It’s easy to feel intimidated when you see other small businesses share their quantitative impact, especially when your business creates social change within your communities.
Let’s talk about the differences between QUANTITATIVE and QUALITATIVE impact!
Quantitative impact and results can be measured by numbers. Things like:
- X amount of people helped directly.
- X amount of trees planted for this campaign.
- X amount of [insert a thing] here for this community.
- X gallons of water saved thanks to XYZ.
Quantitative results make it easier for our clients and communities to understand where their money goes toward when they invest in our business. But what about the QUALITATIVE results and impact? Things that can’t be measured by numbers – for example, qualitative results can be things like:
- Overall confidence in doing XYZ.
- Creating spaces where students feel safe and comfortable.
- Open opportunities for more XYZ to participate in leadership roles.
- Changing negative feelings around a topic to positive ones.
In this blog post, we’ll breakdown how your small business can share your social impact, so your clients and communities understand how your business is here to do more than make a profit!
Sharing Your Business’s Social Impact
Your business report most likely shares useful information such as:
- Your annual revenue
- Your annual expenses and investments
- Your overall profit
- Number of employees and their cost/benefit
- What services were most popular and how many you sold
But if you’re a mission-driven business, you also keep track of the change you make in your communities. This is especially true if you offer scholarship opportunities, donate a portion of your profits to a non-profit, or have programs in place to help those most at risk.
So the question is how can you share your business’s social impact with your clients and communities?
By sharing your social impact, you highlight how your business had made it its mission to not only create profits but make positive changes. Your objective is larger than selling X amount of things or services, it’s now about how you can shift the narrative of businesses to doing more for their communities.
Create a social impact report for your business
One way to share the social impact created by your small business is to create a case study or yearly report. These are PDF files that clients and community members can download and share to understand what and how your business has created positive change.
Similar to what non-profits create annually, your business can create a yearly report document. In your yearly report, you can include numbers and data like:
- Amount donated to projects
- Volunteer hours
- Highlighting your program leaders or scholarship winners
- Your financial reports
- And plans for the next year and how your community can get involved
Community events for clients and brand ambassadors
Here at The Quirky Pineapple Studio, we believe in the power of content and communities to make positive change. Communities are at the heart of everything we do and if you’re like us, you know taking care of your community and audience is important to grow your business, as well as, make changes in systemic oppression. It starts with ‘normal’ people, like us, to start the movement!
Another way to share your social impact is by organizing community events for clients and brand ambassadors.
Think of your community/branded events as ‘celebrations’ for your community and your business. Different ways to organize an event like this is by:
- Celebrating the impact you’ve made within the community
- Invite your clients, brand ambassadors, and community members to meet each other and network
- Have opportunities to highlight the work your community has put in
- Congratulate any key members within the community or larger clients
This is a great way for your clients and communities to see the impact firsthand, while also creating more connections.
Keep transparency in your business operations
Another way small businesses can share your social impact is to keep everything TRANSPARENT in business operations. This means publishing and sharing balance sheets that include:
- Non-profit donations
- Annual revenue
- Annual expenses and investments
- Team organization chart
If you don’t feel comfortable sharing ALL the numbers, we get it, it’s business – another way to keep transparency is to be honest with your product and service suite and the prices you have.
For example, one way to create more accessibility within your business is by creating a ‘sliding scale’ of prices for your services. This can look like:
- Larger high-ticket services
- Medium offers or products
- Small-bite services, products, etc.
By sharing this transparently, your community and clients can see where your business is taking a stance to amplify underrepresented voices.
*We feel it’s important to point out here that by creating a sliding scale of services and offers, you acknowledge and understand that there is systemic inequality that plays a part in business, resources, and education.
Being transparent in your business operations and offerings creates opportunities for others to CHOOSE where they feel they need the most support.
READ: How to Set Sliding Scale Fees for your Practice via Good Therapy (more relevant for therapists but this is a great read)
Conclusion & TL;DR
Too long, couldn’t be bothered reading? Totally fine – we gotchu with a quick wrap-up and conclusion from this post!
3 ways as a small business to share your social impact:
- Create a social impact report for your business
- Organize community events for clients, brand ambassadors, and community members (virtual or in-person)
- Keep transparency in your business operations
Ultimately, the goal is to share how your business is not only creating profits but also social change within your community.
*Looking for ways to share your social impact through your communications strategy? Schedule a call with us to discuss a plan of action!
Enjoyed this post? You might like these, too:
5 Reasons Service Providers are Afraid to get Visible, and How to Change That
5 Step Market Research Process for Small Businesses (that isn’t daunting or boring!)
How to do Different Types of Market Research for your Content
How to Create a Successful Content Creation System
