Embrace Making the Case: Business Reasons for Doing Good Are Still Good Reasons
🧠 Salon with Stephe McMahon: Embrace Making the Case—Business Reasons for Doing Good Are Still Good Reasons 💼✨
🔥 What Is This About?
Why do we hesitate to make the business case for social good? In this provocative session, Stephe McMahon invites us to rethink our reluctance—and embrace the language of capitalism as a tool, not a trap. If we want business to support impact, we need to be willing (and fluent enough) to speak its language.
What if a good reason for doing good… is still a good reason?
🧠 About the Speaker
Stephe McMahon is the Chief BridgeBuilder and Co-Founder of BoardBridge, a strategic initiative addressing the more than 1 million vacancies on nonprofit boards of directors. BoardBridge serves as a critical link between the private and nonprofit sectors, creating meaningful leadership and professional development opportunities for working professionals while strengthening nonprofit organizations with skilled board members who build capacity and drive impact."
Co-Founder, BoardBridge
Former Director, Strategy & Learning at Johnson Center for Philanthropy
Veteran of sector-crossing roles in consulting, philanthropy, and civic innovation
Advocate for dismantling outdated impact narratives
🔍 Key Themes
💡 Why we resist using business logic for social change—and what that reveals
🧠 The difference between selling out and showing up
💸 Real-world examples where ROI and impact are not in conflict
🔄 Reframing capitalism as context—not enemy
📣 Making the case to decision-makers who don’t speak “impact”
🧭 Salon Format
1️⃣ Framing the Tension – Why impact practitioners often avoid making the business case
2️⃣ Catalytic Spark – Stephe shares a strategic provocation from her cross-sector work
3️⃣ Breakout Dialogues – What are the trade-offs, triggers, and stories that shape our own approach?
4️⃣ Collective Synthesis – Surfacing shared insights, language experiments, and triad seeds
🎯 Why It Matters
🌍 Many impact efforts live or die by whether business buys in. Let’s stop whispering.
🧠 Helps Social Impact professionals sharpen the language of influence.
📚 Resources
BoardBridge – Platform for purpose-aligned board matching
RWI Salon Series Overview – Makerspace Salons Guide
Related Themes from Past Salons:
✨ Final Reflection
What story are you telling when you don’t make the case?
Are we leaving influence on the table—just because we’re afraid to sound like “them”?
Let’s find a new fluency—together.