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By Ava Kuhlen
Today’s leading companies are well aware of the Sustainable Development Goals and have started planning for how best to align their company’s sustainability strategy against these targets. But turning plans into action is challenging. And even more challenging is connecting individual employees to a company’s larger SDG strategy.
How can you harness employees’ passion, and talent, to make a difference against the SDGs?
Pro bono service, the contribution of one’s skills or expertise free of charge to social change organizations, is an out-of-the-box way to directly engage employees in your SDG strategy.
As part of Taproot’s commitment to ending hunger with expertise, we focus on SDG2: end hunger, achieve food security and improved nutrition, and promote sustainable agriculture.
Below we’ve outlined 3 steps your company can take to end hunger using employee expertise. This approach can help you:
Step 1: What do your employees do really well?
Contributing your expertise requires knowing your expertise. Sounds simple, right? But we aren’t talking about a broad-based view of the talent that exists across your company. To understand where your company’s human capital will make the most sustained and unique impact for hunger, you need to map your talent against the issue of hunger itself. It isn’t only agricultural companies who have expertise that matters to hunger. Talent in marketing, energy, logistics and transportation, and food disposal are all part of a holistic food systems approach. Knowing how your expertise connects to our food system as a whole is the first step in more effectively contributing your skills to ending hunger.
Once you’ve identified where in the food value chain your company has core expertise, you need to understand how your talent will be most helpful. The purpose is to use your talent to strengthen the effectiveness of organizations already working to end hunger. Why is it important to engage these organizations at all? Because the SDGs will only succeed if they are both national and local in scale and implementation. This means engaging individuals and community organizations to take responsibility for the SDGs to ensure long-term results.
You’ve identified how your expertise maps against hunger and what organizations in that area truly need. The final step is to create a clear, well-defined scope of work that your employees can feasibly and successfully complete for the social change organization.
Interested in contributing your expertise to end hunger? Contact Taproot to learn more.
Image credit: Flickr / Didriks
Ava Kuhlen is a proven influencer and relationship builder for key players in the social sector. She has more than 10 years of experience aligning networks of people and resources for social impact and specializes in nonprofits, philanthropic advising, and corporate social responsibility. As Director of External Relations, she harnesses Taproot’s expertise and knowledge to grow and advance the field of pro bono service. She’s written on topics around strategic planning, diversity and inclusion, product donations, technology pro bono, and leadership and development.
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