Companies

Our Clients

We offer two services for Companies:

  • Impactful Parnerships and

  • Ecosystem Building

We work with different companies including Corporates, Small & Medium Enterprises (SMEs) and Social Enterprises.

Whether you:

  • are just getting started defining your social impact

  • understand your impact, but are not satisfied in respect of measurement and reporting, or

  • think your impact strategy is working, but wonder how you can take the next step.


How We Work

When you engage Be The Difference, we team up with you in a structured way during those time-critical periods. We offer all the benefits of being part of your team, but are a nimble solution, comfortable to be engaged on an ‘as needs’ basis.

This Is why impactful partnerships make sense…

Impactful Partnerships

Be The Difference offers a range of services to companies aided by Susie Steyn, corporate lawyer, B Leader and business sustainability consultant, helping you to achieve your purpose, while balancing your impact on people and the planet.

Services include business consulting, partnering for purpose and overall impact. With a focus on the overall impact of your business, often structured around the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), or Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) we create meaningful partnerships based on shared value creation.

What We Offer

  • An understanding of business purpose, values and culture and the priorities of all stakeholders

  • Helping clients to partner with suitable community organisations for win-win-win solutions

  • Engaging all employees in initiatives, including through skills-based volunteering

  • Effectively communicating social impacts

  • Creating PR for impacts of strategic initiatives and contribution to delivering the SDGs.

The contract I had with Susie and her colleagues at Be the Difference services was characterised by its professionalism and competence. Susie provided a depth of insight and thoroughness to the research they did for me that was a great bonus for me.

- Elizabeth Morris, Founder Innovator at Centre for Applied Social Impact

Our Philosophy

We believe many business objectives can be achieved through strategic partnerships with community organisations: bringing the values of a business to life; attracting and retaining talented, engaged employees; developing empathetic leaders; connecting with clients and potential clients on a deep, human level and nurturing excellent public relations.

We believe shared value creation is achieved through business prioritising impacts in the community and working with and empowering local people to find their own solutions to the challenges facing them.

We believe solutions can and must be win-win-win, for companies, community partners and the people they serve. This way, you can unlock the #GoodSynergy and create even more impact.

Ecosystem Building for Companies

Some companies may wish to scale their social good beyond the Impactful Partnerships by helping build the broader ecosystems, thus creating longer lasting, sustainable positive impact, e.g. through disrupting systems and structural change.

It takes the fundamentals outlined in the Impactful Partnerships service and enhances them by applying a holistic, 360 degree approach of placing the cause(s) in their wider context and highlighting the many inter-relationships which are related to the causes - these may be part of the issue, the solution or, on occasion, a mixture of both. The scale at which this is done, can vary, depending on the client brief. The work then starts to work in partnership to build both the ecosystem AND the infrastructure.

Ecosystem building can take place at a neighbourhood level, e.g. supporting community-wide change in the locality where the company delivers its services and its employees live. Equally, it could be a national approach. Take Seventh Generation, for example, a B Corp, owned by Unilever which produces a range of eco-friendly household and personal/baby care products. As their mission and business focus is all about protecting the environment, they’ve chosen to focus on the juncture of climate justice AND racial justice to tackle the issues at scale.

This is what they say about why the role of business in creating more resilient, connected and livable communities for all people:

You can read more about Seventh Generation’s approach.

Be The Difference’s approach to ecosystem and infrastructure building with impactful companies:

  • The key is to work with the appropriate partners at the right scale and to design and build the ecosystem around this, depending on the desired impact.

  • We work in the knowledge that all stakeholders can be considered ‘experts’ and everyone holds a different part of the solution, with the #GoodSynergy only being unlocked when they come together and start to collaborate.

  • Potential elements of the ecosystem could include building partnerships, disrupting systems, building movements and innovating. 

  • Opportunities will be created between resource providers (funders, expertise, networks, skills) and contributors (eg local communities, change makers) to work together for social good. 

  • Actors may be policy makers, funders, local people, campaigners/activists, local government, charities, community organisations and social enterprises.

  • When needed, external expertise around the issue could be leveraged, as well as drawing on best practice case studies and thought leadership.

Bolt-on Social Impact Co-Pilot Services

We also offer bolt-on Social Impact Co-Pilot Services. These are services either delivered directly by us or outsourced to trusted specialists and still co-ordinated by us which are essential to the delivery of any part of the Impactful Partnerships. Examples could include (but are not limited to): end-to-end project management; social media administration and content creation; research; producing white papers based on case studies.