Purpose Meets Profitable Impact with Rachel Hutchisson
Can a business be both making a profitable impact and purpose-driven?
💡 Discover how it’s not only possible but powerful. In this inspiring episode, we sit down with Rachel Hutchisson, CEO of Common Impact, to explore what it truly means to lead a heart-led business. With decades of experience blending corporate strategy and social good, Rachel shares her transformational journey and defines a business model where purpose fuels profit, not the other way around.
You'll learn about the game-changing concept of skills-based volunteerism, a brilliant strategy in which companies tap into their employees’ expertise to support nonprofits, creating value for both their teams and the communities they serve.
Rachel also opens up about the challenges and rewards of aligning employees, stakeholders, and leadership around a shared mission, and how clear communication and meaningful engagement can turn intention into impact.
🎧 If you're a social entrepreneur, purpose-driven leader, or changemaker seeking to blend profit with passion—this episode is your playbook.
Key Takeaways from this Episode
- Defining a heart-led business
- Aligning mission with profit
- The magic of skills-based volunteerism
- The importance of communication in mission-driven work
- Reconciling profitable impact with purpose-driven goals
- Strategies for engaging employees in meaningful work
About the Guest
Rachel Hutchisson is a purpose-driven leader and the CEO of Common Impact, where she’s on a mission to connect businesses and nonprofits to create lasting social change. Formerly the VP of Global Social Responsibility at Blackbaud, Rachel built and led CSR from the ground up. A lifelong volunteer and advocate for business as a force for good, she’s held influential roles across major philanthropic organizations and was recently honored by Dickinson College with a Distinguished Alumni Award.
Additional Resources
- Website: www.commonimpact.org
- LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/rachelhutchisson & www.linkedin.com/company/common-impact
- Facebook: www.facebook.com/CommonImpact1
- X: https://x.com/commonimpact
- Instagram: www.instagram.com/commonimpact/#
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Explore the Dialogue’s Treasures: Unearth the insights within! Delve into the profound wisdom woven throughout our conversation.
Speaker: Welcome to the Heart-Led Business Show, where compassion meets commerce and leaders lead with love. Join your host, Tom Jackobs, as he delves into the insightful conversations with visionary business leaders who defy the status quo, putting humanity first and profit second. From heartfelt strategies to inspiring stories, this podcast is your compass in the world of conscious capitalism.
So buckle up and let's go. Let your heart guide your business journey.
Tom Jackobs: Ladies and gentlemen, gather round as we shine a spotlight on our extraordinary guest, Rachel Hutchinson, as CEO of Common Impact. Rachel weaves a tapestry of talent, turning purpose-driven companies into champions of change with a heart as big as a billboard and a passion for philanthropy. She's a guiding star for businesses that care. Join us on the heart led business show as we dive into Rachel's journey, exploring how to blend profits with purpose and make a difference that dances beyond dollars.
Welcome to the show, Rachel.
Rachel Hutchisson: Thank you so much for having me and for that wonderful intro.
Tom Jackobs: No worries. I'm really excited to have this conversation, especially when we did our pre-interview, just knowing that there, that we're on the same alignment in terms of even if you run a nonprofit, you still do need, need to be making money. So I think this is gonna be a great conversation for others that have nonprofits and are struggling with the heart led and growing and all that good stuff.
I always like to ask is, what is your definition of a heart led business?
Rachel Hutchisson: I love this question. It's very fundamental to who I am. A heart led business understands its mission. It has mission at its heart, it's purpose driven, it's very focused on its people. I. And everybody's aligned around what's the mission, what's the vision? What are we producing and what that thing, product or service that's being produced needs to be something that's valued by the world. And we're all excited and aligned around doing that work. It fills us, it fills our customers and it makes our investors and our communities proud. As you noted, a heart led organization. It doesn't necessarily have to be a for-profit business. It could be a non-profit, which very much relies on, bringing in funding and funding all their mission based work.
Tom Jackobs: That's a great definition too. I love how you bring in the shareholders or the stakeholders and the customers as well as the employees and everybody driving towards that mission. So the, before we go into your backstory and all this it's top of mind anyway.
How do you get everybody on the same buzz, so to speak, driving towards that same mission when everybody has their own purpose for joining the organization or being a customer, or being an employee, being a shareholder, how do we get everybody mission driven?
