5 Best Social Impact Consulting Firms In 2021

Surabhi C.
5 min readApr 16, 2021

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Looking for a social impact consulting firm?

Before that let's understand what social impact means.

Social impact is all about making sure that is as positive as it can be and lowers the negative impacts that the business or project might have. For the distribution chain, this is significant since it’s now counted into the value for bids — societal value has to be demonstrated in bids, and it is optional within bids.

Below I have prepared a list of 5 best Social Impact Consulting Firms. Without wasting more time let’s have a look at them -

1. Wachs Strategies

Wachs Strategies transforms how companies and organizations shape social change and impact. They believe social impact not only builds brands but also serves as a fundamental business driver. In their experience, this work can be a competitive advantage. Too often, corporate social responsibility (CSR) efforts are siloed, secondary, and stifled by old paradigms.

Here are five key services of the CSR consulting company:

Strategy Development: Wachs Strategies works with clients to set goals, understand current business models and evaluate external landscapes to define organizational priorities and expertise. The plans and recommendations are anchored in clear goals, budgets, and processes to achieve measurable milestones and quantify success.

Advocacy & Communications: Wachs Strategies helps develop advocacy issue campaigns and positions clients alongside key players, including elected officials, industry leaders, and philanthropy influencers, to accelerate mission impact. As specialists in federal, state, and local policy agendas.

They craft targeted advocacy and communications strategies to enhance programs and direct service models, as well as thought leadership and visibility and public-private partnerships.

Fundraising & Development: Big ideas require substantial and sustainable funding. Wachs Strategies works with development teams to identify and maximize diverse revenue streams.

They develop fundraising resources, materials, and processes that celebrate organizational strengths with target prospects in mind. They create cases for support and package programmatic work.

Strategic Partnerships: Wachs Strategies specializes in the design of innovative, win-win public-private partnerships. The nonprofit strategic planning consulting services span the full partnership process from market analysis and identification to outreach and negotiations.

They connect nonprofit, government, philanthropies, and corporate players to advance shared goals.

Leadership Advising: Without strong leaders who prioritize social impact by setting a tone and culture that embraces the work, companies and organizations will not be as effective in truly making a difference.

Their social impact consulting services inform leadership on strategy, executive positioning, and communications around social impact. With the team of experience working with executives at multiple levels with different styles and approaches.

Visit their website at https://www.wachsstrategies.com/

2. Cicero Group

Cicero Group is a premier management consulting firm dedicated to implementing qualitative strategies for a wide mixture of private, public, and social sector organizations throughout the globe.

They work with high management to assess needs and supply onsite decision support to catch and build value in an assortment of industries and across a complete selection of company structures.

Here are some solutions that are offered by these -

  • Long-term organizational preparation
  • Transformation and change management strategies
  • Scaling and expansion strategies
  • Donor and beneficiary research and segmentation
  • Prioritizing goal populations, issue areas, or locations
  • Partner, grantee, or investee due diligence
  • Philanthropic or impact investment portfolio layout

Visit their website at https://cicerogroup.com/

3. Direct Impact Group

The Direct Impact Group exists for one clear purpose — to maximize our customer’s social impact! They operate with organizations that see a social impact as a significant part of their work.

Whether you are an NGO or a company, philanthropic base or investor, they engage with clients in three core areas:

  • Obtaining your organization future-ready
  • Facilitating partnerships to scale impact
  • Accelerating impact through design and innovation

Direct Impact Group acknowledges that the work of organizations looking for social impact is a positive driving force for the development of communities in which everyone can achieve their entire potential in harmony with the environment.

They work with organizations that engage in the growth of societal influence and contribute to raising the effectiveness of the change they seek.

Visit their website at https://www.direct-impact-group.com/

4. Emzingo

Emzingo is a Licensed B-Corporation working together with purpose-driven leaders, teams, and organizations in the company and academic sectors, to induce innovation, inspire accountable direction, and connect business performance to social and environmental impact.

They look and ease transformational experiences. Emzingo prepares accountable leaders for responsible companies. They allow you to do your best work, unleash your team’s potential, and do things differently.

Services that Emzingo provides -

  • Customized Facilitation
  • Training & Workshops
  • Learning Design
  • Design Thinking & Innovation

Visit their website at https://www.emzingo.com/

5. Spring Impact

Spring Impact was established in 2011 by Dan Berelowitz, a Young Global Leader at the World Economic Forum and a Clore Social Leadership Fellow. Dan identified a need for organizations with proven community-transforming projects to be better equipped to scale.

They started working with Oxfam and Big Society Capital to inquire into the capacity of investment in social franchising and published this document.

Working together with partners it became apparent that while social advertising had the most exciting possible path to scale for all, it had been clearly one strategy onto a range of replication.

Services provided by them -

  • Consulting
  • Training
  • Research
  • Projects — Scale Accelerator, Scale Fund
  • Analysis for funders
  • Helping funders fund better, or assess for scale better
  • De-risking potential investments for investors
  • Helping grow existing investments for investors

Visit their website at https://www.springimpact.org/

Conclusion -

Hope you find the list of 5 best Social Impact Consulting Firms helpful. According to me if you are really looking for a amazing CSR consulting firm then you should go with “Wachs Strategies” as they have been in the field for so many years.

Other than that, you can also check our article on “Best CSR Consulting Firms In 2021”.

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