In Part 1 of this story, On Purpose CEO Carol Cone walked us through how PNC Bank turned $10 million in charitable giving into a twenty-year, half-billion-dollar investment in early childhood education and how that commitment changed the way PNC shows up in every new market. It’s one of the best examples of corporate purpose I’ve ever heard. But Carol is quick to point out that stories like PNC’s are the exception, not the rule. Here’s a test to help you see the difference between true alignment with purpose and whitewashing.
Purpose, Carol said, has become “almost performative.” Companies announce a $1 million gift, schedule a day of service, and move on. Real purpose, in Carol’s view, looks like this:
Walkabouts
If you’re a confectionery company, and cocoa runs through your supply chain, your leaders should walk cocoa farms in Africa. They need to see with their own eyes whether the labor is ethical or children. Authenticity has to travel all the way down to where your materials come from.
Supply chain integrity
Where you source your ingredients is part of what you stand for. You can’t claim values at the top and ignore them at the bottom of the pyramid.
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Values alignment
If integrity is one of your stated values, it has to show up everywhere—in how you give, how you hire, how you communicate, how you own mistakes. Carol made a point I love: Authenticity also means admitting when you’ve gotten it wrong and then moving forward. Nobody gets it perfect.
C-suite presence
It starts at the top. CEOs who show up at volunteer events. Who know the issue cold. Who can talk about it without notes because they’ve lived it.
Accountability
This means having a cross-functional teams and outside advisory boards that, as Carol said, “hold your feet to the fire.” PNC’s advisory board of educators has done exactly that for more than twenty years.
Measurement
How are you reporting on what you promised? What does the data say? In a world where your customers and employees can check your claims in seconds, you’d better have the receipts.
And if you’re still imagining purpose as something that exists in a silo separate from your “real” business—the feel-good wing of the org chart—Carol suggests otherwise. Today’s employees, especially Gen Z, bring their values to work. They want to contribute to a company that’s growing the right way. They want meaning and belonging embedded in their paycheck.
As Carol asked me, “Do your employees really wake up in the morning and say, ‘I want to make money for the company’? Of course they do. But they also want to feel, at the end of the day, that they have contributed to something greater than themselves.”
For businesses, that’s a talent story. That’s a retention story. And in a tight labor market, that’s a competitive-advantage story.
