As more and more companies prioritize social impact in their actions, it becomes increasingly necessary that we understand how much good we’re really doing.
Social impact — defined as any notable or beneficial changes that help mitigate social wrongs — has now evolved from a PR play into an important part of corporate strategy to create and protect value.
Doing good is good business, we’ve learned.
But by no means are we the first era in the history of humanity plagued with social injustices nor the first to attempt to address them through social impact.
However, we are in the first era in which there is sufficient international connectivity to more quickly see the effects of our actions.
We are also in the first era in which the future of all living creatures on the planet is under clear threat.
Photo by Ishan @seefromthesky Niyama, Maldives. Photographer’s note — Please don’t throw plastic, the harm will be faced by the next generation, not you and me.
As we increasingly turn our attention towards fixing the many problems that prevent us from being fully free and fair societies living in balance with our ecosystem by generating awareness about these problems, how do we keep track of our results?
How do we even measure the awareness we raise about the problems facing us?
Not only do we need to measure awareness, the means of such measures should be available to everyone.
Up ‘till now, our main strategy has involved knowing the number of dollars we direct at a solution, but it’s hard to know how effective these solutions are. One important part of the puzzle is missing.
Take these stats:
- US$632 billion was spent each year in 2019 and 2020 on global climate investment.
- Funded entirely by voluntary donations, the World Food Program raised a record US$9.6 billion in 2021 to fight global hunger.
- In 2022, the UN Slavery Fund awarded 43 annual grants to assist over 13,000 slavery survivors in 33 countries around the world for an amount of USD$961,000.
There is no question that these numbers paint a picture of a planet interested in making its society better; however, how interested are we really in solving these problems? What does money mean unless we can measure the interest it generates? This interest — in human terms — is awareness and any brand manager can tell you that awareness is what actually drives decisions.
Photo by OCG Saving The Ocean
Our ability to make beneficial impactful choices at the micro and macro level — to pollute less, to disengage with businesses and practices that support and instigate slavery, to protect our climate, etc. — depend on whether we are aware, in the first place, of these problems.
From this perspective, measuring awareness becomes critical.
At +Media, measuring awareness has evolved from a product we offer into a full-scale service for companies, individuals and organizations of any size. We are thrilled that more business leaders have begun realizing that a causal link exists between social impact and the health of a business. To help drive it all, we measure human interest.
Our goal is to make sure people don’t just watch; further, that they go beyond simple awareness to real action that generates positive change.
UN Sustainable Development Goal highlight —
United Nations Sustainable Goal #14, Life Below Water
Our solution to conserve and sustainably use the oceans in this newsletter edition is “the only ocean search engine that directly cleans the ocean.” OCG uses 100% of its search engine profits to fund, employ and operate its own cleanup operations.
Visit https://ocg.org/ to clean the ocean with your searches.
