Final month, Cisco introduced we exceeded our ten-year aim to positively affect one billion lives – a couple of yr early. The 1.1 billion lives we’ve modified for the higher characterize roughly one-eighth of the world’s inhabitants.
The announcement was simply step one in our dedication to share the tales inside our journey to 1 billion lives, and to share our strategy and learnings to empower organizations of any dimension in driving actual change and lasting social affect in communities around the globe.
See how we met our One Billion Lives aim video (1:24)
Cisco Govt Vice President and Chief Folks, Coverage, and Objective Officer Fran Katsoudas illuminates this tenet in Cisco’s FY23 Objective Report. “After we outlined our Objective, to Energy an Inclusive Future for All, we operationalized the work of our groups to co-innovate with companions leveraging connectivity; tackle the digital abilities hole; drive sustainability, inclusivity, and social justice; and help new concepts with partnerships and affect grants.”
To realize our aim to positively affect one billion lives, Cisco solid over 100 partnerships and invested in lots of of initiatives in practically 2 hundred international locations, in each area of the world. We put individuals on the heart of our work and centered on optimistic affect within the areas of disaster response, studying and digital abilities, and financial empowerment.
We additionally created what we name “the Blueprint for One Billion” to align our partnerships and our initiatives with the guiding ideas that intersect our enterprise, know-how, and innovation along with our Objective, and permit us to focus the place we might have the deepest affect.
We imagine that our guiding ideas might be utilized to organizations of any dimension to drive elevated and lasting social affect.
The Blueprint for One Billion: Aligning goal and partnership to drive affect
Begin with “why”
Begin with defining your “why.” For every firm, that is going to look a bit of totally different––and that’s a great factor. Root your “why” within the services and products for which your organization has experience, and within the areas of Objective which are passions on your individuals.
Cisco services and products energy the Web, together with networking, safety, collaboration, cloud administration, and extra. So, our “why” was deeply rooted in connecting the world and discovering a solution to a seemingly easy query, “what number of lives might we alter?” It was rooted to find out what was potential if we pushed ourselves and our firm in new methods, leveraging our core enterprise of connection and innovation, and investing in partnerships and progressive options.
We had been pushed to attach longstanding challenges with new prospects to beat and to deepen our understanding of how one can create lasting change. Alongside this journey, we articulated our firm’s Objective, to Energy an Inclusive Future for All.
Clearly outline your meant impacts
There are lots of methods to outline affect, so it’s necessary to get clear about how your organization will outline and measure it.
We labored with our nonprofit companions to develop a shared definition of optimistic affect. Collectively, we agreed that optimistic affect happens when a person has gained entry to a essential useful resource, realized one thing, or participated in a significant approach.
For instance, for job seekers, optimistic affect is achieved by finishing a coaching program and acquiring a job that gives steady and enough revenue. For college students, it’s gaining data and demonstrating proficiency in the subject material. And for a neighborhood in want of water, it’s having a dependable, reasonably priced supply of unpolluted ingesting water that’s obtainable to all individuals inside the neighborhood.
Construct a rigorous monitoring methodology
Monitoring and validating affect is a fancy however essential course of. That is essential for transparency and correct reporting, and figuring out whether or not you might be having the specified affect.
Our methodology centered on discovering a steadiness between rigor to make sure consistency and accuracy and assembly the wants of our nonprofit grant companions.
Along with validating optimistic affect, our methodology ensures every particular person counted is exclusive, and that they’re solely counted as soon as over time. For instance, some individuals could profit from a number of packages inside a yr or could profit from the identical program over a number of years – they’re solely counted as soon as inside the timeframe of our One Billion Lives aim.
We acknowledged that we couldn’t all the time precisely quantify the affect of some classes inside our Social Affect investments. To handle this, we didn’t embody a few of our social affect grants the place the nonprofit accomplice didn’t have a option to rely distinctive people positively impacted. This was the case, for instance, with a few of our nonprofit companions who tackle meals insecurity – as they don’t monitor distinctive people who obtain help.
Cisco engaged PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) to conduct an impartial restricted assurance of our progress towards our aim and our accompanying methodology and validation processes between FY16-FY22, making certain our path to 1 billion was sound. We utilized the identical strategy and methodology in FY23.
Spend money on potential
With an audacious aim, clear definitions of affect, and a rigorous methodology in place, we turned our consideration to executing in opposition to our funding mannequin.
Cisco focuses on getting in early – offering essential seed funding to promising nonprofits to ideate, create, and check tech-enabled options. Whereas investing in confirmed options responds to quick wants, figuring out and investing in new and progressive options might help scale and amplify your affect over time.
Our technique of investing in tech-enabled options stems from who we’re. As a know-how firm, we imagine within the energy of know-how to attach the unconnected, and likewise to have affect at scale.
We help our nonprofit companions past money grant funding. We donate our know-how to allow our companions to ship their choices extra securely and successfully and join them to material specialists throughout the corporate, and to key organizations, companions, and funders. We do that to make sure that our companions can have sustained affect effectively past the lifecycle of our engagement with them.
Our Social Affect Grant companions get the time, area, funding, and suppleness to check their options. As these options are validated, we offer continued help to assist our companions replicate these options to new geographies and scale to achieve extra individuals. Cisco features a greater understanding of the problem they’re fixing and what it takes to drive true affect. All of us develop from innovating – collectively.
What’s subsequent?
As we speak, we’re sharing with you our Blueprint to One Billion. As we ponder our subsequent impressed aim, we’re dedicated to sharing extra about what we’ve realized in positively impacting one billion lives and to understanding extra concerning the challenges confronted by communities around the globe. We’ll share tales of our companions, the work they do, the options we’ve got funded, and the lives which were impacted in consequence.
Discover the inspiring tales inside our aim to positively affect One Billion Lives
Go deeper in understanding all that Cisco is doing to carry the facility of goal to life inside Cisco’s FY23 Objective Report
Hear from Brian Tippens and Man Diedrich how we’re persevering with to increase our strategy to optimistic affect in The subsequent one billion lives
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