Jon Browning, co-founder of the Global Impact Sourcing Coalition (GISC) started the keynote by sharing a definition of impact sourcing as creating good career-focused jobs in communities anywhere where there is unemployment and providing the training needed to succeed.
The panel of experts shared their company’s stories of using impact sourcing to achieve great rewards.
INTUIT POWERS PROSPERITY
With a mission of powering prosperity around the world, Intuit has created five U.S. and one Canadian-based “prosperity hubs” that provide 1,500 jobs with 56 percent of the positions held by women.
The model is not just about providing jobs, it is aimed at creating a “prosperity ladder,” said Stacie Herring, Vice President of Intuit Expert Networking Services at Intuit, a 2019 GISA recipient.
Intuit works to create career paths for long-term employment either internally or with its BPO providers and also partners with the community to educate and empower small businesses, she says.
“It’s all to get the flywheel going,” according to Herring.
Intuit strategically selects the locations for its prosperity hubs in distressed communities with high unemployment that have the potential to once again flourish economically. Two of its U.S. centers are sited in communities that once relied on coal mining and steel production as its economic engines.
“It’s been heartbreaking to talk to communities whose biggest exports were coal or steel and now their biggest export is their kids,” she said. “We’re trying to change that.”
Herring noted the company is finding real talent in the communities where they establish prosperity hubs. The speed to proficiency rate is two times faster and retention is 18 percent higher.
“This is a legitimate business model,” Herring said. “We are seeing business success. It’s not charity.”
For each dollar Intuit invests, the economic impact to the community equals $1.59, creating a real ripple effect.
“We are looking to build strategic alliances and grow this into a movement,” Herring said, noting they are open to partnering with healthcare, childcare, Internet and other providers.
