On a recent trip, I had time and reason to reflect upon the last few years of The Impact Exchange, and working to make a difference through business. As strange as it sounds, I re-realized that the entire reason for these initiatives has often been lost in the details, strategies, and discussions.

A great quote highlighting the importance of personal motivation:

"My biggest personal milestones - and consequently the things that have most furthered my career - are activities that I undertook on my own initiative. Organizations are extraordinarily risk-averse. Even Walt Disney had to pay for the drawings of his theme parks with his own money."

- Ben Arment - Experience & Innovation Director at Catalyst in Atlanta

The Impact Exchange, founded in 2006, is a for-profit business focused on making companies more effective, positively impacting people’s lives, and using business to combat poverty.

Impacting companies

Our goal is to help your business run more efficiently and effectively, at lower cost, while making a difference in your community and the world around you.

Whether in IT services, project management, administration and production outsourcing, or new supplier and buyer connections, we want to help you be more profitable financially and personally.

Impacting people

Our goal is to build relationships with people, give them profitable avenues to use their talents, and enable them to enable others. This may be a parent in a developing country or a Chicago accountant or MBA grad who wants to do something with his life.

Long term, we plan to create unique jobs in the developed and developing world for individuals with a passion for being on the cutting edge of social impact and business development

Impacting poverty

Rich countries have poured billions of dollars into charitable aid to improve global living standards, but most of the world’s poor are seeing little improvement. Significant progress in living conditions is only found where there is encouragement and success of private business and entrepreneurship.

Early advocates using business to combat poverty repeat the old saying, “Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day; teach him how to fish and you feed him for a lifetime.” Our goal takes this a step further. We believe that the fisherman also needs financing for his boats and nets, markets to sell his fish, and people to support his efforts all around him.

In everything we do, we strive for quality, excellence and impact.

All of human endeavor can be summarized as a search for individual significance. No matter the role or position in society, in however small a way, we all want to be good at something, better at this or that, more educated, more successful, more influential, and more liked and respected. Without this, nothing would ever be accomplished.