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At Visit.org, we believe that we’re better together.
That’s why we recently teamed up with one of our corporate partners to host a social impact roundtable in New York City.
The goal: Create a safe space where CSR, DEIB, and HR professionals in NYC could gather to meet their peers, exchange ideas, and iterate on 2024’s anticipated challenges.
Visit.org and the social impact professionals explored four core questions during the roundtable discussion.
Below is an overview of the top answers to these questions. We categorized and anonymized these answers into data visualizations to help you understand the triumphs, strategies, challenges, and general social impact sentiments of the experts. Each graph's circle size correlates to response popularity.
We hope the following insights will help inform your 2024 CSR and DEIB planning. As always, reach out to Visit.org if you’re interested in having a trusted partner on your social impact journey.
Top social impact KPIs of 2023
Employee participation
Increasing program accessibility — ensuring that experiences are available to every employee, every time
Number of lives impacted
Volunteer hours generated by each experience
Number of global communities that are supported
Improve storytelling
Key performance indicators (KPIs) are a crucial way for teams to measure the success of their efforts and identify areas for improvement. Social impact KPIs communicate to executives how CSR and DEIB experiences enrich both the company and the employee experience.
In our roundtable discussion, the lion’s share of social impact experts said employee participation is a key way they measure success, with many professionals aiming to see 25-40% of their workforce engaged in volunteering activities.
Measuring the output of social impact efforts — such as lives impacted, communities supported, and volunteer hours generated — are also important metrics the experts gathered.
During the discussion, social impact professionals expressed the limitations of KPIs: While much social impact work can be quantified, many aspects of CSR and DEIB events are intangible.
For example, how can you reduce the deepened connection employees feel after a volunteering activity to a number? How can you communicate the joy a colleague experiences while making a local impact, or the support a community member feels during an employee mentoring session?
These questions are leading some professionals to rethink their 2024 KPIs and focus on storytelling to convey the impact of their work. Other experts are still solidifying their 2024 goals.
DEIB and CSR challenges in 2024
Reduced budget and staff devoted to CSR and DEIB
Global political instability
Creating innovative social impact experiences
Social impact professionals will have no shortage of challenges in 2024.
Many experts said their budget will either stay the same or be reduced, which will force CSR and DEIB leaders to ‘do more with less’.
“As my company is going through a time of restructuring, the unknowns of our budget and number of staff left will be a key challenge,” said one social impact professional.
Largely due to layoffs, some teams must contend with a reduction in their human capital. Fewer people dedicated to CSR will strain remaining team members. A smaller headcount particularly affects large-scale and global volunteer programs that are notoriously complicated to organize in-house.
Many social impact experts anticipate challenges related to global political instability. Some people specifically pointed to divisiveness related to this year’s U.S. election cycle, where Americans will vote to choose their next president, among many other elected officials.
“Complications of the election cycle and the politicalization of corporate ‘woke-ism’ in the USA will be one of our challenges,” wrote one participant.
Lastly, professionals struggled to create and execute innovative social impact experiences for their global, dispersed teams.
Insights about the state of DEIB in 2023
DEIB has been politicalized
Companies must respond to global disasters through a DEIB lens
DEIB initiatives received varying levels of executive support in 2023
Employees now expect DEIB programs to be the norm
Over the past several years, diversity, equity, inclusion, and belonging initiatives have experienced massive change.
After the murder of George Floyd in 2020, many companies were prompted to make DEIB commitments to address systemic injustices. According to a LinkedIn study, chief diversity and inclusion officer positions grew by 168.9% from 2019 to 2022.
Fast forward to 2023 and some social impact professionals say DEIB discourse has changed. For example, DEIB has been politicized in the United States — a trend that will likely accelerate during the 2024 election cycle.
Some attendees experienced increased support for DEIB initiatives from employees and executives alike.
The successes of CSR and DEIB professionals in 2023
Launching effective new programs and initiatives
Professional and personal achievements
Garnering high employee participation throughout the year
Supporting local nonprofits
Social impact professionals are rockstars, and a highlight of the roundtable was when they shared their greatest triumphs of 2023.
Most experts were proud of the new initiatives they were able to launch with their team. These programs ranged from large-scale social impact experiences that engaged global workforces to events designed to make a local community impact.
Many CSR and DEIB leaders also shared the professional and personal milestones they reached this year, which included being unconditionally present for their team, building inclusivity and accessibility into donation matching, and even moving to a new city.
Visit.org can help you achieve your 2024 KPIs. Schedule a call with a member of our team to learn more.
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