Rachel Hutchisson: That individual people are mission-driven, and I know, we're gonna talk about this, but I spent 31 years in the tech world at a company that was very mission and purpose-driven, working with nonprofits as their customers, and that appealed to a certain employee base. People would say, I wanna go to work and I'm a programmer, or I'm a financial person, or I'm in hr, I'm in marketing, but I wanna deploy those skills. For this audience and that audience had happened to be nonprofits doing fundraising, managing their finances, doing really incredibly important mission-driven work.
And so the fact we served that community and invested in their success was really compelling to people they could have chosen to go use their programming skills, for example, anywhere else in the world. So part of it is just having a mission-driven outlook and more and more. are seeing people coming to the workforce and saying, I not just want vision alignment, I want mission alignment.
I want value alignment. I really am seeking that. I'm not just doing this job to make money, but once you're in an organization, a lot of that alignment comes from communication. And I started way back when I got a master's degree in journalism. Came out into the world really as a project manager and a communications person and strategic initiatives. don't work unless you actively communicate and message across all your audiences and you do it really consistently. So for example, when we, when I was doing a social responsibility impact report for a tech company, it was about the customers. It was about the investors, it was about the employees, it was about the community.
It was about all four of 'em because it wasn't, this is a publicly traded company. You'd say it's just about the investors. No, it actually started with the employees and then went from that to, okay, what do employees think? And. And how do we message to them? And don't forget to tell them the good stories about we're doing, they're busy doing their jobs.
Don't forget to message to make them brand ambassadors and then your community, your customers. It's so a lot of communication. And then walking the walk, doing the good work. Not just saying it, but actually building and doing programs that show that you believe it.
Tom Jackobs: I love that. And just thinking back while you were saying that, I was thinking back to my own career, starting in oil and gas and it was definitely not purpose-driven, but over time we saw those initiatives because they were seeing that the workforce, of like my parents were, it was like, you go to work for, the blue chip company.
You stay there for 30 years, you do your job, but you do everything else. Purpose stuff you do outside of work.
But not anymore. I love to see, it's I didn't work for Shell, but Shell had a huge like volunteer organization that they would go out and do Habitat for Humanity and stuff like that.
And you'd always see big companies getting their employees to do volunteer work. And even some of the companies that I worked for had, we, I think we were given like 10 hours a month or something like that, that they incentivized us to go work and volunteer outside of the company, which I thought was really brilliant.
Absolutely. It's a fundamental part of employee engagement about brand and about, really being a part of the community. People think of companies as just there to make money. Companies are a vital part of the ecosystem. All the people they employ, the benefits they provide, and they care deeply about the communities that they sell within to. And that they live within, their people all live in community. So it's a, and actually, we're gonna segue right into that volunteerism thing.
Now let's go back to your story. So tell us a little bit about your business and what got you into being a heart led entrepreneur.
Rachel Hutchisson: So I am the CEO of Common Impact. It's a nonprofit organization. Think of us as a expert consulting firm, and what we do is we, I. Work with purpose-led companies, organizations that really care about making an impact in the world, and we help their employees engage in skills-based volunteerism. So think of us as a bridge between that company, organizations who could really benefit from some of the skills that those that company's employees have. And so we scope and deliver and act as that matchmaker bringing projects to the table for those employees to deliver. And in the end the nonprofit partner gets this capacity building gift through the volunteerism. A lot of volunteerism is more, it happens in a day and then it's done. But this is more capacity building. company gets more engaged employees and projects and initiatives that really aligned with what they care about and their social impact goals. So it's a win all the way around.
Tom Jackobs: So what brings to mind when you're describing that is like in an employment agency for nonprofits to. Position volunteers that are skills based if I had a nonprofit and I needed administrative support, then you would train up administrative support for that company, or you would find volunteers.
Rachel Hutchisson: There are some groups that do that, that do fractional work or other things, but I think the better example would be thinking of us as professional services. So you have lots of companies. I led corporate social responsibility team for tech company, and so we had a number of people on the team who would basically manage what I called this portfolio of offerings for employees. So some of it was, here's a way that you can give to nonprofits. Here's a matching gift program. Here's a volunteer day that's happening in our hometown community. Let's go out and do a bunch of projects, sign up for those. And then skills-based volunteerism, which is where Common Impact is really an expert in what we focus on is more detailed, it it creates more planning, it goes to greater depth, and therefore it creates bigger impact. So some CSR teams, many CSR teams. Are small and mighty. They have a few people who are doing a lot of work, engaging thousands and thousands of employees sometimes around the world. And so we basically act as an extension of that team and scope and deliver skills-based pro projects.
