On this episode of Reimagining Company Culture, we sat down with Brandon Parkes, CEO and Founder of Parkes Philanthropy. Brandon has supported more than 350 nonprofit organizations including Teach for America, UNICEF, Make A Wish, and the Museum of Modern Art on capacity building, and previously led nonprofit engagement at CariClub and held corporate philanthropy roles at Morgan Stanley and Toyota. He has been recognized as one of CauseArtists' 20 Inspiring African Americans Impacting the World Through Social Impact, and as one of NYC's 33 Under 33 by Startup Boost.
Brandon argued that most corporate social impact programs miss because they are designed inside the marketing function and resourced like a side project. The companies that produce real outcomes treat social impact as part of the operating model, with HR as the structural owner. He pushed back on the idea that purpose is a recruiting line. Purpose only retains employees when the company can show consistent action over years, and the only way to show that is to build the program with the same discipline as any other talent function.
That conversation matters because the next generation of workers will choose employers based on demonstrable impact, and most companies are still running social impact programs that look impressive in a quarterly report and feel hollow on a Tuesday morning.
Why Corporate Social Impact Programs Stall
The pattern is recognizable. A company commits to a cause area in response to a moment. Marketing builds a campaign. HR adds a volunteer day. The first year produces a press release and a small grants program. By year three, employees have stopped paying attention because the program is not connected to the work they actually do.
The data on what younger workers want is clear. Deloitte's Gen Z and Millennial survey finds that roughly nine in ten of both generations consider purpose important to job satisfaction, and 89 percent of Gen Zs say purpose-driven work is a key factor in employer choice. Edelman's Trust at Work research finds that 79 percent of employees globally trust their employer, but that trust is fragile and depends on demonstrated action.
Companies that move past the marketing model do three things. They tie the program to a few specific causes for the long term. They resource it inside HR, not just marketing. And they create participation pathways that connect the cause to the employee's daily work.
What Real Social Impact Looks Like Inside an Operating Model
Why does HR need to own the program?
Because the program lives or dies on participation, and participation is a people function. HR controls the time-off policies, the recognition systems, and the manager training that make participation possible. Marketing can amplify the program. HR makes the program real.
How do you avoid cause whiplash?
By committing to two or three cause areas for at least three years. Companies that change cause areas quarterly produce performance theatre, not impact. Companies that commit for years can build the relationships, expertise, and credibility that compound.
What Actually Works: A Framework for Corporate Social Impact
Design principle one: connect impact to participation pathways
Build participation into the operating model. Volunteer time off that is genuinely usable. Skills-based volunteering that uses employee expertise. Board service that counts as career development. Programs that fit inside the calendar produce participation. Programs that require sacrifice produce burnout.
Design principle two: instrument participation and outcomes together
Use pulse surveys to track whether employees feel the program is real, and use employee surveys to ground trends in deeper analysis. Pair survey data with participation rates and outcome metrics from the partner organizations. The combination tells you whether the program is moving people or just spending money.
Design principle three: integrate the program with career development
Treat board service, pro bono work, and structured volunteering as part of the development conversation. Recognize the skill-building that happens in nonprofit work. The companies that do this produce employees who stay longer, develop faster, and feel a deeper connection to the company because the company helped them grow.
Where Employee Relations Fits
Social impact and employee relations share a backbone: both depend on the trust that comes from consistent action. Nonprofit programs and corporate social impact programs alike fall apart when the company says one thing and the daily experience says another. Strong ER infrastructure protects the program by giving employees a confidential channel to flag the moments where stated commitments and lived experience diverge.
How does ER tooling reinforce social impact work?
By surfacing patterns where the company's external commitments do not match the internal experience. The complaint about a manager who blocks volunteer time. The cluster of concerns about cause-area decisions. The pattern of program participation by demographic cohort. Each of those signals informs program design and protects organizational culture as the program scales. Strong programs also use intake data to maintain employee engagement and surface effective mentoring patterns inside the work.
Frequently Asked Questions About Corporate Social Impact
What is the single biggest mistake companies make with social impact programs?
Treating them as marketing initiatives instead of operating programs. The marketing approach produces campaigns. The operating approach produces outcomes. Employees and partners can tell the difference within a year.
How do you measure social impact internally?
Three categories. Participation rate by cohort. Employee perception of the program from survey items. Outcome metrics from partner organizations. The three together tell you whether the program is real, felt, and effective.
How should companies pick cause areas?
Start with what your employees and customers care about, then narrow to areas where the company has differentiated assets. The intersection of employee interest and company capability is where programs produce the most outcome per dollar. For more on connecting internal and external work, see our piece on driving DEI in the workplace and outside of the workplace.
How does social impact relate to retention?
Strongly, especially for younger workers. Programs that produce real impact and create participation opportunities measurably reduce attrition in the cohorts that care most about purpose. The retention math alone usually justifies the program investment.
How do you handle the politics of cause selection?
Pick areas where the case is operational rather than ideological. Education, workforce development, environmental sustainability, and access to opportunity tend to be defensible across political environments because they tie to business outcomes the company already cares about.
The Bottom Line for HR Leaders
Brandon's framing puts corporate social impact where it belongs: inside the people function, designed with the same operational discipline as any other talent program. The companies that take this seriously produce employees who stay longer, partners who trust them more, and outcomes that compound over years.
The companies that keep treating social impact as marketing produce headlines that age poorly and employees who notice. The choice is operational, not ideological, and the next decade of competitive talent strategy will reward the companies that make it deliberately.
That is what real impact looks like inside an operating model.
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