Giving Compass' Take:

• Billee Howard interviews Alexis Glick about the rise of brand advocacy and the growing relationship between business and philanthropy.

• How can you as a donor lend your expertise to the cause you are involved with?

• Read about traits of sustainable and ethical brands.

The age of brand purpose tied to broad-brush aspiration is giving way to one where purpose must be firmly grounded in meaningful issues and the advocacy of real change. We have seen this paradigm evolving more and more in leading organizations over the past several years, and now we’re also seeing some new thinking seep into the non-profit world, with leading business executives coming in to run philanthropic endeavors as fine-tuned business machines.

I had the pleasure of speaking with Alexis Glick, CEO of GENYOUth, and an executive with decades of Wall Street and media experience.

Following is excerpts of the conversation:

Alexis Glick: More and more companies now understand that a commitment to a purpose is hollow if you cannot measure its impact, and how the actions your company takes makes a difference in the communities in which you live and work, and on your people. We see this in our work with tech giant SAP.  Instead of just underwriting our social entrepreneurship program, AdVenture Capital (AdCap for short), which provides kids 13+ with funding for their student-led solutions to improve school-wellness, where they develop, pitch and implement their ideas in Shark Tank-style events, SAP helped us scale our impact by making us think and act like a business. They did this by helping us grow, deliver outside the box ideas and become more agile. We grew our program to reach hundreds of thousands of students, working closely with SAP to re-imagine and design our website, and host Innovation design-thinking workshops across the country. It’s an example of a brand both eager and willing to work at cultivating a future workforce that they might one day employ and make a staunch commitment to the development of youth through their efforts.

Read the full article about brand advocacy by Billee Howard at Forbes.