Happy Mid-Year!

We hope you are having an awesome year and wanted to share some highlights of what has been keeping us busy in 2019.

Here’s a short version:

• Board Growth & Development - A great and engaged Board can make or break an organization, especially during pivotal growth stages. We've been helping multiple nonprofits navigate a Board Growth & Development process to design and engage their Boards for maximum impact.

  
  

• Great HR & Mid-Year Reviews - 'Tis the season to set your organization up for year-end success via a mid-year review process that seamlessly flows into the year-end review, planning, and budgeting process. It's important (and fun) work that multiple clients are undertaking. We hope your organization is doing this too!

  
  

• Landmark Legislation - Our team played a key role in passing landmark restorative justice legislation in Illinois and is helping other states and organizations design and launch important policy and advocacy campaigns.

  
  

• Commencement Addresses, NY Times Best Sellers & TV Too! - Our Principal Messaging & Communications Team has been helping high profile speakers, authors and writers create inspirational and amazing content!

• And More - Read on for more about what we've been up to or just drop us a note! We'd love to hear from you!
  

Here’s a longer version:

Board Growth & Development

An active and engaged Board of Directors is critical for long-term, scalable, and sustainable success. Most growth-stage organizations struggle to grow their original founders board into a more dynamic, diversified, and fully engaged Board. That's where we come in! We use the same simplified and easy-to-action approach we've used with some of the most high profile nonprofit Boards in the world to help organizations comfortably grow and engage their Board. Recruiting new Board members is one thing - onboarding and engaging them effectively over time is another. We help do both! If you'd like to discuss your Board, let us know!

Great HR & Mid-Year Reviews!

We know that few people get really excited about HR...but we do! And we've been really busy this year helping clients develop policies, procedures, and simplified practices to engage and motivate their teams toward peak performance.

• Mid-Year Reviews. The secret to awesome year-end reviews begins with the mid-year review (or at least the less formal mid-year touch base). And several of our clients are in the middle of them right now! Mid-year reviews during often slower summer months provide a simple, low-pressure opportunity to engage with each team member and to review essential functions, performance expectations, and goals. Year-end reviews are right around the corner (we recommend starting in October - yes, really!). If you want to finish the year seamlessly and efficiently focused on the exciting new year ahead, the mid-year review process is the best way to start!Need help with or want to talk about your mid-year and/or year-end reviews? Let us know!

  
  

• Make HR Awesome! It's important to have strong policies and procedures in place (including an Employee Handbook and Code of Conduct) and to review and revise them on an annual basis to ensure compliance with new and changing obligations. We have seen tremendous demand on this front from clients. But beyond just having the policies, we also recommend annual trainings, including the ever-important anti-harassment training, which we recommend (and some states require) you conduct annually! While we know some employee trainings can be a drag, ours are short, sweet, and awesome! We love helping clients update their policies and train their teams in simple and fun sessions that can be conducted remotely and/or in-person!Want to talk about your HR practices and/or trainings? Shoot us an email!
  

Landmark Legislation

In June, Illinois Governor JB Pritzker signed HB1438 into law, which was one of the most sweeping criminal justice reform bills to ever pass a state legislature. Dave Horwich, Beyond Advisers' expert in advocacy and political engagement, together with JCL Strategies, developed and managed the advocacy campaign that led to this monumental legislation. Through its legalization of the sale of adult-use cannabis, the law, passed with bipartisan support, includes automatic expungement of records for cannabis offenses, thereby expunging over 700,000 records and opening better pathways to jobs and civic engagement.  It also creates a social equity program that provides benefits directly to those communities that have been disproportionately affected by previous legislation. We also worked on other exciting public policy matters:

• Civics Education - Earlier this year, we worked with one of the largest social innovators on the planet to create a national, multi-year roadmap to elevate civics education standards through state legislative action.
  

• State-Led Climate Change Action - In response to a request from a funder, we are developing strategic engagement options in a southeastern state around climate-related issues and beginning the process of building out their long-term program in the state. 
  

• Multi-Entity, Cross-Sector Public Policy - We are currently working with a number of leading nonprofit organizations in one large Midwestern state to align their efforts to advance a menu of public policy priorities through collective action.
  

Changing public policy can be one of the most effective ways to deliver social impact at scale. If you are working to launch campaigns that affect public policy change at the local, state, or national level, let us know!

Commencement Addresses, NY Times Best Sellers & TV Too!

During graduation season, Steve Rinehart, the leader of our Principal Messaging & Communications team, assisted our client, a world champion athlete, with commencement remarks for a major university. This was in addition to Steve’s concurrent work supporting multiple NY Times Best Selling authors on their books and television projects. Have a high-profile founder, leader, and/or principal who wants to enhance and amplify their message and impact? We'd be happy to discuss their vision, mission, and message. Feel free to reach out! 

We help amazing people change the world.

We'd love to help you, too!

If we aren’t already working together, let’s chat about what we can do together during the rest of 2019 and Beyond!

