Aligning Strategy

Corporate social responsibility (CSR), corporate giving, and corporate foundation teams operate in the dynamic, complex contexts of their companies. Over time, they often become increasingly ambitious, strategic, and well-resourced operations that not just meet baseline expectations but influence, shape, and create value for the company’s stakeholders. These evolutions and inflection points can highlight misalignments between how the function operates, the social impact strategy, and the broader company.  

This resource and accompanying toolkit are designed to help CSR and corporate foundation leaders address those misalignments as they evolve their functions and strengthen their ability to execute on their impact strategies. In it, you will find: 

1. CSR / Corporate Foundation Operating Model (see below): We introduce an operating model specific to these corporate social impact functions, define 4 strategic choices and 13 dimensions that help leaders and teams deliver impact, and articulate how those dimensions work in sync with one another.  
2. Four Stages of Progression: We describe the 4 stages we typically see operating models progress or mature alongside strategy – from Fundamental to Transformative – and how they translate to the company’s impact ambition and ability to deliver on it.   
3. Examples and Case Study: We share anonymized examples and a deep dive into how misalignments across the 13 dimensions come to life for social impact functions, the implications it has on their ability to deliver impact as well as value for the company, and how leaders approach course correction and continued progression.  
4. Leader’s Worksheet: We outline a set of questions to help leaders get started and assess their current operating model, paired with suggested next steps for evolving it.