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Starting your social purpose journey

As an acquirer of software companies, this client focused on preserving the legacies of their business owners and decided that they wanted to build a legacy of their own by starting a corporate foundation.  This big, bold move was a step towards embedding social purpose deeply into their organization. The big question to solve: what kind of impact did they want to have in the world?

 

GHS facilitated a stakeholder engagement session and materiality review to examine what kind of giving strategy would align best with their business objectives and engage their team in volunteerism.  

Deliverables in this project included:

  • Defining a scope of community investment 

  • Developing the foundation’s mission and purpose

  • Building key messages that supported various audiences to launch the foundation

  • Scoping options of charities to consider as early grantees

  • Developing grant agreements and building partnerships with successful grantees

  • Building learning materials and a webinar to engage employees

  • Supporting the development of a Volunteer Time Off Policy

  • Worked with internal legal counsel to support finalizing the foundation as an entity

  • Providing a content calendar to engage internal and external audiences

 

The organization successfully launched its foundation and immediately rolled out employee-facing programs to encourage volunteering and civic engagement.  With inaugural grants confirmed, the foundation is well-positioned to start its impact journey and look ahead to reporting annual results.

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Engaging your remote team with purpose

As a tech start-up focused on scaling, this client recognized the importance of people and purpose programs to be successful. Building a social impact agenda that employees could engage in was a top priority for this company to support the attraction and retention of talent in a very competitive hiring space. 

 

GHS was asked to build and execute the client’s people and purpose programs which included a social impact plan, team engagement, and internal communications tactics. What started as a project turned into a fractional support model where GHS is responsible for:

  • Building a right-sized social impact plan including a Volunteer Time Off policy and Matching Donations Program

  • Producing planned internal communications 

  • Facilitating annual objectives sessions with the team

  • Hosting monthly all-hands meetings

  • Developing and executing in-person team meetings including team volunteering opportunities

  • Implementing an annual engagement survey

  • Writing an annual Social Impact Report

 

The company has been able to grow its employer brand and keep year-over-year engagement scores high (in the top quartile).  With employee retention ranging from 90-100% each year, and community giving representing 1-5% of profit, the company’s annual social impact reports are an impressive achievement for a lean team of twenty!

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Communicating with your team through transition

A mid-sized tech firm needed to make changes to their organizational structure, specific to their engineering and development teams.  The goal was to simplify their structure, align under one unified team brand, and develop a very intention communications and engagement plan to create a shared understanding of the company’s strategy in R&D.  

 

GHS embarked on a listening tour with key leaders to understand their current state and desired direction.  Combined with a communications inventory, it became apparent that there was a need for consistency, uniformity, and clarity of the information being shared with the team.  In order to address this, GHS created:

  • A consensus session to land on one unified team name

  • An internal communications and engagement strategy focused on recall and empowerment

  • Planned communications templates for leaders to deliver key messages

  • A specific M&A communications plan to effectively integrate new and existing employee teams

 

The client was able to effectively retain key engineering talent and provide sound rationale for the change in organizational structure. The team deployed a communications strategy that leveraged their mid-level managers to cascade messages accordingly.  All this was done with engagement in mind - providing opportunities for cross-functional teamwork, welcoming new team members, setting them up for success and monitoring retention rates. 

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“I originally brought on Renata and Green Horseshoe Solutions to facilitate a Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) session with my team and to prepare a first-year CSR plan for Profound Impact Corporation.  Her inclusive process provided education to the team while extracting insights from the team members.  The outcome was an extremely detailed customized CSR plan right-sized for a start-up including a suite of employee programs designed to create social impact through engagement. Renata thinks holistically about the full team experience. She is strategic, takes initiative, and is thorough. The flexible, fractional approach of Green Horseshoe Solutions is ideally suited to start-ups and scale-ups who are committed to bettering their employee experience”.

 

Sherry Shannon-Vanstone, CEO & Founder

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“Renata was recommended to me by a mutual contact when I expressed the need for support in starting a corporate foundation. From our very first conversation, I knew our work was in good hands. Renata recommended a process that engaged our leaders and key stakeholders in a facilitated materiality review to build consensus and focus for our new foundation. Together, we built the foundation's purpose, mission, vision, and key messages all tied back to our existing company values. With a foundation roadmap in hand, Renata continued the journey with us providing fractional support to scope our inaugural grant recipients, structure grant agreements with our legal team, build a foundation fundamentals learning module for our employees, and resources to support their interest in volunteerism. Renata brings external expertise into internal conversations in a way where everyone feels included and valued as a part of the project. She was flexible to changing deadlines and a great advisor on all the things we needed to know in starting a corporate foundation".

 

Deanne Reimer, Marketing Director

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“As our organization scaled, there was one constant - change. Renata quickly became more than a trusted advisor; she became the essential partner I relied on to ensure our team remained connected to our strategic goals and culture during challenging transformations. With years of experience in the technology sector, she understood our business goals, the challenges we were facing, and our diverse audience.

Renata’s approach is holistic and integrated. She considers all stakeholders before putting pen to paper. Whip-smart and always quick to respond, she consistently provided strategic and tactical support that engaged our talent. From key messages to strategic plans to creative programming; I always knew that when I was on a project with Renata, she would deliver high-quality work and hit deadlines every time.

 

Beyond her professional capabilities, Renata’s warmth and approachability make her a genuinely wonderful person to work with. I can’t recommend Renata highly enough to anyone looking for a consultant who combines professional excellence with a personal touch.”

 

Bea Bastedo, Internal Communications Leader

Generating Impact

GHS delivers results that go beyond metrics. The value of engaging a team of people or bettering society can be hard to put into words, but we’re going to try! Have a read through three recent examples of the work GHS does to generate lasting impact.

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