Community Impact
Community Impact is the action of deliberately improving one’s surroundings – whether that is through directly changing behaviors, educating others, or contributing to nonprofits & other organizations.
What is Community Impact?
Community Impact is an opportunity for people or organizations to better understand and address the needs of their surroundings. These needs can range anywhere from economic and environmental concerns to health and well-being. Community Impact differs based on the goal, but is usually targeted at encouraging and facilitating concrete actions that lead to measurable results.
Community Impact spreads across a variety of missions and range in scale. For instance, people can focus on their impact relating to education, homelessness, or sustainability, and engage on a small scale within their neighborhood, or on a global scale in those communities in need.
What Does Community Impact Mean
Community Impact Examples
K-12
In public and private K-12 schools, students can engage in community impact through projects or community service. Oftentimes, high schools have community service hour requirements for each student to complete by their graduation date. This type of community impact could include beach cleanups to address climate action, food banks or soup kitchens aimed at reducing hunger, or mentoring other students in need of guidance and quality education.
College
College organizations or clubs might focus on different missions, such as going overseas to complete service projects, finding local schools to volunteer at, or raising funds for medical treatments for those in need. Some classes related to environmental, social, and governance (ESG) outcomes are also implementing project-based learning into their course requirements, which ultimately contributes to increased community impact.
Workplace
Community Impact at the workplace can take several forms: matching monetary donations, allocating hours to community service, hosting charity events, or simply raising awareness through conversations and announcements. These types of deliberate actions within the workplace oftentimes improves employee morale and creates chain reactions that start to acknowledge and address social challenges.
Why Community Impact is Important
Unites people toward a common goal
Whether engaging in community impact alone or with others, the intentions and actions all contribute towards a mission that the people care deeply about.
Fosters higher empathy and learning
Regardless of what stage they are in life, people who engage in community impact can build human connection and realize their potential to give back.
Makes a tangible difference for others
The end goal of community impact is to deliberately work towards a cause that will make a difference for the environment, its inhabitants, or the future of humankind.
Community Impact Statistics
Community impact accounts for nearly 30% of corporate reputation
According to the Wall Street Journal, community impact can grow a business’s bottom line, all while benefitting society as a whole. Companies can evaluate community impact along six key drivers of value creation: brand differentiation, talent attraction and retention, innovation, operational efficiency, risk mitigation, and capital access and market valuation.
Local community impact actions improve employer brand perceptions by 53%
According to Entrepreneur, millennials are more likely to be interested in brands that engage in community impact on a local scale, and the most effective initiatives are those tied to a company’s core mission or business operations.
58% of admissions officers agreed that community impact influences college acceptances
In this Forbes survey of 264 264 admissions officers at U.S. colleges, 58% of admission officers agreed that community impact can positively influence a student’s acceptance into university. Furthermore, 53% of those 264 admission officers indicated that community service was a tie-breaker between equally qualified students.
Community Impact Resources
How to integrate community impact into your company culture
This Forbes article presents a clear step-by-step breakdown of how your company can encourage employees to engage in community impact, both locally and globally.
How community impact can create real value across companies
This Harvard Business Review article analyzes the empirical results of a study performed across more than 10,000 companies, 30 field studies over two decades.
How to host a community impact event at your school
Lawrence Brown gives a TedX talk about how his school consistently hosts charity performances to raise funds for homelessness, domestic violence, and veterans.
How To Engage in Community Impact
Be an active learner
Decide on a mission that you are passionate about, conduct research on the key areas of growth, and find the most efficient ways to address them
Have conversations
Spread your knowledge and engage in conversations that will further your understanding about how you can best involve yourself in community impact.
Start volunteering
Find an organization or launch your own project in which you can design a plan, track your progress, and ultimately make a measurable impact.