Category: Perspective

Is a Demotion Worth It to Transition into Social Impact?

No, if you can help it.

In short, no.

Unless you have no other job options and are unemployed.

I talk to many mid-career folks who are considering taking a lower-level position to break into social impact. They think that once they get their proverbial foot in the door, they’ll be able to advance quickly.

I don’t think this is necessarily true, unless you get a formal commitment in writing before you accept the job offer. What I have witnessed is that you get pegged at the level at which you enter. No matter how much you try to convince your superiors (who might have much less experience than you do!), and remind them of your impressive LinkedIn profile, they won’t budge.

Most supervisors are self-interested, which means the last thing that they want to do is promote you to where you should be, because usually that means taking over their job. As such they also feel threatened by you and their advocacy will be limited — they will not help you to advance to their level or beyond. So your professional development will be pretty stunted.

The most likely way you will advance at that point is: if you leave the organization and getting a better offer elsewhere, OR if someone above your supervisor’s level sees your strengths and promotes you above them. The latter is quite unlikely to happen due to all the potential fallout. Even then, it may take a long time for you to work your way back up to the level you were at before you transitioned into social impact.

If you are in no rush to leave your current position, I advise biding your time and waiting till the right job opportunity at the right level comes up. In the meantime, serve on a nonprofit board; volunteer using your skills, via organizations such as Taproot Foundation or Catchafire; and do lots of informational interviews and reading on the causes you care about.

There are also a few fellowship programs for mid-career professionals, such as:

FUSE Corps – this 12-month executive fellowship program embeds professionals in local government agencies.

Education Pioneers – this organization connects professionals with the education sector.

Maintain your leverage for finding the right position by being patient and remaining in your current role.

Challenges of “Breaking into” Philanthropy and Some Tips

People often ask me during informational interviews how to get a job at a foundation or directing philanthropy at a family office. Please comment with your thoughts, but the short answer is, it’s very hard to break in without direct connections. Foundations tend to hire people who used to work at foundations. So to break in, networking is critical.

A lot of roles at family offices and also smaller family foundations are shared by word-of-mouth, so you’d only hear about them if you were part of that network. For a family office, if if there’s only one philanthropy role, they will generally expect that this person either has extensive philanthropy experience and/or deep subject matter expertise (or ideally both) in the donor’s areas of interest.

It’s typically easier to shift into a larger foundation than find a role at a family office or a small family foundation. There are usually two kinds of roles at foundations: programmatic and administrative. For programmatic roles such as program officer, you need fairly deep subject matter expertise in the issue area that the role oversees. While you may not need formal grantmaking experience to succeed, the recruitment process is often so competitive that the top candidates have both subject matter expertise and grantmaking experience. For other types of roles, most of which are administrative, apart from grants administration, you don’t necessarily need philanthropy experience, but instead functional experience. This includes finance, human resources, etc. Monitoring and evaluation is also a great role to pivot into in philanthropy.

So, assuming you either have deep subject matter expertise and/or functional expertise, here are a few strategies to pivot into philanthropy:

Learn how to make grants: Volunteer on a grantmaking advisory council at a community foundation, or run a giving circle of your own

If you don’t have prior direct philanthropy experience, learn how to give away money in a volunteer capacity. Some foundations, e.g., Washington Area Women’s Foundation or New York Women’s Foundation, have volunteer positions where you can serve on an advisory committee to help select grant recipients. Also, sometimes local public agencies will open up grantmaking opportunities to the public to participate in.

Alternatively, you could round up a group of friends and pool your money together to start a ‘giving circle‘, where you as a group decide where to collectively give away your money. A giving circle can be very informal (i.e., no formal financial structure, but your friends collectively agree to make joint decisions on how to give away your money). Alternatively, there are organizations that formally host giving circle structures, such as Full Circle Fund as well as community foundations.

If you work at a nonprofit, network with your funders

It’s not uncommon for people who work at nonprofits to eventually migrate into program officer positions at the foundations who fund their nonprofits. So it’s important to build relationships with your funders. Perhaps even ask them for an informational interview to find out what it’s like to work at a foundation.

