How This Founder Built A Career On Creating, Launching Corporate Social Responsibility Initiatives

The typical day of clocking into the 9 to 5 job, pushing papers, leaving work at home and then making dinner is a picture of the past. With remote work and employees wanting more out of their roles, corporate social responsibility (CSR) is more relevant to retaining stellar employee talent than it has ever been. GlobalGiving shared that companies with a clearly defined sense of purpose are up to 50% more likely to successfully expand into a new market. Additionally, 50% of millennials say they would take a pay cut to find work that matches their values. Realized Worth states 70% of their 2020 survey respondents believe volunteer activities are more likely to boost employee morale than company-sponsored happy hours. Also, 89% of respondents believe companies that sponsor volunteer activities offer a better overall working environment.

Toby Graff, founder of The Graff Group, a social impact consultancy, helps companies and nonprofits boost reputation, revenue and loyalty through CSR campaigns. Her portfolio includes Raliance and Uber+No More initiative.

“It’s [CSR] changed pretty dramatically since I started working in it,” she states. “It used to be something nice to do. Certainly, there were always leaders who were doing more than just nice, but now it’s much more ubiquitous that people, brands and companies are doing something. It’s because their consumers and their employees are requiring it of them.”

Graff started her career in politics and government, serving on the Clinton and Gore campaigns. Once Clinton was elected into office, she secured a role in the White House, working initially on healthcare. She then transitioned over to the Department of Health and Human Services, working on welfare reform. After graduate school, Graff then served as Hilary Clinton’s, then First Lady, deputy press secretary. 

Towards the end of Clinton’s second term, Graff stepped down from her post, transitioning into entertainment in a communications and public affairs position at Lifetime Networks. Here, she led multiple Emmy-winning public service campaigns to end violence against women, raise awareness of breast cancer and increase women’s political participation. 

“The thing about entertainment is that it has this built-in platform where you’re basically talking to an audience of millions of people on a daily basis,” Graff explains. “Whereas in politics and government, you have to capture their attention. … Through entertainment, we were able to incorporate issues into storylines. We were able to put a hotline number at the end of a show or a movie at Lifetime. Specifically, we used to put the Domestic Violence Hotline number at the end of a movie that addressed domestic violence. The call volume to the hotline would sometimes go up over 100%. It would be upsetting in a way that so many people needed that service, but it was heartening in a way that we were able to offer it or to at least raise awareness of its existence.”

After nine years, USA Network approached her to create a department and replicate what she was doing at Lifetime. She and her team used its platforms to raise awareness and encourage action on every civil and human rights issue in partnership with a coalition of civil rights and human rights organizations. Vice chairman of NBCUniversal, Bonnie Hammer, then asked her to take what she was doing at USA Network and implement it across the portfolio of networks. She oversaw the award-winning Characters Unite initiative and developed numerous pro-social efforts and special events tied to the networks’ original and acquired programming. 

She then pivoted from entertainment to sports to head CSR for the start-up football league The Alliance of American Football. Here Graff worked on cause marketing game campaigns in the stadiums; each team partnered with a local nonprofit organization and worked with them in their communities. After the League dissolved, she decided to take this as an opportunity to focus on launching her CSR consulting agency. 

As Graff pivoted throughout her career, she focused on the following essential steps:

• Research as much as possible. Understanding what type of work is necessary for you to succeed in your next venture will help you make better-informed decisions.
• Be realistic. Success doesn’t happen overnight. Take the time to put in the work and strategize.
• Figure out what is going to make you happier and feel like you’re serving a purpose. Life is too short not to enjoy what you spend your time on. 

“One important thing is recognizing the value of it [CSR],” Graff concludes. “Not just thinking of it as a cost, think of it as a real investment, and then sometimes, in some cases, as an actual revenue growth builder. … Once people start thinking about it as an investment in their revenue and their growth, then they can start thinking about it as they’re not spending money that’s not going anywhere, but they’re spending money that’s bringing in more value.”