Dispatch from ACCP 2025: Andrea Bell & Sam Caplan On How CSR Is Adapting

Transcript Notes:

• Follow Andrea on LinkedIn

• Follow Sam on LinkedIn

• Learn more about ACCP

• Read ACCP’s insights blog

• More about the 2025 ACCP Annual Conference

• Listen to our recent episode with ACCP CEO, Andrea Wood

• Listen to our 2024 episode with former ACCP CEO, Carolyn Berkowitz

• Check out keynote speaker, Luvvie Ajayi Jones’, book “Professional Troublemaker: The Fear-Fighter Manual”

Transcript Welcome to Impact Audio. I'm Sam Caplan, Vice President of Social Impact at Submittable. Two weeks ago, I had the pleasure of attending ACCP's annual conference held in Atlanta, Georgia. It's a yearly event for CSR professionals to come together and learn from each other.

And it was also a celebration of ACCP's twentieth anniversary, and they really pulled out all the stops this time. This year's theme was Leading Boldly, Driving Impact in a Changing World, and it did not disappoint. Despite all that's happening around them and the challenges that they may face, CSR professionals really seem to be stepping up at the moment. I learned a ton from the speakers and the attendees alike, and I led a session and had a blast with my co panelists exploring how to prove the impact of CSR programs.

Today, I sit down with Andrea Bell, who is the director of CSR learning programs at ACCP.

Andrea and I reflect on the event. We discuss some of the sessions that we loved. And we finally answer the burning question, are CSR professionals good dancers? It turns out they are. Let's get into it.

I'm super excited to welcome Andrea Bell to Impact Audio. Andrea, you're the director of CSR learning programs at ACCP, and I know from your, LinkedIn profile that you've been there for about a year and a half now. Is that right?

That is right. I've joined the team a little over a year and a half ago, just ahead of our last conference. So excited to be a part of the team and and joining the team that really organizes and puts on our learning events, part of our larger content and learning team.

Yeah. So this is a really timely conversation for us because we were both hanging out in person last week at the annual ACCP conference. This is one of my favorite conferences that I get to attend. I have been for, like, four or five years in a row now.

Every year they get progressively better. I walk away just learning tons of new things about corporate social responsibility and, like, all of these incredible practitioners in the field get together, and we hang out, and we teach each other things. Tell me about, like, what's your role with the conference? And and I'd love to just hear your impressions of last week.

Absolutely. And I'm so excited to hear that you've been with us four or five years, but you've seen that growth and elevation of the event over time.

As the director of CSR learning programs, my role is really be to be informed on what's top of mind for practitioners, what topics, what content is really rising to the surface, and what folks wanna learn more about or need more support on to develop their own strategies.

So in addition to our annual conference, I manage a few of our other learning programs like our virtual summits. We do have one more coming up in November focused on employee engagement. But my role at conference was really to take all the things that we're hearing from practitioners on what they want further development on and to bring the content, the speakers, those practitioners who can help, lead conversations.

Certainly, no one person has it right, but the conference gives some examples in a space for knowledge sharing, brainstorming, action planning, and to hear from those who really understand your work and can help you to advance your practice as well.

So as you and your team were planning out the conference for this year, like, what were you hearing from members in terms of what they wanted to learn about this year or what they wanted to talk about?

Yeah. So we open our conference RFPs into kinda put the framework in place really early in the year. And as you know, lots has changed. Lots has evolved over, what has been the last several months.

So what really emerged for us is that people are navigating a lot of uncertainty, a lot of change. It's increasingly more difficult to to do the work, and it's increasingly more difficult to be a practitioner in this space. We're human first, obviously. So some of the things that we wanted to make sure to capture and allow space to talk more about is how the work continues, how we continue to make an impact by evolving strategies, being well informed about what kind of this environment both politically, means and what impact that has on the work and to hear some strategies and approaches that others are taking, whether it be successes or lessons learned.

So the theme of bold leadership, and really navigating a changing world informed really all of our sessions from our keynote speaker to those breakout discussions, small group conversations, and convenings.

But I I think our theme really captured the environment and allowed for practitioners to dig into various topics from there.

Yeah. I hear you. I'm I'm super privileged and that I get to go to a bunch of different conferences, whether they're in the the corporate social responsibility space or philanthropy and private grant making or government grant making. And, you know, I've probably been to six or eight this year, and the theme of everyone has been the exact same.

It's all around, like, bold leadership and thinking about, like, you know, all of the changes politically, socially, that are happening across the space right now. And it really is kind of, like, unprecedented times. And it's, you know I think one of the biggest benefits of, like, coming together at ACCP is just that you get to be around your people. Right?