One funder told me that they only hire people who were previously grantseekers so that they understand what it’s like to apply for grants, so prior nonprofit experience can be very important.

Work at a philanthropy ‘intermediary’ organization (e.g., consulting firm)

If you have strong strategy/research skills, you might consider working at a firm that provides consulting services to funders, and then pivoting from there into a foundation. This would include Arabella Advisors, FSG, Tides Foundation, Bridgespan, and Rockefeller Philanthropy Advisors. Community foundations might also provide a way to pivot into the philanthropic sector, since they are also client serving.

While this is a decent stepping stone into working directly in philanthropy, it is possible to get pigeonholed in working for an intermediary and not be able to make the transition.

Identify the main philanthropy search firms in your region and get on their radar

Typically there’s a handful of search firms that focus on recruitment for philanthropic roles in each region. You can usually figure out who those are by looking at philanthropy job postings and seeing which firms pop up the most often. I’d suggest building a relationship with the recruiters at those firms. At the national level, firms like Koya Partners will often conduct searches for philanthropy roles.

Read up on philanthropy

Read the Chronicle of Philanthropy, Inside Philanthropy, Stanford Social Innovation Review, etc., to learn the latest trends on philanthropy and social impact. Check out websites such as Council on Foundations and National Center for Family Philanthropy.

Join a philanthropy ‘affinity’ group / association if they allow members who aren’t formally working in philanthropy

There are philanthropy associations, networking events and conferences, by region, by ‘affinity group’, and by topic area. For example, in the SF Bay Area, the regional association is Northern California Grantmakers. For AAPIs in philanthropy, there is AAPIP (Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders in Philanthropy). For health-related funders, there’s Grantmakers in Health. Some of these associations do allow people who aren’t funders to participate in some of their events and get on their email lists. Just note that events have a ‘nonsolicitation’ policy — i.e., do not make any direct requests for funders for grants, and I’d also say be careful about making direct requests for jobs!

Approaching Foundations for Grants

Small nonprofits constantly ask me how to approach foundations for grants. Sadly philanthropy and the process to apply for grants can often be rather opaque.

Here are some thoughts on how to approach them, based on my experience; but if any of you have other advice to share, I’m happy to add it here.

Corporate Foundations

These are probably the easiest to access, especially if either you have a volunteer working at the company, or you are in the same location as the company. What’s nice is getting a corporate grant may help build your credibility for getting a grant from a private foundation.

  • Employee matching: Companies often have employee matching programs, and so if an individual donor makes a donation to your nonprofit, you should ask them whether their employer matches.
  • Corporate grants: Some companies have some kind of corporate giving program (or even a corporate foundation) where they make grants to local organizations. They usually make these application processes open (versus invitation-only), so that any organization that fulfills the eligibility criteria is welcome to apply. You should check the company’s website to see if they have a corporate grants program, and reach out to them directly to learn more. If one of your volunteers/board members works at the company, they should reach out on your behalf to the corporate giving / grants officer as well.
  • Employee volunteer programs: Companies in your local area also often have volunteer engagement programs, so even if you can’t get a corporate donation, you could see if the company would send volunteers to your organization. It’s a great way to start to build a relationship with the company. Also, I believe it’s reasonable to ask the company to give you a small donation (e.g., $500-$2,000) to cover any costs of hosting a large employee volunteer group — explain to them that there are admin/coordination costs associated with large group volunteer events.
  • Free products: Companies may also donate free product to your nonprofit, either for use by your staff, or for benefit to the community you serve, and/or a fundraising event (e.g., silent auction).

Private Foundations

It’s unfortunately much harder to connect with private foundations. For small nonprofits, I generally advise against investing a lot in grantwriting, unless they already have a personal connection with the funder. I think time is better spent building up relationships with individual donors.

Part of why there can be a shroud of mystery regarding access to private foundations is because a lot of foundation staff are (or want to avoid being) overwhelmed by requests. I have been approached numerous times by friends of friends and cold contacts on LinkedIn for requests for donations. While a privilege to steward charitable giving, it can be exhausting to have to field so many requests, especially when the requests do not at all fall in line with a funder’s giving priorities. Many foundations have defined priorities within which they will make grants, and when I’m approached by a nonprofit, their work very often doesn’t fall within our interest area. It also doesn’t reflect well on the nonprofit if they don’t do their ‘homework’ ahead of time to find out what the funder’s priorities are.