So sometimes the company will say. You go source some nonprofits for our work, for us to work with. But often they'll say, we believe in, fill in the blank. We're very focused on environmentalism, we're very focused on health, whatever their focus is, and we actually make grants already or make donations to the, this portfolio of non-profits.
Go identify nonprofits within that group that we already work with and know and love and care about and identify some projects that our employees can help them with.The matching of this is the skillset and here are some nonprofits that could really benefit from that. And then here's the actual project so that when the employees come to it, they, it may be over a day, it may be over a number of weeks, it could be over a number of months. It just depends on what that company for, and we manage and deliver that working with the employees on one side and the nonprofit partner on the others very much as a partnership. The it's both sides love it. They really get a lot of value out of it.
Tom Jackobs: I can imagine because I remember volunteering sometimes I think I volunteered at a single woman's shelter and I was a babysitter. It was just like, I had an hour of orientation and then it was like, boom. And I'm, I don't have kids of my own and I'm not the best babysitter around.
So I was like, I'm not quite sure this sit fits with my skills. Do you have any like text stuff or podcast?
Rachel Hutchisson: For you for doing that and volunteering. It was important that you were at least there to be the responsible adult, but I volunteered for a women's shelter once and we got there and I think the organization had signed up for this day because they felt like the local United Way maybe expected them to. And so we got there and they didn't know how to use us, so we ended up like. Cleaning up the yard, painting fences and doing things that didn't really fill us as volunteers. And that's really when I started thinking about skills-based volunteerism. And I was out and about in the market and I met the then leader of Common impact.
And she really, brought my understanding of skills-based to a forefront about what a, what an impact it really could create. And I really adopted that belief. And how you. How do you leverage someone's skills that may be that four hours of someone's professional skill is gonna be a much better gift to a nonprofit than having them go out for a So I had an experience working with a women's shelter where we got to the organization and they didn't really know what to do with us. It was a part of a community-wide day of service. And so we ended up cleaning up the yard and it really wasn't very meaningful and we came up with projects and as I learned more about skills-based volunteerism, I met the leader of common impact out in the market and she really educated me about it. That having an employee give four hours to a nonprofit to help look at their social media policies, or maybe they spend a team of people spend. A week, over a couple of months evaluating an organization's website and web outreach and giving an assessment of how to improve that site. It might not take the same amount of time, going out into the market to do that work, but it's incredibly impactful. So looking at what does an organization need, who has the skills, and very quickly trying to get to how do we actually help them. their missions better. How do we help these nonprofits build their capacity? There's really, it's a lot of wonderful magic to it.
Tom Jackobs: It sounds like magic too and an administrative nightmare almost. because now you have the companies that have all these resources available and people, and then you have the nonprofits that have all these needs. Now it's a matter of just matching them up and building that database.
Rachel Hutchisson: That's really what common impact brings to the table. We understand company CSR teams and how they work and what their needs are and how we can act as a really seamless extension from them. And we understand the nonprofit world and the needs that they have, and sometimes they don't even understand what they can ask volunteers to do, and we manage both sides of it so that when they come together.
Into a project. They have a joyful experience. They have an impactful experience, they're proud of what they delivered. They can walk away with something concrete and say, look at what I did with this, these skills. And that is hugely important for employees. You go to work at a company every day and you're doing your job, and sometimes you just get into this. I'm doing my job. I'm doing my job. And. You don't even necessarily value your own skills when you take them and give them and serve with a nonprofit even for a short period of time, you realize what a gift those skills are. You realize the value you bring, so you're proud of yourself, you're proud of the company because it, it gave you the opportunity to do that. You're much more highly engaged. There's absolute data that shows this and that ends up with something that truly helps 'em. So that's really a beautiful thing. why we do what we do.
Tom Jackobs: It sounds great. That's yeah, that's such a need in the market because I'm, there's tons of people that volunteer that just like you said, just go clean up the yard or something like that. It's oh, that's not really what I signed up for. But, having a service like like you have is just, it sounds like a dream.
Rachel Hutchisson: Everybody's about data and impact, and ROI and a big company is not gonna invest in something just because it sounds like a good idea. They wanna know that this work that they're doing, that they're inviting their employees to do really matters. You know that they're gonna lift up those stories and be really proud of that work, and that's where we come in and help them do that.
