In a period of economic uncertainty, geopolitical instability, organisational restructuring and growing regulatory pressure, businesses are facing competing demands. For social impact professionals, this creates a familiar challenge: how to keep social impact visible, credible and actionable when leaders and teams are under pressure.
The task is no longer simply to raise awareness or generate interest. It is to move internal stakeholders from passive engagement to meaningful and sustained action.
A recent Business Fights Poverty Insight Paper, Staying Ambitious: Moving internal business stakeholders from engagement to action, draws on the experience of seasoned social impact professionals across the Business Fights Poverty community. Their reflections point to a clear conclusion: successful stakeholder activation rarely comes from persuasion alone. It is built through trust, relevance, emotional connection, operational clarity and practical pathways to participation.
For businesses seeking to sustain ambition in difficult conditions, five lessons stand out.
1. Make social impact relevant to business and personal success
Internal stakeholders are more likely to act when social impact is framed as relevant to both the organisation and the individual.
This means connecting social impact initiatives to business priorities, operational realities, compliance requirements, leadership goals or company purpose. During periods of strain, stakeholders are often focused on resilience, efficiency, reputation, risk and regulation. Social impact professionals therefore need to show how their work supports, rather than competes with, these priorities.
But motivation is not only organisational. Individuals are also shaped by personal and professional drivers: career development, reputation, leadership visibility, legacy, networks and purpose. Effective stakeholder engagement recognises this dual dynamic.
This does not mean diluting social impact ambition. It means translating it. Abstract principles need to become practical steps, measurable expectations and clear implementation guidance. Jargon from philanthropy, sustainability or social enterprise can create distance. Clear, business-focused language builds credibility and helps social impact professionals become strategic partners inside the organisation.
2. Build trust before asking for action
The strongest examples of stakeholder activation are built on relationships developed over time. Trust often needs to be created before a formal ask is made.
Practitioners contributing to the Paper described investing months, and sometimes years, in relationship-building before significant collaboration emerged. This included creating shared values, meeting in person, understanding stakeholders as individuals and building confidence through early exposure to social impact work.
Face-to-face engagement was highlighted as particularly important. In-person interaction can build the human connection that presentations alone rarely achieve. This matters especially in complex business environments where organisations may be competitors, clients, suppliers and collaborators at the same time.
Trust also depends on reciprocity. A useful question for social impact professionals is: what can we offer before asking for commitment? This might involve inviting leaders to mentor, creating opportunities for first-hand learning, or helping teams understand a social issue before asking them to act.
Relationship-building can feel slow when organisations are under pressure. Yet the insight from practitioners is clear: trust is not a distraction from action. It is what makes sustained action possible.
3. Reduce risk and make participation achievable
Stakeholders often fail to move from engagement to action not because they lack interest, but because participation feels risky, unclear or difficult to prioritise.
Social impact professionals can play an important role in reducing this friction. That means understanding operational constraints, reputational sensitivities, emotional concerns and practical limitations. It also means making participation feel manageable.
One practical approach is to break large ambitions into smaller, tangible next steps. Rather than asking stakeholders to commit immediately to broad system change, practitioners can create accessible entry points. Mentoring, coaching, first-hand exposure visits and small collaborative projects can all help people begin with a clear role, a manageable time commitment and a direct connection to impact.
Operational clarity also matters. Businesses are more likely to act when they understand what participation requires, how success will be measured and what support is available. Frameworks, implementation guides, shared criteria and coaching can help turn ambition into action.
Reducing risk does not mean lowering ambition. It means removing the barriers that prevent people from acting on it.
4. Let authentic voices and experiences drive action
Data can build the case, but authentic human stories often create the commitment to act.
One of the strongest insights in the Paper is the importance of allowing people closest to an issue to “show, tell and ask.” Direct interaction with those affected by social challenges can create emotional connection and credibility that reports or slide decks cannot achieve alone.
The Paper shares the example of a senior executive who was moved by the story of a young entrepreneur from Kenya during a meeting of 500 senior executives. Rather than being persuaded by a formal presentation, the executive connected with the experience of the entrepreneur and the example of an existing mentor. The result was immediate action: the executive chose to become a mentor and remained actively involved for more than eighteen months.
This illustrates the power of proximate voices. The call to action is often most effective when it comes not from programme teams, but from people with lived experience or from peers already involved.
At the same time, authenticity must be handled carefully. People should never be tokenised or pressured to share personal experiences. The role of social impact professionals is to create respectful conditions for meaningful connection, where stories are shared with agency and purpose.
5. Make the next step simple, practical and immediate
Activation grows when stakeholders know exactly what to do next.
A recurring question from practitioners was: “What’s the next action we can take together?” This shifts conversations away from broad ambition and toward practical collaboration. It helps stakeholders avoid feeling overwhelmed by the scale of social challenges.
Clear next steps are especially important when business pressures are high. Leaders and teams may support an issue in principle, but action can stall if the path forward is vague. Practical entry points, time-bound activities, simple asks and visible examples of peer participation help build confidence and momentum.
Persistence also matters. Social impact issues can quickly lose visibility amid restructuring, leadership transitions, regulatory demands and shifting priorities. Sustained action depends on keeping the issue visible while adapting to changing business realities.
This makes activation an ongoing process, not a one-off moment. It requires systems, relationships and shared ownership that can survive organisational change.
The changing role of the social impact professional
The Paper also points to a broader shift in the skills required of social impact professionals. In times of constraint, success depends on more than passion for a cause.
The Paper sets out a “5 C’s” framework that captures this evolving role: connect, convene, convert, create and communicate. Social impact professionals need to build relationships, facilitate collaboration, translate ambition into commercial and operational reality, provide credibility for practical implementation, and communicate with clarity and persistence.
This is a demanding role. It requires emotional intelligence, commercial awareness, systems thinking and operational pragmatism. It also requires the ability to hold ambition and realism together.
Staying ambitious through action
Businesses do not need to lower their ambition on social impact during difficult periods. But they do need approaches that are more relational, practical and strategically integrated into how organisations work.
The lesson from practitioners is clear. Moving internal stakeholders from engagement to action requires more than compelling messaging. It requires trust, relevance, emotional connection, operational clarity and practical pathways to participation.
At a time when many organisations are under strain, this kind of stakeholder activation is not a soft skill. It is central to responsible business leadership.
Staying ambitious on social impact does not depend on perfect conditions. It depends on creating the relationships, clarity and momentum that enable people to act despite uncertainty.