Naturally nonprofits are focused on finding $ to meet their needs to provide services to their beneficiaries. However, it may be helpful when connecting with funders to understand funders’ objectives — the objectives are certainly overlapping with those of nonprofits, but there are also other considerations. Many foundation staff have goals to give away a certain amount of grant funding per year, to meet foundation objectives. The staff need to justify why they are recommending a grant to a certain organization (versus another organization), assess the risk of giving that grant (risk that for some reason the organization may fail to execute the grant), and after the grant is given, articulate what difference the grant made in the world, and how that impact aligns with the foundation’s stated goals/mission. This is often how a program officer’s job performance is assessed.

So from that perspective, I’d suggest nonprofits be able to articulate to a funder:

  • Why your nonprofit would fit in the funder’s portfolio. For example, the funder has a strong focus on K-12 education, your nonprofit should operate in that space as well. You should research the other nonprofits the funder already supports (or ask them, if this info isn’t online), and articulate why your nonprofit complements their existing funding. Some funders try to avoid ‘duplications’ in their grantmaking.
  • Related to the point above, why the funder should fund you versus another nonprofit that operates in your space. In other words, how is your nonprofit distinctive compared to other nonprofits that work in a similar space. How does your nonprofit fill a gap that no one else can / does your nonprofit have a unique/innovative approach? For example, it can be a geographic gap (e.g., nobody in the neighborhood provides a much needed service). Or it could be a service gap or an ‘ecosystem gap’ (e.g., a lot of tech workforce development programs are geared towards people who can attend the training full time, and there’s a gap for training providers who can accommodate people who work full-time and can only attend part-time). Alternatively, if your nonprofit doesn’t fill a unique ‘gap’, does it perform in a way that is more effective or cost efficient than other orgs providing a similar service? Can you offer any proof or evidence of that? If not, do you have a plan to collect data to demonstrate your impact? Maybe the funder could help you develop that capacity for monitoring and evaluation.
  • Why your nonprofit has the ability / capacity to deliver on its mission and strategy. For example, you have sufficient staff capacity and capability to carry out the work. You plan to collaborate with / have strong partnerships with other nonprofits to deliver on the work.You have strong relationships to the community/beneficiaries you serve. You and your staff have lived experience or other expertise that is directly relevant to effectively shaping the work. You have a track record of strong dedication to the mission. If your organization’s finances are unstable, you have contingency plans for delivering on the work. Your organization has a unique asset (e.g., some orgs might have a celebrity board member who can help them raise additional funds). (If there are aspects of your capacity that need support, perhaps the funder can help you strengthen these aspects.)

Here are some additional thoughts on foundations:

  • Candid / Foundation Center has a database of foundations that you can sort with different criteria (geographic location, topic/issue area, etc.), to see what foundations are out there.
  • Many foundations have an “invite-only” policy. This means the only nonprofits who can apply for their grants are explicitly invited by foundation staff to apply. Also, such foundations often do NOT invite inquiries / cold contacts. For these foundations, you typically need some kind of connection via your network (e.g., ask your existing funders, board members, donors, and volunteers for intros — if you already have funding from a foundation, they can often approach other funders on your behalf.)
  • Each major metropolitan area often has a regional membership association of foundations (e.g., in the Washington, DC area, it is Washington Regional Association of Grantmakers). Sometimes they might host events that are open to the public, not just members. You could potentially find a relevant event to attend and this would be one avenue to connect with funders. However, these events typically have “non solicitation” policies: this means you cannot ask funders for money (and I’d also avoid asking them for their contact information unless they ask for yours first). These events are geared towards funders as their primary audience and therefore are protective of funders.
  • As mentioned above, if you choose to approach a foundation, you should first look at their list of stated grant-making priorities on their website to see if your nonprofit falls within these guidelines. If the information is not available online, you should ask them what their giving priorities are, before trying to pitch them.

