Client Overview: Visa Inc.
As one of the leading global payment technology companies, Visa Inc. has set as its social mission, ‘advancing inclusive, equitable and sustainable economic growth for everyone, everywhere’ and Visa Inc. and the Visa Foundation alongside the Visa Foundation has shown a long term commitment towards the growth of underserved SMBs around the world.
In light of the substantial impact of COVID 19 particularly on SMBs, Visa announced in 2020, a new initiative to provide nearly $5 million in capital to minority-led SMBs, amid a second wave of COVID-19 alongside mentorship programs to further support minority-led SMBs. Visa also committed to digitally-enable 50 million small and micro businesses worldwide by 2023, as part of their efforts to advance digital equity. Furthermore in April 2020, the Visa Foundation launched the Equitable Access Initiative, a five-year, $200 million strategic commitment to support gender diverse and inclusive SMBs around the world globally.
The Challenge
Supporting SMBs has been an urgent priority throughout the COVID-19 pandemic, with a great need among minority-owned small businesses, which are disproportionately impacted. With thousands of employees sharing Visa’s social mission and wanting to contribute to it, a solution was needed that would merge Visa’s social impact objectives with employee engagement goals in a way that was efficient, measurable and effective.
Visa encourages and supports employees to make an impact in ways that inspire them, whether that is through volunteering, giving or empowering people and communities in need. In 2020 Visa decided to put more resources into building skills-based employee engagement programs that enabled Visa employees to be part of the impact Visa wanted to make in the SMB space. Visa also wanted to ensure the programs were global and local in nature to mimic the nature of Visa’s business of facilitating digital payments across more than 200 countries and territories.
What this meant was finding a partner to launch an employee engagement program in multiple regions and languages, focused on delivering high quality experience which was both engaging and meaningful to both the small business founders as well as Visa employee mentors.
The Solution
To meet Visa’s objectives, we created a program tailored to their specific needs and the challenges mentioned above.
High touch employee engagement at scale
Over 300 Visa employees signed up to be part of the program as mentors. To increase the range and quality of information mentees got, Visa paired two mentors with one entrepreneur. This co-mentorship program had the additional benefits of creating opportunities for employees to collaborate with an entrepreneur outside of their typical day-to- scope, and also encouraged collaboration between employees across different departments and seniority levels to connect based on a common purpose.
Bridge for Billions incubation program allowed Visa employees to directly support early-stage entrepreneurs through a shared online incubation platform in a 3-4 month mentorship journey. Following the Bridge for Billions structured online process, mentors had full visibility on the entrepreneurs’ work and was able to provide feedback at each stage of the program.
A top-notch Mentorship Program for all early-stage entrepreneurs
A top-notch Mentorship Program for early-stage entrepreneurs
The Bridge for Billions incubation program is a proven and effective way to bring scalable support to early-stage entrepreneurs, already trusted by several global companies and organizations. Our unique methodology is at the core of all of our programs. Built by entrepreneurs for entrepreneurs, it incorporates cutting-edge innovation-based entrepreneurship methods, inspired by Disciplined Entrepreneurship from MIT, BusinessModel Canvas by Osterwalder and Lean Startup by Eric Ries, among others.
Focused on helping entrepreneurs work on the fundamentals of their business and prove business viability, it is suited to all entrepreneurs with projects in the initial phases of development. With it, entrepreneurs are able to dig deep into the structure of their business, understand how to make necessary pivots or adjustments to their strategy and benefit from the guidance of their mentor whilst working through 8 tools on Bridge’s interactive online incubation platform.
Efficiency and Effectiveness
Since Visa runs many programs and initiatives globally they needed something effective and impactful yet manageable. With a standard methodology that has supported over 2250 entrepreneurs globally, they could count on the expertise of Bridge for Billions incubation team to create a program that was not only highly effective for the entrepreneurs but also well organized and easy to coordinate. Throughout the program, the Visa team was able to easily monitor the progress of the program using a centralized dashboard provided to them by Bridge.
The program Impact
Visa was able to count on Bridge’s expertise in impact measurement to effectively assess the final outcomes of the program such as revenue and job creation for the entrepreneurs who participated as well as get crucial feedback from Visa employees about their experience as mentors. At the end of each cohort, Visa received a detailed impact report explaining outputs and outcomes of the program, tailored towards program objectives.
What’s up next?
Due to the success of our first collaborations in the US and Latin America, Visa together with Bridge for Billions is expanding the program to more cities across the US and launching in Europe to offer high quality entrepreneurship support to early-stage SMBs in the regions. Future plans are also in store to expand Visa’s mentorship program to select markets in the CEMEA and Asia-Pacific regions.
If, like Visa, you’re an organization looking to create a high impact program whilst fostering a culture of change from within, increasing employee engagement and taking an active role in tackling some of the most relevant challenges our society faces, you can contact us below to create your own Social Innovation Programme in less than a month.
