Aimee Griffiths is the Head of Social Impact at MoneyGram, a global fintech company providing money transfer and financial services around the world. Aimee was previously the COO of Cafe Millenium, a nonprofit dedicated to serving at-risk youth with culinary, career, and life skill training. She brought that unique perspective to MoneyGram, where her original job was to run the organization’s foundation. In the two years since joining the corporate sector, she’s gone beyond writing checks to making social impact fundamental to MoneyGram’s business strategy. 

Our conversation revolved around their transition from philanthropy to social impact, and how to ensure a social impact program is successful.

Sustainability and social impact should be core to your business

“Every business has some service, some element of service to others. Find out what that is. What is that service to others? And then challenge yourself to find a way to lean into that, to generate something of more value … something that you're already doing to improve a person's life, improve a community, and so on,” she says. “When the impact that you’re creating is your business, it’s truly a part of your company’s strategy and expected outcomes. A program like that is likely going to see support, not budget cuts.”

Go beyond regulatory compliance standards

“Social impact is about going beyond what is expected by way of regulatory compliance standards. You have the things that you should just do because it's the right thing to do. Go beyond that to do more to protect customers.”  

Aimee says MoneyGram is always seeking ways to “leverage expertise systems, networks, and things that we’re already doing to create societal, positive societal impact. Making sure stakeholders, especially the global family of employees we have, feel valued and supported… basically just being a good citizen, a corporate citizen of the world.” 

Innovate and engage strategic stakeholders

“Companies should innovate because you need to look and ask, where can we improve? Where can we harness resources? Where can we maximize them? What's happening already that we can evolve? The key is to look at something with a totally different set of glasses and see if you can see something that is already there.”

Additionally, Amy reminds those working in sustainability and social impact to slow down, be intentional, and find your champions; find ways to get them on board and bring them along with you. 

“Put yourself in their position,” she says. “Make sure you've considered them before moving forward, because you may have a great vision, but if they're not seeing it yet, you have to move slower because you're not going to ultimately be successful without them.”

And lastly, be confident and decisive. “Don't let overall uncertainty prevent you from growing or taking hold of an opportunity. I think if you've given something a lot of thought and consideration, you feel confident about taking those first steps in a direction, then go for it.”

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