Pivoting from Corporate to Nonprofit? Don’t Rush in like a Fool Where Angels Fear to Tread

An Informal Book Review of “Giving Done Right: Effective Philanthropy and Making Every Dollar Count” by Phil Buchanan, CEO of Center for Effective Philanthropy

Just after college, I worked at a strategy management consulting firm and a couple of high tech companies, but I didn’t feel as though my work was ‘meaningful.’ My mother had passed away right after graduation, which caused me to reflect on the purpose of life, and of my life in particular. I decided that it was important for my work to ‘make a difference’, and at the time, I translated that to working in what I called ‘poverty alleviation’ back then, but now refer to as ‘economic empowerment.’ So I started to make a career transition from tech into the nonprofit sector.

Like many who speak to me about pivoting from corporate to nonprofit, I approached the nonprofit sector with a mindset that it was totally inferior to the private sector, and that I had a lot of value to bring to nonprofits. I assumed the sector was rife with the inefficient use of funds. This was based on general nonprofit stereotypes, scandals that are much more the exception than the rule, and personal experience with a handful of people I knew who worked in nonprofit.

The fact is, there is a whole range of people who work in the nonprofit sector — with a wide spectrum of dedication, competency, common sense, management acumen, lived experience, programmatic experience, leadership and organizational development skills. Yes, I witnessed firsthand a few people who were not utilizing funding efficiently. But in retrospect, those few data points served as confirmation bias for a hypothesis I already held in my mind. And to be honest, in the private sector, workers also range greatly in competency and skills.

However, I admit that, because the private sector often offers higher compensation, and companies often invest in the professional development of their workers (while many nonprofits cannot afford to, due to pressure from donors to minimize overhead), private sector workers might be more competent than some nonprofit workers in some aspects, but the question is whether these aspects necessarily correlate with success in the nonprofit sector and to what extent.

I recently read Phil Buchanan’s book, Giving Done Right: Effective Philanthropy and Making Every Dollar Count, and heartily agree with him on most points. There’s this general misconception that the nonprofit sector is inefficient and poorly run, and that the sector needs to be ‘professionalized.’ Buchanan writes:

In recent decades, some business school faculty and consultants employing this argument [that philanthropy has failed] have sought to essentially colonize the nonprofit sector, taking it over and applying their principles and values forcibly. The locus of study of the sector is now on business school campuses.

But “study” is not the right word because much of what occurs on these campuses includes little rigorous analysis of the sector, its history, or its role. Instead, the focus is on prognostication, on the assumption that what is useful in a business context will be useful in a philanthropic one. While exceptions exist, the bulk of those teaching and writing about the nonprofit sector and philanthropy at leading business schools know precious little about the subjects.

Phil Buchanan, Giving Done Right, page 190

For these reasons, I’m glad I chose public policy graduate school (even though a lot of people outside of Washington, DC don’t seem to know what an MPP is…) instead of business school. Through my MPP program, I learned about the history of the nonprofit/philanthropy and public sectors, and the evolution of social policy issues and public programs devised to address them. It has been extremely helpful context for my social impact work. I also learned about program evaluation and how to critique research studies. And most importantly, I learned that social change is hard and takes a long time because of the complexity of the systems that we’re trying to reform. Also, it’s often hard to measure and quantify social change, even though the business world is obsessed with metrics.

I think some corporate professionals assume that nonprofits will really want them as workers or volunteers, because of their corporate experience, and that they can just show up on a nonprofit’s doorstep and immediately add value. But, some corporate skills aren’t immediately transferable, although they are adaptable. To pivot, a private sector worker needs to understand how nonprofits function and map their skills to meet the needs of a nonprofit organization.

I do think that thoughtful application and adaptation of corporate competencies can certainly help a nonprofit function more strongly from an operational perspective. However, on the programmatic side, it’s a different story. Nonprofits providing direct services to their communities need leaders who are highly responsive to the needs of their communities, and not just well-intentioned people from outside the community who impose what they think will work. Directly asking people what they need is important. Lived experience is key. Representation from impacted communities is critical to informing the design and implementation of programs– in the staff and leadership (including the board) of the organization. A lot of success of a direct services program is based on the trust and relationships between the nonprofit and its community. But, in the quest to ‘professionalize’ a nonprofit, fancy management consultants who don’t have the community’s perspective, will swoop in and create a strategic plans for a nonprofit without using a participatory approach. Someone should do an evaluation comparing the effectiveness of strategic plans created with community input and a participatory process, versus those which were not.