So, like, when you're off in isolation and you're doing the work and you're trying to navigate all of these changes that are happening right now, like, it's stressful and it's hard, and it often feels really, like, sort of isolating. And so I think one of the greatest benefits of of coming together as a group at ACCP is that you get to be in the same room with hundreds of other people who are in the exact same boat as you, and they're all facing the same challenges and trying to figure out, like, how to navigate these times in the same way. And it's this coming together of here's the best of our ideas and the best of our practices.

And I get the sense, like, everybody leaves feeling really energized and and like me, you know, tons of new ideas and and things to think about. Like, what do you think? It's is that kind of the feeling that you had as you were leaving the conference last week?

It really is. And I I like to say the size of our conference really is a bit of that secret sauce. I think, like you said, and what we know is many practitioners are on teams of one to five, and it can feel really isolating. But I think ACCP in this community environment that we've created both at conference but in our virtual spaces as well.

Really, fosters that sets of community that that peer connection where folks really feel like their work is understood, supported, and celebrated. And we really felt that energy at conference this year. It was also a celebration of ACCP's twentieth anniversary. So, we wanted to, you know, infuse some of those elements of celebration. But I think even if it weren't, there's always an energy that that folks leave conference knowing that there the work can continue. They have new connections, new strategies, new ways to approach the work that kind of fills your tank, and and really allows you to walk back into your organization feeling supported and energized.

Well said. Well said. Alright.

So tell me about a couple of the sessions that you found most interesting or inspiring, and then I'll tell you about a couple that I that I enjoyed.

Yeah. I would love to hear what stood out for you. I think as you think about being the conference organizer, it was a a little, like, bouncing around, so I didn't get to sit on as many sessions. But I've heard such wonderful feedback already from both staff, as well as our attendees.

But I have to say our opening keynote really set the tone for conference. Lovey Ajayi Jones, who, really focused her talk on around courageous leadership, and couched some of the conversation in her, book, professional troublemakers guide to competitive advantage.

I think she really set the tone for us and challenged our attendees and and gave some reminders around the power of our voice that you can continue to lead through these periods of disruptions.

We've seen periods like this before, but we're a resilient sector. We're resilient people, and it's now even more important to use our voices to think about innovative solutions to some of the challenges that we're facing, but to really be kind of those beacons in those strong those strong voices within our organizations to to continue the work forward. So I think her keynote really carried through throughout conference, some sessions around aligning to the business, how we start to measure and communicate impact, and, really, again, this evolution of strategies. It's now a period to think about innovative approaches to work, not business as usual.

And I really think our attendees were challenged to start to think in that way. And a lot of that came out of some of the peer discussions and conversations that we were seeing both in the sessions, but continued throughout conference. But I would love to hear which ones you were able to to sit in on and and what some of your impressions were.

Yeah. For sure. Well, first of all, I would echo, you know, that the opening keynote by Levy. She's just a a dynamo, and she was really kind of building on that, like, good trouble from, senator John Lewis who has since passed on.

So I was so excited to see her, like, pick up that theme and really talk about, you know, the importance of being courageous, you know, in times like these. And and I felt like she really kind of energized the whole audience. And she gave everybody, like, agency and license to feel like it's it's our responsibility to speak up, especially as we're seeing corporate social responsibility evolve in a chain and change so quickly that, you know, for the for those who have a seat at the table, like, you can't just be quiet if you hear people saying something that you disagree with. Like, that's our responsibility as practitioners is to is to feel empowered to speak up, to help effect change in the right way.

So I loved that session. I thought a couple others. So first of all, I'm I'm going to, promote my the session that I I was very, very privileged to be a part of. We called it aligned CSR demonstrating the business value of your programs.

And by all means, like, I was not the star of the show on this one. That would have been Estelle Roth from Novartis and Maria Collins from New York Life Insurance and Alexis King Wilson, from Oberland. And they each presented case studies on how their businesses are really it's kind of aligning more closely with CSR and how they're really starting to think through how you demonstrate the internal return on investment, the internal business value of these programs. And by the way, like, to me, this was I was so excited that we had this session accepted.

And then I saw there were, like, two or three other sessions that all touched touched on the same theme. And I continually, over the course of the week, heard about how organizations are doing two things. The first is that they're figuring out how you measure that internal value of programs, and they're also figuring out how you align a little bit more closely, to the business. So rather than taking a sort of scattershot approach to grant making and funding every nonprofit in the organization, you know, organizations are trying to figure out how do I tailor our program to or focus areas to, like, our core business.

