that, you know, how important it's to have conversations. - That's right.
- With your prospects before you
actually go down
the road of making a proposal. That's where that conversation comes in. And almost like, I've not yet come across a
company that would not be willing to share that information. So I think it's really
important to do your homework and make sure that if
you're looking to reach out, if it's a prospect, for example, that you are having that
conversation and you're learning about their ESG goals, how looking for like how
you align with those goals. So where do you fit into that
and t
ailor your conversation in your proposals around that. If they're a current
partner and you're looking to just build that up or you're looking for like a larger gift from
them or whatever it might be, again, that's where that
conversation comes into play. It's super important, important
to find out, you know, listen and learn about their business. So ask those pointed questions, you know, what are the things that
you're looking to evaluate and measure right now? And show, like, demonstrate even
if you have
like the simplest points of data, show those points and demonstrate this is the kind of data that we're able to collect right now. Tell them what your strategy is around data evaluation and management. Tell them if you're working on it or you're looking to improve it, or you're just getting involved or you're just getting into it. It's important to have those
conversations and understand where there are in their
journey, their ESG journey, because that's when
you can figure out how,
where you can best fit and
where you can best align. And it really is going to save
you a ton of time down the road. If you can't have those conversations, I know loads of times you can't
even get them on the phone or they, or if it's a prospect, you can't even get them
to even connect with you. But if you can look online
and you can try and Google and find that information, it's usually somewhere
there and really, you know, you just need to put in
the time and effort now because it's, once you
tailor that proposal, it's going to save you time
and energy then putting out a random proposal that has no
alignment to their ESG goals. - That's it. Yeah, and 100% we, well, at BridgeRaise, one of our main offerings is like digging through the material
and trying to tease out that piece of information that the metric that they're collecting in their S by reading the long reports
if you don't have time at your organizations, because it does make a huge difference. And I think if we're
talking a
bout a company that's getting a whole bunch of emails, I always say like, if they get one that
shows that you've read it, you've figured out the connection and you can even give a simple
data point that fits in, you're much more likely
to get the call back than the very general outreach, right? - Yeah.
- And so I think that that's such a super important point. And hearing it from you, knowing that you've been on both sides, I know that obviously that's
what we talk about as well here at BridgeRa
ise is that, how do you, like, there's so many different
things you can leverage to get the call and this ESG
area is such an important one. And I also know that for
most organizations in ESG, if not all, like reporting on this information is actually part of
requirements to get evaluated. So the data is there somewhere. It does often require though
we're doing some reading and deciding that, you know, that this is a partner
you really want enough to invest that time so
that you can match up. In
teresting that we've
been focusing on the S, I will say recently I
have a few organizations that I'm working with that are also fitting into the E and the emergence of
more and more attention on climate change and on carbon footprint and things like that. We are seeing, you know, if you're talking about
an advanced sponsorship or a conference or something like that, you may also have to make
sure you're paying attention to your carbon footprint, some of those things as
well because, you know, th
ey don't want to be investing in an S and then hurting their E at the same time. So it's really important
to be keeping an eye on both of those, I think. - Yeah, that's a really
good point actually. And looking at it from both
sides of the coin, you know, just to sort of highlight that,
you know, on the one hand, you know, I think that the charitable, if you're not-for-profit,
charity, whatever you are, once you partner with a company, you are sort of part
of their supply chain. And so if that c
ompany is
already being evaluated on their environmental footprint, and remember we were
talking about the fact that a lot of them are now looking at the tertiary phase, right? So it means like a company is looking at what's their environmental
impact for themselves and then they're looking at, okay, what does that mean for
our supply chain, right? So they want to partner with
organizations, companies, vendors, whatever, that
are also looking at that and that it's super, super important. And I t
hink the other side of
thing to keep in mind is that, you know, I think, you know, coming from the not-for-profit sector, I think what we tend to
do is we tend to silo a lot of the social issues
that we are working on. So we say poverty is
poverty for the most part, but we don't connect