So how do you pivot from corporate to nonprofit?

Be humble and take a learning posture. Learn about what it means to ‘center equity’ in your approach to social change.

Do research. There are so many online resources to learn about the issue you care about, and the perspectives of all the people who have come before you. Learn about all the solutions that people have tried — what works, what failed.

Volunteer. Talk to people in the community to understand what they think are the opportunities and challenges, and what are the best solutions.

Understand how the nonprofit defines success and what their needs are.

Learn how nonprofits function.

Think about how you can come alongside these organizations and support and empower their leaders.

Map your skills. Conduct informational interviews with nonprofit staff. Figure out what role in a nonprofit would be the equivalent to the corporate role you have now.

There are programs that help corporate professionals transition their skills into the social sector. There are fellowship programs such as Education Pioneers (in the education sector) or FUSE Corps (not nonprofit, but focused on local government). It’s probably best to dip your toe in first through volunteer gigs, such as through Taproot Foundation.

What are takeaways for donors?

Support nonprofit capacity building. Don’t fret about overhead. Buchanan’s book also talks about not punishing nonprofits for how much they spend on administrative overhead. This overhead pays for professional and leadership development (which addresses the critique that nonprofits are poorly run and need corporate professionals to come in and help them), rent and utilities, salaries to hire competitively, etc. Yes, there are always occasional stories of larger nonprofits being frivolous with funding (I did raise an eyebrow at a nonprofit that had enough money to hire a poet in residence…), but small nonprofits tend to operate on a shoestring budget and most nonprofit workers don’t earn enough. If you’re concerned about waste, and want to learn how much top nonprofit leaders earn, go look at their salaries listed on their tax form 990, available via Candid. But you’ll discover for most small nonprofits, it’s woefully little.

Instead of focusing on overhead rates, focus on the nonprofit’s strategies for creating social change and results. Is there evidence they’re making an impact? Maybe there are additional ways you could fund them to strengthen their programs.

Support nonprofits that have representation from the communities they serve, via their staff, leaders, and board — instead of focusing on whether their staff and leaders got fancy MBAs or had prior corporate experience. Ask the nonprofits you donate to how they actively and continuously incorporate the perspectives of their communities in their work and adapt their programs. Similar to what Buchanan writes about in his book, it’s puzzling to me when a nonprofit board hires a corporate executive to run a direct service, community-based nonprofit. He often has no prior nonprofit experience (other than being a donor and occasionally volunteering), and no direct experience with or exposure to the community. He obviously has success running a large corporation, but leading a nonprofit is not the same at all. This archetype of individual might be best suited to raising funding for the nonprofit, and empowering people from the community to run the organization.

Now might be a good time to request info interviews!

A lot of us have mandatory (or highly recommended) work from home mandates, out of deference to public health guidance. Our business travel and attendance at conferences and other external meetings have been canceled. Some of us might be really busy with childcare b/c of our kids who are at home from school. But some others might have some slack in their schedules and might be climbing the walls for social interaction; there are only so many hours of streaming video we can endure from Netflix before we get antsy.

So… given all these factors, this might represent a good opportunity to request an informational interview via phone or video chat! Take this time to explore other careers that you’ve always been interested in. This might also be a good time to sign up for virtual career coaching because you’ll have time to invest in all of the different exercises.

Here are a few quick tips on requesting an informational interview — we’ll have a couple of other guest bloggers write more guidance in detail, but here’s some basic advice. A lot of it is common sense, but you’d be pretty surprised at how often people do NOT follow these pointers:

  • Conduct thorough research on the organization and the individual before you approach them. Identify the right person/department within the organization to speak with.
  • Make a clear and compelling case as to why you’d like to speak to them. How exactly does your background or interest relate to what they do?
  • Especially if this person is very senior, ask if you can speak to one of their colleagues, if they don’t have time to spare.
  • Give a flavor of the questions that you plan to ask them. Prepare questions in advance of your informational interview. Assure them that they’re not wasting their time in speaking with you.
  • Be clear about how much time you’re asking for from them, e.g., 15-20 minutes.
  • If you don’t get a response, follow up in a month. Persistence can pay off.

