Business Priorities That Create Community Impact

Aligning business priorities with community impact can amplify a company’s purpose while driving meaningful change.  

In a corporate citizenship panel at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce Foundation’s 2024 Business Solves conference, Marc DeCourcey, SVP of the U.S. Chamber Foundation, spoke with leaders from three organizations that address local and global problems through the power of business. 

TCS Makes a Global Impact With Its Dedicated Employees and Partners 

IT service provider Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) has built a “purpose ecosystem” targeting areas with high needs and low resources. These efforts are supported by the company’s core strengths and capabilities, along with a 200-member social impact team. 

“Within that team, people who are closest to communities help us understand … the needs of those communities,” said Balaji Ganapathy, TCS’s chief social responsibility officer. “Then we looked at, how do you … make [employees] part of this solution that you're building? How do you bring your technology and know-how?” 

Thanks to customer partnerships and employee volunteers, TCS has implemented global programs for digital literacy, employment, and rural inclusion, like a scaled-up model that has supported 1 million people in 7,000 villages in India. 

Ganapathy summarized his approach as turning good intentions into good actions to achieve good outcomes.  

RTX Supports the Next Generation of STEM Talent by Building Holistic Community Resilience 

Aerospace and defense company RTX Corporation focuses its social impact strategy on several areas, including STEM (science, technology, engineering, mathematics) education. RTX’s STEM pipeline efforts are targeted at students in underrepresented communities who may otherwise be unlikely to pursue a career in those fields. 

“Our strategy … became increasingly focused on … the places where we need these STEM professionals 10, 15 years from now,” explained Randall Bumps, vice president of global affairs and public relations at RTX. “How do we build programs in those communities … and then … stay connected with those students? That meant putting together partnerships with nonprofits … [and] imagining an ecosystem where those partnerships would work with each other to sustain a student's educational journey all the way through their schooling.” 

Bumps advised other leaders to leverage strategic moments of corporate change, like mergers and acquisitions, as opportunities to advocate for social impact.  

American Express Strengthens Small Businesses in Times of Crisis 

American Express demonstrates its commitment to small businesses through strategic investments in disaster recovery and resilience efforts around the country. For example, the American Express Foundation partnered with the U.S. Chamber Foundation to provide direct funds to businesses affected by the 2023 wildfires in Maui, Hawaii. 

Madge Thomas, president of the American Express Foundation and head of corporate sustainability at American Express, said the company continues to build and iterate upon what it’s learned through its programs. 

Continuing its collaboration to help small business owners recover from natural disasters, American Express and the U.S. Chamber Foundation have announced a new grant program to support small businesses impacted by Hurricanes Helene and Milton. American Express has committed over $5 million in philanthropic funding for a grant program to help 1,000 impacted small businesses recover from the hurricanes’ devastating effects and build resilience against future disasters. 

“It's [about] achieving that kind of scale of impact and ambition, aligned with your strategy … [while] having some flexibility and adaptability,” said Thomas. “You can … deploy the toolkit and the learnings of what you have and adapt it and apply it to different situations.” 

For other organizations looking to make an impact, Thomas emphasized the value of prevention over response and the importance of partnerships with other organizations to address large-scale challenges.