Tom Jackobs: That's awesome. Now let's shift gears a little bit and talk about money. Every heart led person's worst nightmare is talking about money. It seems and that's the purpose of the show, is to break that cycle and realize that we need the profit or the revenue to fund what we want to do.
So tell us how you've reconciled personally. Making a profit and still being, purpose driven and how you then help others realize that as well.
Rachel Hutchisson: Yeah, this is really the story of my whole career and I started in tech when. The company that I had joined was really small, and I remember it made the Ink 500 list for a couple years in a row early on, and the founder said The best thing about that is we survived it because we were growing fast that it was, it was a difficult period.
It's a stressful period. So the reality is you do need a profit. You do need money. You do need to get to that point where things level out. You invest, not just in dealing with that incredible growth period that you're experiencing. In the moment. So I always reconciled it is that, every single person needs the dignity of work.
And work be very purpose-driven, whether you're in a nonprofit, whether you work for government, whether you work for-profit, whatever you choose. And I actually did a TEDx talk a while ago where I talked about how I graduated from college and the Gordon Gecko greet is good era. And those of.
You who've watched the original movie, wall Street will understand the great Michael Douglas role and comment. And I, what I meant is that when I, we graduated, if you wanted to make money, you went into business. If you wanted to do good, you went to a nonprofit or you went to work in government.
And as I watched my kids go into college, I was so proud to see that there were so many paths they could take. I had a son who majored in international business. And minored in sustainability. Like he was interested in both, both of my he's working for a nonprofit now so it's. The way you choose to do good in the world can come in many different forms. And there's big focus on companies on, you have the sustainable development goals, you have the focus on ESG, the awareness that we have to be responsible for how we operate. And so really that's why I like to think of organizations, not whether it's nonprofit or for profit.
Nonprofit literally means. That you have the ability to give tax If someone gives you a philanthropic gift, that's all it means. It still has to be successful. So
About the mission, vision, values, the culture, the way people treat each other. there is absolutely nothing wrong with being compensated for your work.
The whole world revolves around that. You get your health insurance through work, you, if you're fortunate enough to have that opportunity, so it's part of our economic system. So I've always thought about it and when I ask myself, am I delivering enough value?
I look at the work I'm actually doing, the impact it's having, the communities we're helping, and then all the people who, talk about developing people into agents of good and If they are doing a job where they're not feeling as much purpose in that existing role, then maybe they should go out and do some skills-based volunteerism or get on a board or do these engage in their communities. you know what, that's not separate. As you said, that's something where they can develop skills that they then bring in to their workplace. I know I did that, throughout my entire career, so I don't think of it so much as a. Companies are bad. Making money is bad. It's not bad. It's what you do, how you, what you deliver, the practices you engage in. And that the company side and the nonprofit side. Now nonprofit is much more mission driven, but you still fund what you do. And the more you raise, the more you earn as an organization, the more you can invest in your mission. That's the big difference.
Tom Jackobs: And when you grow, you're helping more people, helping more communities, and it's a win-win, win all, all around.
Rachel Hutchisson: Talk about companies, people talk about nonprofits. They're not all the same. They're a bunch of different ones. So you really have to own your own story.
Tom Jackobs: Yeah, exactly. I'd like to get your opinion on this. So I worked with a nonprofit that About 40, 50 million a year in revenue or, it was a fairly large organization and the CEO was making like half a million dollars a year. And a lot of people that were on the board were just like, why are we paying him so much?
And I was like, how else are we gonna get a CEO that is running a $50 million organization? For less than a million dollars. I think we're getting a great deal for this person. But the thought process was this is a nonprofit so we can't pay our employees as much.
Rachel Hutchisson: In general, nonprofit salaries are not gonna be as high as corporate salaries. They're not gonna have the same benefits. You can't give an org a nonprofit person stock. There, there are certain that are just not gonna be available. But of course they're replaced by other benefits that are really incredible, which is that impact you're seeing in the community. There are a of discussions about comp. I think a lot of people in the nonprofit world deserve to be paid better than they are. But you're talking about this discussion of the highly valued high-end CEO and it depends on the organization. there are bands depending on how big and what the organization does.
But when you look at something like. hospital, or the people you're competing with to higher quality talent. A half a million dollars seems high to me, but there are. making very good salaries who deserve to be making those salaries because they're running complex organizations that are lots and lots of people are depending on their services.