An early-career person just sent me a message cold via LinkedIn requesting a brief informational interview. It was a very thoughtful message in 2-3 paragraphs — he had clearly done research on my background and my employer, and made a compelling case for a conversation. I was happy to oblige. Also, in deference to the 100+ people who have granted me informational interviews, I’m happy to pay it forward, time allowing. The rule of thumb is that people are busy. Show them that you’ve done the work to show that you respect their time.

On the flip side, it drives me crazy when I get a LinkedIn message from someone whom I don’t know, asking for an informational interview, but it’s clear that they are just trying to find anyone to speak with who works at my organization. I’m not even in the department they’re really interested in. They also may not have done much research on my organization to understand what we do. It’s just scattershot. I think some career coaches would say to take a scattershot approach to requests for informational interviews –the theory is you increase your odds of getting an informational interview if you just randomly send out requests. I disagree with this spray-and-pray methodology — if you’re not doing the work to send out thoughtful, well-researched requests, it can be harmful and backfire on you because it shows you’re thoughtless and sloppy. Don’t do it. It’s a different story if you put in the work and send out 100 thoughtful requests, vs 100 random requests with no thought!

This is the wrong time to transition into a CSR career (corporate social responsibility)

We haven’t had a recession for 10 years and we are overdue. While the jittery stock market from last week may not indicate we are entering a full-blown recession currently, it’s probably in the not-too-distant future.

As a result, I would be wary about taking a corporate social responsibility role at a company right now.

In times of recession, it is normal for most companies to pull back on “nonessential” spending and cut cost, which may include parts of their CSR, especially if CSR is not part of their core revenue strategy. Even if they maintain essential parts of their CSR department, you always have to worry about the “last-in-first-out” phenomenon which occurs during layoffs. When I worked in college recruiting, our tech company went through a downturn and had a layoff eight months after I was hired, and my position was eliminated, especially since it was in a cost center (HR in this case, not CSR) and not a business unit, which generates revenue. My layoff was totally predictable.

If you have a fairly stable job right now and are trying to break into CSR, here are a few questions I’d consider if I had a CSR job offer:

  • How large and financially stable / profitable is the company? A smaller company may have more pressure to generate revenue and as such, its CSR function may be more vulnerable to economic shifts.
  • Is this role a “nice-to-have” or “need-to-have” within the company’s CSR department? In other words, can the CSR department function without this role?
  • Is this a new role or an established role that has been around for some time?
  • If the role were eliminated, how transferable are your skills to other roles and departments/business units within the company?
  • How long has the CSR function existed at the company? How did it fare during the last recession? Did they lay people off?
  • How committed is the company to CSR? (Hard to gauge since all companies are going to say that they value CSR)

A Silver Lining

So one possible silver lining about a recession is if a company is truly committed to its role as a corporate citizen, it might actually increase its CSR activity to accommodate increasing needs in the community. (In the last recession, many foundations increased their giving, for example, to offset declines in individual charitable giving.) For example, a company might increase and redirect its charitable giving to supporting individuals and families struggling with unemployment. Or it might increase employee engagement around volunteering or giving. In that case, there could be a potential increase in CSR activity and job security.

Reflection on Yoda#4 “Your job already has social impact” … but it might not be the impact you want, and how do you shape that?

I’d like to respond to Yoda#4 Mo Yun Fong’s post, “Your Job Already Has Social Impact” by saying YES AND… “it may not exactly be the impact you want – and here are some thoughts on how to shape your impact”.

As Mo wrote, most or all jobs have some social utility, whether at a large or small scale. It is a privilege to have a role where you create products and manage platforms that could potentially impact thousands or millions of people. However, what’s challenging is if you desire to impact a different demographic of people than the current end users of your product.