So for me, that really emerged as a big theme over the course of a week, and I was excited to hear, like, so many people are trying to figure this out.

Absolutely.

Absolutely. And I think it's an important reminder, to practitioners and kind of a almost repositioning.

You're not just a CSR leader. You are a business leader, And it's very important for practitioners to, you know, continue to develop their, CSR strategies and the the development around grant making and those types of real, tactical pieces of the role, but you also have to be developing your business acumen both within your organization, but what it means for your corporations to to function and thrive.

It's not only enough to be able to to speak from a position of knowledge about your CSR strategy, but to develop the language that is aligned with how your corporation is talking about their business priorities is essential, and something that we want to continue to encourage practitioners to to think about and to continue to develop. And that work happens within your corporation as well.

Right. And, you know, these aren't new concepts. We've been talking about things like the triple bottom line and shared value for a very long time. But it is interesting to see, like, how these are there's this resurgence of interest now and sort of going back and demonstrating how, you know, corporate purpose can closely align with, like, the actual work of the business.

Right? It shouldn't be all about generating profit, and it's certainly not all about this altruistic, we're gonna do good because we have a moral imperative to do good. Now we're imperative to do good. Now we're beginning to think about how do we combine these two things.

Right. Alright. So so since I spoke so much about, like, my own session that I was so happy to be part of, there was a a session that you led. It was titled driving business value through employee engagement, and this one had Trane and Georgia Pacific and Sage Foundation.

That was a really great session as well. Georgia Pacific talked about, how they aligned their work with the business, and that was a bit of a pivot for them. There was another great session titled from Scattered Disk Strategic Impact Using Impact Measurement to Prove Your Value. That was from our friends, from True Impact, a great vendor in the space.

And then I thought the the final plenary, which was state of social impact and the road ahead, This had Best Buy, KPMG, and Captivate. And I loved that during this time, Best Buy talked a lot about their philanthropic work that they're doing in workforce development and how that work enables them to develop a talent pipeline, and that creates actual business value. So they provided this really good example of how their CSR programming directly aligns with the business.

Absolutely. And we really, planned and wanted to end on that closing plenary to think about the road ahead and to think about how the work continues, how we continue to evolve our strategies and and what might be what might the future of things look like? And I know one of the, notes that I took in a reminder that I took again is that it's not just business as usual anymore, and it is an opportunity for us not to just think about how we get back to the way we used to do things or the way we were, making an impact and thinking about our strategy. It really is a time for us to think about new approaches to the work, new opportunities to think about how we collaborate and have coalitions of practitioners within the space. And that's one of the things that resonated with me and that I heard a few times.

Where are there opportunities for us to work across organizations to, share resources, to share insights, to work in a a space that we have we can make the most impact, but look at opportunities to partner, across the sector to to further our impact and to think about how we can approach the work more collectively.

Yeah. I like all of that. And when I think about ACCP, like, I think that a really important role that you play in the sector for us is that you do convene people to come together and have those conversations about how do we share best practices. You know, how how do we come together to figure out how to do this work better together? Like, would you, expand on that a little bit for me? Yeah. Absolutely.

I think, Absolutely.

I think conference is one example and it happens once a year, but year round in as we kinda find opportunities to do so, we offer space to convene practitioners.

That's done in informal ways through peer discussion groups, for member groups that we have across the industry. We host webcasts and virtual summits, but we also have online communities. We it's a community forum where professionals and practitioners can ask questions and what is so encouraging to me is just how open and transparent and willing to share and exchange policies, best practices, examples, pick up the phone and jump on a call. I think the community is really looking for those opportunities to exchange again.

Many companies we see our staff of one to five, so you can't do the work alone and we really do what we can to assure you can pick up the phone. You know who you can reach out to. You can pose questions both to practitioners, but ACP is also gathered a really great bank of resources from our members and from organizations who just been willing to share some of their strategies, whether it be, you know, hard copies of policies that folks can use as examples when they want to write their own for a volunteer time off or they're looking to implement an employee ambassador program.

We have tons and tons of examples of those, but folks are willing to to share how they've come to implement their strategy, what's worked for them, what challenges you might look out for. So it really is a peer peer learning community where folks are really open to exchange and and share best practices.

Yeah. Andrea, one of the the things that I was thinking about as I was leaving the conference last week was that, like, it kinda felt like in years past, as a as a sector, as an industry, at conferences like ACCP, like, the dump the conference and the conversation has been dominated by themes of, like, equity and, you know, the sort of external impact that we're making with our programs, making the world a better place. And this year, it felt like so much of the conversation was more inwardly focused around aligning with the business and measuring the value of the work that we're doing internally.