Shoot us an email at contact@beyondadvisers.com

Here’s to 2019…and Beyond!

2018 went by in a blink. Time flies when you’re having fun serving great clients! Here’s a short version of our 2018:

• Our clients are amazing, inspiring, and changing the world across industries and sectors.

• We’re helping them in virtually every aspect of their organization and work.

• Our team grew!
  

And here’s a longer version:

Amazing Clients. Inspiring Work.

While we don’t advertise who our clients are, here’s a bit of what they - and we - have been up to:

• Family Office Big Bet - We’ve helped an audaciously motivated family office design and build the next great big bet in cross-sector social impact (philanthropy, private sector, education, and beyond!). Stay tuned for big news on this one in 2019! 
  

• A-List Social Impact - Some of our favorite icons are scaling the work of their foundations and nonprofit interests while also designing, building, and deploying a wider social impact approach across all of their businesses, interests, and platforms.It’s been our joy to support and help them build compliant, well governed, measurable work that can scale and sustain over time!
  

• Private Sector Leaders Changing The World - We’ve supported some of the most influential businesses, brands and brains working to infuse their business models with dynamic social impact approaches.Far beyond CSR, corporate philanthropy, and pro bono alone, these businesses are motivating their teams and their markets by using their business models to do good while doing well. You’re going to see a lot more of this in 2019. We’re thrilled to be helping make it happen! 
  

• Law Firms Too! - That’s right…law firms. Lawyers. No joke. We’re unapologetically bullish that lawyers are the architects of social innovation. Nobody doing anything great is doing (or has ever done) it without lawyers. So we help lawyers and law firms better speak and practice social impact - which motivates and serves their clients and their talent. Look for more law firms to launch their (profit-generating) Social Impact & Innovation practice groups in 2019! Chances are good we helped them! And if your law firm is on this path, let us know...we can help!
  

• Dynamic Nonprofits - We’re supporting some of the most inspiring and rapidly scaling nonprofits working on some of the most important issues of our time. From dynamic and engaged boards, to financing models that support rapid growth, to helping with critically important details on extraordinary work being deployed nationwide and around the world, we provide some of the best guidance and tools to scale effectively. 
  

• Political Dynamos on the Rise - Through our “hidden” offering ofwww.socialimpactpolitics.com we’ve been delighted to provide guidance to some of the most exciting rising stars in public service who focus on positive social impact over partisanship or party politics. This is the future of politics. And we’re excited to be supporting those on the leading edge.
  

In 2018, we’ve seen quite clearly that the “usual suspects” in social impact are changing. The most dynamic leaders are no longer just politicians and philanthropists. We’re seeing with greater clarity than ever before that CEOs, celebrities, newcomers in philanthropy, and an entire generation are engaging as powerful voices for change.

It’s our privilege - and a whole lot of fun - to support them.

We help clients plan big, build simple, and scale for impact.It’s hard work. We make it easier.

Our Most Popular Services in 2018:

• General Counsel - Most growth-stage nonprofits and social enterprises don’t have and can’t afford a general counsel, but wish they could. That’s where we come in!From the Board to program teams and everywhere in between (especially contract review and Human Resources this past year - wow!), we make good governance and compliance real, simple, and seamless.  We don’t replace law firms (and aren’t one), but we reduce the need for one, and make sure the use of them is far more efficient and effective.

• Strategic Counsel - $70,000 PowerPoint “Deliverables” often fail to deliver much at all. So we pick up where most strategic planning leaves off, diving in quickly and with focus to help our clients grow their organizations and their work to achieve specific, actionable, and measurable objectives. 

• Program Design & Development - Our team’s unmatched experience in global philanthropy and on the leading edge of social enterprises results in laser-focused pattern recognition and issue identification. We’ve seen what works and know why it does, so we are uniquely positioned to help design, develop, and pivot programs, partnerships, and initiatives for impact. From landscape mapping, to purposeful partnerships, to impact storytelling and “not your average fundraising and development” guidance, we assist clients in achieving clear targets quickly and effectively.

• Advocacy Strategies - For funders and organizations looking to create positive change through public policy, we’re developing smart, forward-thinking strategies at the state and federal levels to tackle some of the most intractable issues by looking at new ways to build power and winning outcomes.

That’s just where we were busiest in 2018.  There’s a lot more to what we do. Check it out here.

Our Team Grew!

The individual and collective experience and talent of our team is what makes us unique, our services awesome, and our clients better off when we finish our work than when we started.We’re thrilled to have added the following members and their skills to our team this year:

• Zayneb Shaikley- Strategic Counsel; Human Resources; Partnerships; Commercial Transactions

• Joe Ballard- Program Design; Impact Assessment; Strategic Planning; Development Strategy

• Steve Rinehart- Principal Messaging & Communications

• David Horwich - Advocacy Campaigns & Philanthropic and Political Counsel

  
  

We help amazing people change the world.

We’d love to help you, too!