it with larger issues. And so making that
connection and it's sort of, it takes like systems thinking, right? So it's the holistic view of,
okay, well this is, you know, when you're connecting with a partner, wit
h a corporate partner for example, or a prospect or whatever it might be, you know, you're talking
about your social issue, but you want to make sure
that you're connecting it to the broader, the broader issues of the ESG. And also keep in mind too, a lot of companies are
connecting and aligning with the SDG goals, the
sustainable development goals. So I think it would be
really, really important to also connect your work to those goals when you're connecting
with a corporate partner. Because yo
u can find, you will
find an alignment somewhere. I promise you. There's 15 goals in there. There are a million
different tactics and goals that they're trying to achieve. You're going to fit in there somewhere. You just need to highlight that because to your point, Heather, you know, when you're talking about
the number of organizations that are trying to get
that company's dollars, if you can make that connection super easy and right up front, they don't
have to go digging for it. - Yeah, yeah
. It's interesting that you bring up SDGs 'cause there was a question
in our comments about that. And I was going to say
while there are connections, they are separate, but one of the tactics
that we use with SDGs and ESG are similar in my
mind that these are things that companies are measuring and where we can find alignment. So, you know, if you're
looking for, you know, things to put in your pitch deck or things to put in your early emails, the alignment between yourself
and ESG goals at a co
mpany or your alignment between
your charity and the SDGs that that company has prioritized
are two really good ways to do it. And yes, is there overlap in there? Sure. But those are two separate
frameworks basically, in my view that organizations
that companies are using. - Yeah. - And both, which we can use as levers to create connection and alignment. I'm going to jump to another
question here too that, so the comment was, you know, that they have seen some companies treating corporate
philan
thropy and ESG separate. I think that that is true,
but we're seeing more, are you seeing more integration
of this is, you know- - Yeah.
- Is this sort of a question of where they're on their journey- - Yes. That's exactly it. It's where they're on their journey. So traditionally or historically, that's how it was looked at. It was looked at as corporate philanthropy is this nice to have
thing because it's good and we feel good and everyone's
happy and that's it, right? It was never connected
to
the revenue generation of the business, but now
it's completely different. So those companies that are
implementing an ESG framework, very much understand
that their social value, their social proposition or
their social license to operate is very much tied to
corporate philanthropy and community investment. - Okay.
- And now they're making that connection. Now they understand for
those ones that are evolving or that are further on in their journey, those companies are now
understanding the inv
estment I make in community investment
has a direct relation to my bottom line. It's going to reflect
the partners that I get. If you are a retailer, it affects customers and
how they think of you. It's your social license to operate. - Yeah, yeah. - Very much Part of it's
the ones that have evolved that are further along in their journey, those are the ones that have
tied those two together. The ones that are still
a little bit behind, I think of it more
traditionally as separate. Those ones ar
e, you know,
just a little bit, you know, behind the eight ball I would say. - Yeah, I couldn't agree more. And I think, you know, to
your point about, you know, the size of company and
where they are does affect where they are at their journey. But I'm seeing more and more, I actually have an entrepreneur friend who works with startups on ensuring ESG and they're seeing more and
more now that startup funding is getting connected to ESG. So I think it is just a matter of time, just like there wa
s a point
where corporate philanthropy was not connected to marketing
or employee engagement or any of those things. You know, over the last few years, very few companies are giving away money that doesn't connect in some
way to either ESG priorities, employee priorities, or, you know, some very specific business goals or marketing brand building goals. And I feel like this is like we're continuing on this evolutionary path in our businesses, in our companies, and therefore corporate partnership
s need to keep up with that. They're also evolving, right? And if you're still
exclusively looking for funding that doesn't meet these
different expectations on the corporate side,
that pie is dwindling as this other one is growing. - Yeah. - So, you know, we only have
a couple more minutes here. If you wanted to give like one really, one or two really core piece of advice to charities who are looking to use ESG as a way of either strengthening
or building a relationship with the company, what w
ould you suggest? - I would say there's a couple of things. I would come back to the idea
of your impact measurement and your evaluation.