For example, I had found myself at a crossroads, deciding between two entirely different roles at two companies. One role was internal facing and had strong potential to impact the company’s global workforce of >100K workers. The other role was more external facing, and could impact as many, if not more, people across the US – and one key difference was the potential beneficiaries in this latter case are historically marginalized, as compared to the former case of high-tech workers. Both roles had the potential to create social impact, but, given the fact that I’m a Myers-Briggs “NF” (intuitive feeler), I’m an idealist and gravitate towards roles which most closely, explicitly, and directly align with my passion to empower communities who have been disenfranchised. You can probably guess which role I ended up choosing.

However, not everyone is quite as idealistic and I think there are many ways to be creative in how you shape your social impact. I personally have a bias towards promoting equity, so I’m framing my solutions with that bias in mind.

Adapt Products and Services to Benefit More People

Say you work on a large tech platform that reaches millions of people. You have a voice to speak for subgroups who traditionally may have no voice in product design. Can you think of ways to adapt the product so that it serves a wider range of people? Is the product culturally responsive for different groups? Can people with disabilities access the product? On the flip side, are there ways that the product might be biased against certain subgroups of people? There are lots of subtle barriers and features that prevent people from using products and platforms, and we need people inside companies who have this awareness and can correct for this type of bias in design.

To demonstrate how subtle this bias can be, here’s an example. On LinkedIn, for 3rd degree connections, they hide the “connect” feature under the “…” button on the webpage. At first glance, it looks as though the only way you can reach out to a 3rd degree connection is if you send a Premium InMail by purchasing LinkedIn’s Premium membership. However, in reality, you can still “connect” with that person for free by clicking “…” to select this option. I did confirm with a LinkedIn employee that they hid this feature on purpose to encourage you to purchase their membership. Why this is a big deal?  (1) People who have less social capital, are less connected, and are more likely to have a lot more 3rd+ degree connections and relatively fewer 1st and 2nd degree connections. (2) People who are less tech savvy may not realize they need to click on the “…” button to find the free “connect” option. And I posit that people who fall under conditions #1 and #2 are more likely to be less educated (and less tech savvy) and possibly lower income — if there is a correlation between income, education, the ability to use technology, and the size of one’s professional social capital / networks. So, if this is true, then LinkedIn may be unintentionally disproportionately targeting lower-income individuals to purchase their Premium membership, which is an inequitable policy. If someone can’t afford to purchase the membership and doesn’t realize that they can “connect” with folks for free, then they face barriers to developing their professional network.  The simple solution would be to move the “connect” button back to the main page. It would be amazing if there was a social-impact-minded LinkedIn product manager out there who could make this happen!!

Adapt Your Work Processes

Not all of us work in roles where we have direct influence on how products are designed and implemented, especially if we are in more junior positions and/or not working at a product company. However, I believe that we can find ways in most of our jobs to promote equity and social impact. For example, when I worked in philanthropy, I had developed recommendations on how to incorporate diversity, equity, and inclusion in how foundations give away money, and there were some recommendations that need approval from senior leaders for implementation. However, there were many administrative recommendations that junior staff could potentially implement without explicit approval – small things such as removing character limits on written responses on grant applications. You may scoff, but nonprofits claim that 50 percent of the time that they spend on their grant applications, is spent editing their responses so that they fit the character limits.

Use Your Influence Internally in Other Ways – Start Small!

There are small and large ways to influence your work environment with social impact in mind. There are stories of employees starting diversity & inclusion programs, recycling programs, employee volunteer programs, charitable giving programs, etc. I even know people who have started apprenticeship programs to provide pathways for people with no college degrees to work in technology. However, starting an entire program might sound overwhelming, so start small. For example, if your team is hiring a new person, can you influence how the job description is developed? Does the role really require a college degree? Can you ask the recruiter to look for candidates from other sources than the usual elite colleges – maybe local community colleges? Would you be open to hiring someone with a criminal background, as a way to give a returning citizen a second chance? If your company has a policy against hiring people with criminal records, find out why – and press them to really understand if it’s a blanket policy or if they’d be open to hiring people with certain kinds of criminal backgrounds. You could also encourage your company towards supplier diversity (food, office supplies, consulting services). Or do the cleaning/ janitorial and other staff get paid a living wage? Do you treat all staff with respect? 

I hope this smattering of concrete examples might help you to think more creatively about how to enhance the social impact your job has.