If we aren’t already working together, let’s have a big, bold, fun conversation about what we can do together in 2019! Shoot us an email at contact@beyondadvisers.com

"Beyond Pro Bono, Firms Put Do-Gooders in Top Positions"

Social Impact in the C-Suite of law firms is the future of how law firms do good!

Winston & Strawn recently created the C-Suite position of "Chief CSR Officer." The Legal Intelligencer contacted us for comment, asking whether we expect to see more of this in the law.  Boy, do we!

Check out the article below (especially last section) for more! 

Beyond Pro Bono, Firms Put Do-Gooders in Top Positions

Lizzy McLellan, The Legal Intelligencer

Keeping up with their corporate clients, large law firms have set their eyes on charitable efforts beyond the traditional pro bono commitment. And one firm recently put the leader of those efforts in the C-suite.

In June, Julie Goodman became the first chief corporate social responsibility officer at Winston & Strawn, coordinating the firm's volunteer efforts and charitable giving. In shaping the role, Goodman said, she has looked to corporate clients, rather than other law firms—clients like Bank of America and Motorola. She said she doesn't know of any other law firms with a chief title for corporate social responsibility.

"We really need someone to pull it all together and look at it with more of a strategic point of view," Goodman said. "Law firms need to change like the rest of the business world."

Valentine Brown, partner and pro bono counsel at Duane Morris, agreed. She said positions like Goodman's are "the way of the future."

"Looking at social responsibility the same way that clients look at social responsibility is going to be necessary," Brown said. "It's more effective, and also clients are going to be looking for that."

Many firms, including her own, are already engaged in charitable activities other than pro bono, Brown said. But having a C-level executive overseeing those efforts highlights that commitment.

"Having a person in that role would help them demonstrate what they're already doing and present it in a way that's cohesive," Brown said. "It helps, especially in getting the internal actors in the firm to understand the importance of it. Also, it will help to show clients that it is something the firm takes seriously."

Unlike Brown, Goodman does not oversee pro bono, but she said she expects to work closely with Winston & Strawn's pro bono practice leaders, particularly when the firm has opportunities to volunteer nonlegal help for pro bono clients. She has been with the firm for 28 years, most recently having served in a human relations position before taking on her newest role.

Like any staff position, Goodman said, "there has to be a business driver" for adding a corporate social responsibility executive.

"It's important to clients, which makes it important to us," she said. "Another is to retain and attract the best talent ... our employees want to work for an organization that cares."

Chief by Another Name?

Goodman's title is unique, but many other firms have a person in charge of charitable work, sometimes including pro bono.

Bruce Gilchrist, the global citizenship chair at Hogan Lovells, oversees a team of 24 full-time employees dedicated to the firm's citizenship program. But he is also a full-time corporate and securities partner. The firm's citizenship program includes pro bono, volunteering, diversity and inclusion, sustainability and a matching program for charitable donations.

Firms may not need to dedicate an entire position to CSR leadership, he said. But the person who leads CSR should have authority at the firm.

"We've, I think, consciously wanted it to be partner-driven, and not outsourced , but there's nothing wrong with outsourcing it," he said. "We made a conscious choice that it might need to be senior people to show other people that it's an important part of your experience and work for Hogan Lovells."

There's no one right model, said Reena Glazer, assistant director of the law firm pro bono project at the Pro Bono Institute. It depends on the firm's structure.

"Some of this goes to the professionalization of law firms," Glazer said—the implementation of corporate leadership models throughout the industry. "To the extent that a C-suite position lends gravitas ... that could be a good thing."

But if pro bono is put under a social responsibility umbrella, a CCSRO should not just be an administrative position, she noted.

"In many respects, running a pro bono program at a law firm, you're running the biggest practice group," she said.

Integrating pro bono with community service and charitable giving allows all of those functions to work more effectively, she said. But if executed improperly, it can muddy the waters.

"You want to be sure that the lines don't get blurred ... that you're not mushing in all of your volunteer and pro bono efforts," she said.

A Step Further

Still, even firms with a corporate social responsibility strategy may be behind the times.

"I think it's awesome. I applaud it. And I think it should go further," said Scott Curran of Beyond Advisers, speaking about Winston & Strawn's new position.

He said the rest of the business world has moved past corporate social responsibility into social impact—simply defined as using the business model itself to do good. Unlike pro bono, social impact produces revenue. A former general counsel for the Clinton Foundation, Curran now helps law firms, nonprofits and other businesses find ways to do good while making money.

"I love that the chief CSR officer is becoming real, but I think we have to leapfrog the title and call it the chief social impact officer," Curran said. "I'm here to be a catalyst to tell law firms, 'You're already doing more than that.'"

The interaction between pro bono and social impact is complicated, said Glazer, of the Pro Bono Institute. But social impact is an emerging area, she said, as lawyers seek more ways to use their profession as a vehicle for positive change.

Having a C-suite role to organize those efforts is absolutely necessary, Curran said.

"There's no question in my mind that firms have to prioritize this at the top level," he said. "There are firms that say they want to do this and don't action it. They have to understand that this is not our grandfather's pro bono."

You can read that article by clicking this link.