- Okay. - I think that that is
one of the top priorities, if I had to say like, that
was a key takeaway, honestly, it's such a big takeaway
and there's a couple things going along with that. I think one, make sure that you understand and have those conversations
with your prospects or your partners to understand
what is important to them in terms of evaluation
and understand what you can
provide them and tell them that, show them what you've got, even if you're at the beginning
stage of it, that's fine. And the other important
piece is that, you know, I would consider yourselves as, you know, change makers within your organization. So if your organization
isn't currently doing that, I think that you should be starting to plant that seed internally
with your organization and having other people
understand the business case of not having that evaluatio
n or if you're not measuring
in some way, shape, or form your impact, it's going
to affect the funding that you can attract and retain. So I think that's an important piece. Another one that I want to emphasize is, we haven't touched on this yet, but I think it's also really
important to remember that even, for example, I know
that we're all going and, you know, I consider myself a we because I still feel like I'm a, but I would say that keep in
mind that even if you don't, if you don't land tha
t partner
right away or, you know, the prospect says no, keep in mind that another
part of the S in ESG is what employee or what companies
consider employee giving and volunteering or engagement. And I want to make sure
that there's like, you know, there's volunteering and
then there's also engagement. So don't worry if you
don't have volunteering. So coming back to the idea of the S when we were talking earlier,
the fact that companies look at the S, the social part of ESG as the relationship
w
ith their stakeholders, they very much have more emphasis placed on like an employee's, their relationship with
their company, how they, you know, what they like about
it, how they feel about it, the culture and that sort of thing. So as an organ, as a charity
or not-for-profit, what if, if you can at least get your
foot in the door in terms of, you know, perhaps connecting with them on employee giving side of things or even if there's some engagement. So if you have volunteer
opportunities, sup
er, I know many don't, many organizations don't. Think of it as an
educational opportunity too. So not just volunteering, but like, you know, can
you offer up, you know, webinars that connect
employees to your cause and, you know, educate them
on the social impact issues that you're trying to solve. That kind of thing is also
super, super valuable. So you might start off at that level and then you're building
that relationship with them because now you've built
in some key ambassadors in the com
pany, you've got
some people on your side and that's maybe where then
you can start to build out more of a larger partnership with them. So those are-
- I love that. Such a great place to end
because I know that the, for many of the people listening, probably the metrics and impact piece feels heavy and difficult. Although I love that you said
tell them where you're at. You know what? I could not agree more. I always say that, you know, if you're transparent at
the front and are honest, it's muc
h more likely actually
to get you the partnership than to hurt you because
with the other person that's not telling the whole story, that's going to fall apart, right? If you're honest, you
say this is what I have, this is what we're measuring,
this is what I can offer, this is what we aspire to,
but we're not there yet. Companies can understand that and relate to that and appreciate that. And then you're building
the trust and credibility. So I love that. I talk all the time about how we shy aw
ay from employee engagement
or employee giving because we think it has to be volunteerism and big and complex and it doesn't. So thank you for giving people hope there, 'cause I think most of us can run webinar engagement type activities and so that's another
takeaway for everybody. We have run out of time. This has been so, so valuable. I know, like we started at the beginning, we could talk forever. We've let you in on a half hour. I know this has been really
useful for all of you. Thank you s
o much, Victoria. If people have any follow up questions, where should they reach out to you? - Yeah, I'm happy to have
this chat with anybody. As Heather mentioned, we're both pretty passionate
about these areas, so I love having conversations. Just reach out to me on LinkedIn. I'm there.
- Perfect. Perfect. Okay, thanks everybody for joining. As I said at the beginning, I have a list of resources on this topic. If you want to learn more, please send me a DM and
I will get them to you. I wish a
ll of you the very best day, the very best in figuring out how your organization
internally can embrace an ESG framework as well
as use ESG frameworks in corporations as a
way to create alignment, stronger partnerships and more revenue for your organizations. Thank you so much for being
here and I look forward to connecting again. - Thanks everyone. Thanks Heather.
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