Are you concerned that because of the political and the social environment that we're in that, like, our industry is shifting too quickly away from those conversations of equity and diversity and inclusion and belonging and and moving quickly towards, you know, where where the conversation is being dominated by discussion of, like, how CSR impacts our business and, you know, things like that?

Yeah. I don't know that I would say concerned, because I do know the conversations are continuing.

Obviously language is shifted. The way we're we're talking about the work maybe has changed a bit in one of the things that I think is important too about some of the conversations that can happen during a convening like ACCP is that it truly is for practitioners.

And so some of those very transparent in those continued conversations were happening at conference. But one of the things that I think, folks are thinking about as strategies evolve in some of those internal approaches are talked about more is how those themes are actually woven through our programs and strategies.

They can't stand alone. I think it's clear that some of our some of the things that have been pivoted and seem to no longer be, part of the work that we're doing is because they stood alone. Your DEI department might be separate, and it's the work of the people over there. So when it goes away, we're not talking about it anymore. When in fact that is not actually the case in those those strategies, those approaches, the equity lens is a part of the work and continues to be a part of the work that CSR practitioners are doing and leading.

But what a first step for many is is to understand how we talk about it as an organization, to come to shared understanding and shared language around it, and then how that shows up in our communities and in practice, I think will be what continues to to unfold from here. But I do know those conversations continue because they continue to be conversations continue because they continue to be important and essential.

Absolutely. Alright. So final question for you then. Like, what was the highlight of the conference for you, and what what would you wanna share with somebody maybe who didn't have the opportunity to attend this year?

Absolutely. A highlight for me was our celebration at the world of Coca Cola, which I hope you were, able to join and be a part of. I think there's so much good content in the exchange, in the networking, and it really fostered this sense of community where people really just were able to relax and have a comfortable casual environment to celebrate and have a good time. And dare I say, CSR practitioners are some of the best dancers I've seen.

But there was really a a wonderful celebration of things. I think there's so so much that goes into doing this work, and we carry all of that with us into a conference.

Folks are still busy. There's still pressures of things, but it was an opportunity really to relax and have a good time and to enjoy being in the environment in the space.

One element that we did also introduced this year was idea exchanges.

We hear very often that the value comes from having conversations, being able to talk about a challenge and to get feedback from peers, to brainstorm, to workshop new ideas. So we included more of those elements within conference, and I think that many people left with new connections, expanded networks.

The conversations will continue, and that's what I'm really excited about from here.

I am too. Man, I met so many new people this year as I always do, just wandering around and sitting down together for meals and going to the different sessions and before and after the sessions and in the receptions. Like, to me, that's the best part is, you know, it's the combination of getting to meet new people and and really pick their brain and and learn about their work and and their organizations and and what they're doing to be successful. And then the other half is just the opportunity to run into, like, the people that you've been sort of working with for years at other organizations and just an opportunity to get together. And as you were saying, like, hang out and have fun and relax. You know, the hard work is gonna be there next week when we all go back to work.

Such a great opportunity to just come together and, you know, reenergize, meet new people, learn new things. And I'm telling you, I am already, marking my calendar for for next year. I don't remember. Did ACCP announce where the conference is gonna be next year?

Yes. We are excited to be heading to Boston next year for conference. So bigger and better, more conversations, more to come, but we're excited about twenty twenty six.

I'm excited about it too, Andrea. Thank you so much for hanging out with me for a little while and trading ideas on this year's conference. And, you know, I'll see you in webinars and all the great resources, that you put together. And, of course, we'll get together in Boston this time next year.

Wonderful. Thank you, Sam. Thanks for having me.

A huge thank you to Andrea, the team at ACCP, and all of the attendees of this year's conference for making it something really special. Be sure to mark your calendars for next year's conference, which is gonna be in Boston, and I hope to see you there. Also, be sure to go back and listen to our other episodes with our friends at ACCP.

We have one from earlier this year with Andrea Wood, their current CEO. It's titled How to Actually Make the Business Case for Corporate Social Impact. And back in twenty twenty three, we recorded an episode with then CEO Carolyn Berkowitz. It was titled The Starvation Cycle in Corporate Social Responsibility, How CSR Professionals Can Right the Ship.

Both of those episodes are packed with great advice that only gets better with time. That's all for me today. Thanks for tuning in to Impact Audio, produced by your friends at Submittable. Until next time.