Impact Sourcing: What is it?

One lesson many of us have learned from COVID is that some parts of our jobs can be done from home, or really anywhere for that matter.

Many organizations knew of the potential of remote work even before COVID, as demonstrated by the growing amount of work outsourced to companies around the world. Rather than complete certain, often mundane, tasks in-house, organizations are increasingly sending parts of their work to companies designed to complete basic tasks. Tasks such as transcribing interviews, captioning videos, monitoring websites, or labeling hundreds of photos are examples of commonly outsourced work. Organizations outsource for many reasons: it saves valuable time and money, increases the quality of the work, and allows the organization to focus on its priorities.

Impact outsourcing builds on the practice of outsourcing, but has one major difference: it makes a significant positive impact by employing disadvantaged people to complete the outsourcing work. Rather than outsource work to just anyone, impact sourcing purposefully creates jobs for vulnerable people. Impact sourcing organizations are creating opportunities for disadvantaged people from all around the world, such as refugees in Columbia, rural women in West Africa, and people living in poverty in Madagascar. Simply put, impact sourcing is about intentionality. Many organizations can benefit from outsourcing digital work, and because this work can be done anywhere in the world, companies now have the ability to make a significant impact by sourcing their work from people living in dire situations.

Impact sourcing organizations, such as Upsource, provide training and income to their staff. UPsource invests in upskilling their staff of digital workers. This can take the form of soft-skill development, building digital literacy, providing certificate training courses, and more. This training enables staff to continually improve their skills and qualify for even better work. The income earned by staff from this work is used for a variety of purposes, including funding their own start-ups, paying for schooling or healthcare, and supporting family and friends in need. Through impact sourcing, digital workers have the ability to pull themselves and their families out of poverty and into better lives.

Impact sourcing is a growing movement. Companies such as Sama, Isahit, and others are all working to create opportunities through digital work, and as machine learning and artificial intelligence continue to develop, there is a growing need for basic digital work such as data labeling.

Digital work can be done anywhere around the world. Organizations can positively change the lives of disadvantaged people by intentionally impact sourcing.