Overview
Mutually-Beneficial Corporate Citizenship
Meaningful Impact recognizes outstanding achievements in mutually-beneficial corporate citizenship — because we believe that companies can do the greatest good when project leaders leverage their corporate budgets to create alignment between:
- The strategic priorities of their company
- The critical needs of a cause
- The self-fulfillment goals of project team members, personally and professionally
Meaningful Impact award winners achieve a triple win-win-win:
- a win for their for-profit business
- a win for a cause
- a win for the individual(s) on the project team
Award Tiers
Meaningful ImpactTM Goodwill Award
The Meaningful Impact TM Goodwill Award is an esteemed honor, while remaining accessible for many corporate projects which make a meaningful difference for a cause.
Qualifications for a Goodwill Award include:
- A significant win for a cause, based on resources contributed or target-audience engagement
- A significant win for a company, by accomplishing a business goal
- A significant win for the project leader(s), personally or professionally
Meaningful ImpactTM Leadership Award
The Meaningful Impact TM Leadership Award recognizes the achievements of purpose-driven leaders who align the strategic interests of their company with the critical needs of a cause — at a scale and level of importance felt company-wide.
Qualifications for a Leadership Award include:
- A substantial win for a cause, by improving the quality of life of beneficiaries
- A substantial win for a company, by accomplishing a challenging business goal that is aligned with the C-Level suite’s strategic imperatives
- A substantial win for the project leader(s), personally and professionally
Meaningful ImpactTM
Paragon Award
The Meaningful Impact TM Paragon Award, the highest honor, is reserved for exemplary projects which demonstrate that a corporate initiative can generate a higher return on investment by integrating social-good into the implementation — at a scale and level of importance which inspires peers industry-wide.
Qualifications for a Paragon Award include:
- A transformational win for a cause, by improving the quality of life of a large segment of the cause’s beneficiaries
- A substantial financial win for a company, yielding higher ROI than alternative uses of the same budget
- A substantial win for the full project team, personally and professionally
Note: ‘Significant’, ‘substantial’, and ‘transformational’ are evaluated relative to the size of the nominee’s organization or department.
All Meaningful Impact TM Awards are a prestigious honor for high achievement in corporate citizenship. Respectively, the Goodwill, Leadership, and Paragon Awards are approximately equivalent to Silver, Gold, and Platinum at an annual awards competition.
Honorable Mentions
In cases where a nominated project does not meet the full requirements for a Goodwill Award but did make considerable progress towards that goal, those projects will receive an Honorable Mention to acknowledge their admirable merit and corporate citizenship.
Special Commendations
The Meaningful Impact TM Paragon Award is reserved for projects which are an exemplary demonstration of the highest achievement in mutually-beneficial corporate citizenship.
Occasionally, a project which wins a Paragon Award is so influential that the nominee is further considered for a special commendation — when extraordinary social good is achieved by creating new best practices in corporate citizenship.
Meaningful ImpactTM
Paragon Innovator
A Paragon Innovator creates new CSR tactics that:
- Are innovative for their industry
- Improve substantially on previous best practices
- are likely to remain the ‘gold standard’ for the foreseeable future and have been adopted by peers
The Paragon Innovator commendation is similar to being recognized as the Grand Prize winner at an annual awards competition.
Meaningful ImpactTM
Paragon Laureate
A Paragon Laureate has all the qualities of an Innovator and also:
- Motivates the highest possible rates of project participation among relevant staf
- Mentors others within their own company to successfully lead similar projects in the future
- Inspires others within their industry to successfully lead similar projects in the future
The Paragon Laureate commendation is similar to being inducted in a corporate citizenship Hall of Fame.
Award Eligibility
Eligible Nominees
Meaningful Impact TM Award entries are welcome on behalf of:
- Individuals
- Project Teams
- Companies
- Trade Associations
Since Meaningful Impact honors excellence in corporate citizenship, eligible individuals and project teams must work for, or represent, a for-profit company.
Partnerships which include a 501c(3) charity are also welcome when at least one of the partners is a for-profit company.
Eligible Projects
An award-winning Meaningful Impact project can be any one of the following types of activities:
- A marketing campaign, for a product or service, which also supports a cause
- An education, advocacy, or outreach initiative for a cause which also enhances a company’s brand or reputation
- An employee volunteer initiative
- A product or service which has both a for-profit and social-good purpose
- A corporate initiative which gives back to the community
- An internal company initiative to improve sustainability or equity practices
Timing
Projects are eligible if at least a portion of the activity occurred within the past 12 months.
Publicity Opportunities
Helpful for reputation management and executive positioning, Meaningful Impact award winners get access to optional publicity add-ons, including sponsored articles, press releases, award badges, and private-label podcast episodes.
Sponsored Articles at CSR.org
These news articles, written by professional business journalists, showcase award-winning projects and the people involved.
Sponsored articles at CSR.org are written by journalists who have had their work published in marquee dailies such as The New York Times and Wall Street Journal as well as top tier business magazines including Entrepreneur and Inc.
Subject to editorial review, sponsored articles at CSR.org can include client-provided images, videos, quotations, and hyperlinks.
At your request, your sponsored article can be copywritten in a style that uses keyword-rich outbound links to boost the search engine ranking of your own related content.
Meaningful Impact Press Releases
Keyword-optimized for search engines and news readers, these press releases are guaranteed to be included in Google News and hundreds of syndicated news websites via: Associated Press, Reuters, and Bloomberg.
Sponsored press releases can include client-provided images, videos, quotations, and hyperlinks as well as third-party testimonials.
Meaningful Impact Award Badges
Our official award seals can be licensed and integrated into promotional materials for your award-winning products and services.
Private-Label Podcast Episodes
Your private label podcast episode could feature interviews with your award-winning project team, testimonials from grateful cause beneficiaries, and efficacy validation from third-party experts.
The episode would be created in the same style as the Meaningful Impact podcast, produced by the same team, and hosted by Michael Organ.