They are highly skilled people. They could go and work in the for-profit world as well. So often a non-profit leader understands that they are taking a bit of a lower salary when they're taking a nonprofit role than they could achieve in the corporate world. But that doesn't mean that they can't be making a decent living.
Tom Jackobs: Yeah, exactly. And that, that's what I always thought. I was like how are we gonna be able to get the right talent? That like you said, that has the experience, has the knowledge to be able to grow that organization even more if you're only, paying a fraction of what they could get in the private sector.
That's interesting. How else can heart led businesses wrap their head around the whole making money and making profit that will make them feel good about making the profit making and having that same impact? What have you seen?
Rachel Hutchisson: Is making sure you understand and you're good with, you know how you're making that profit. Are you providing a product that is doing good in the world? Is it creating waste? If it's not, then if it is, then you need to think about maybe our products and services need attention, but if you're doing something really good and you're making money, you should be proud of that and looking at how you invest and help more people, you should be looking at how that equips you to invest in your people more. It's. It's, there's a lot of focus on leaders and owners, and if the, that money is just going to make a couple people more wealthy, that's harder to process than if, you're in an organization where that wealth is shared, where that success is shared, that's probably a better, better term than wealth.
Is it that you're expanding and you're expanding your operations to a new market, which gives the people in your organization more career opportunity, which helps them, grow and be able to better support their families. It's, a lot of it, I think, really comes back to communication and if you all of a sudden are successful and then. not telling anybody and only certain people are benefiting, then you're going sideways. You're not being heart led, like what keeps you back And being heart led, we did this, we were successful. This is what this equips us to do next. This is how you are, you're a part of what we're doing next. And so I think transparency, storytelling, back with your employees first because they might not see it or know it because they're focused on. piece of the organization that they're working in, they might not get to see that overall view that a leader sees.
Tom Jackobs: Yeah. I think that in, in all of life, communication seems to solve all the issues. And lack of communication creates lots of issues.
Rachel Hutchisson: Nine times for people to actually get it, and you do have to, don't assume that people know. I had tech, a programmer, a a technology person in at my previous employer say to me I don't really understand how what we do matters to the customer.
And I'm like, oh my gosh. Our company wouldn't exist without you. You are creating the very solutions that these nonprofits are using to be successful every day. Because you do this, I have the privilege of doing what I do. But you have to, you can't assume that everyone knows it.
Tom Jackobs: Yeah. Yeah. That's a very good point. For sure. And doesn't just for non nonprofits, it's every organization needs, everybody needs to know what their impact is for the end customer, what they're doing to build the business as well.
Rachel Hutchisson: And the companies we work with at Common Impact are really in giving their people opportunities to step away from their desks and do really meaningful work that in their own communities with organizations that they care about. And that's that's really important.
Tom Jackobs: I can't believe the time has gone so quickly today. Rachel, this has been just a great conversation. I I just hope that many people are taking notes and listening to this and realizing that, you can make a profit and still be non-profit. You can just make more revenue and be okay with that because you're helping more people.
Rachel, how can people learn more about Common Impact and the great work that you're doing?
Rachel Hutchisson: I'll give you two resources. The first is just go to common impact.org. It's our website and check out, information and stories about the. organizations we work with, we've had a 20 year relationship with Fidelity. They've been an incredibly great partner. Allstate and the Allstate Foundation do incredible work and read some of the stories about the companies we work with, the non-profits they care about profiles of employees that have done this work and what they feel about it. So that's the first resource. And the second one is that I'm super easy to find on LinkedIn. Just look at Rachel Hutchison. And link with me. Happy to connect with you. Always happy to talk to anybody who's interested in purpose, mission, and heart-led organizations.
Tom Jackobs: We'll link all that up in the show notes so it's easy for people to find as well. But Rachel, thank you again so much for being on the show.
Rachel Hutchisson: This has been a really fun conversation.
Tom Jackobs: Awesome. And thank you listeners and those watching on YouTube as well. I really appreciate you tuning in and taking notes and learning more about how you can balance making a profit and still being purpose-driven and still being heart-led. And if you could do me just one little favor, if you could share this show with somebody that you know, that could use the advice given today.
I would certainly appreciate that as well, and I know Rachel would like that also. And until next time, lead with your heart.
Speaker 2: You've been listening to the heart-led Business Show, hosted by Tom Jackobs. Join us next time for another inspiring journey into the heart of business.