Please share other thoughts, ideas, and anecdotes on how to shape your social impact through your work!

Yoda#4 Perspective: Your Job Already Has Social Impact!

Our yoda today and guest contributor Mo-Yun Lei Fong is currently Sr. Director, Google Technical Solutions, Assistant and Search; she was previously Google’s Director, Computer Science Education, Catalyst for Equity in Education, and Chief Compliance Officer for Google Payments. After graduating with her bachelor’s and master’s degrees from Stanford, she began her career as a school teacher and then was promoted to assistant principal at Monta Vista High School. She then went on to Harvard Business School and became the founding executive director of the Stanford Educational Leadership Institute, prior to joining Google.

Every job has an impact on society – it’s a matter of mindset and how large a scale and direct an impact you want to have.

Coming out of undergrad, I decided to defer a career in chemical engineering because I had a strong desire to teach and give pay forward what my teachers had poured into me. The idea was to teach for a couple of years, go back to engineering, and maybe retire as a school teacher. Two years turned into three as I wanted to see my sophomores graduate, but in that third year, I was already starting to get the itch to do more. If only I could start a school and not just impact 180 students a year, but an entire student body of thousands? I got that wish, as I became an assistant principal at the school, the same year I applied to business schools with the intention of opening up my own girls school focused on STEM. I chose to attend Harvard Business School, which has a lofty mission to “educate leaders who make a difference in the world.” At the time, I translated this to literally make a difference in the entire world, setting expectations high and the pressure was on to figure out how to do just that.

Upon graduation, I thought, “If only I could help restructure the entire school system, I would really start to make a difference in the world.” When I was offered the role as the first executive director of the Stanford Educational Leadership Initiative, I was convinced “this is it!” Combining the amazing resources and thought leadership from Stanford Graduate School of Education and Stanford Graduate School of Business, we set out to transform the complex US school system to better serve students. Working with the largest school districts, we developed executive education courses and research to help school leaders bring back best practices that could potentially impact hundreds of thousands of students. For me, though, something was still missing. If only I had more direct business experience, I could be even more credible in this intersection of business and education and have even more impact.

My pivot to the corporate sector was fortuitous. I was responsible for the “acceptable use policy” for the allowable goods and services sold using a payment platform. This drew from my experiences not only working with policymakers but setting up the enforcement operations. Although far removed from the world of education, my mindset was on protecting the public from physical harm, fraud, and risk. Users at the time were in the millions and my responsibilities continued to grow. With each career move, it pulled me further and further away from direct social impact. I was no longer in the classroom helping the individual students with their math problem or writing college recommendation letters, but the policies that were set had economic implications on small and medium business owners. Similarly at Google, my role as the Chief Compliance Officer was protecting a global user base from money laundering and terrorist financing after 9/11. It was then that it dawned on me that every job has an impact on society – it’s a matter of mindset and how large a scale and how direct an impact you want to have.

I knew that my work was playing an important role in society, but it didn’t stop the desire to get back into education. I remember my original purpose in wanting business experience which was to help more students attain the education they deserved and need to be successful in the 21st century. I started asking everyone I knew both at work and in my social circles if they knew any organizations that could use some help. Again, the stars aligned and I for the next four years, I led a team to bring the importance of computer science education to the national stage and helped spark the imaginations and learning for millions of students globally. And now in my current role working on Google Assistant and Search, I have the privilege of providing information and technology to sectors beyond education and to billions of users. This is an opportunity that would not have been possible, if I hadn’t started talking to people about my dreams to change the world for the better.

Having held jobs that had direct impact at a small scale, to jobs that have indirect impact but at a much larger scale, I sometimes wonder if I’ve made the right tradeoffs in my career. But as I sat down for lunch across from Jennifer, a former student of mine who now works at Google launching devices that will be used by millions of customers, I realized that those early years of teaching had just as much meaning and social impact as my current day job. Every life we touch makes a difference, so at the end of the day, there is very little tradeoff. Even HBS recognizes that though they can “ touch only a few thousand directly each year, we can indirectly influence many more.”

Thank you for sharing your thoughts with us, Mo. Reactions? Please comment below!