Forbes magazine has several tips for businesses to find the proper outlet for their social activism that may also be instructive for churches wanting to enter the social justice field.

1. Look in the mirror. When it comes to defining your social mission, start with your business mission. Increasingly, we find it helpful when these two are aligned from the start – even if your company makes widgets. Strategic leaders recognize that giving back can be baked right into your corporate DNA, such as with equity pledges, where companies offer a small percentage of their equity to nonprofits. Regardless of your organization’s structure, your business mission will help inform the most aligned direction to harness your corporate energies and offer the best opportunities for pro bono volunteering and other engagement.

2. Go on a listening tour. As you consider your mission and values, it’s important to get your employees involved so that they feel “heard.” Surveys are a common tool to cull employee interests around causes, including where many of them may already be volunteering and giving. Sure, you won’t be able to prioritize every cause, but you may be able to find patterns of common interests, which will help when it comes to increasing volunteer participation if you decide to pursue these causes. And even with the many causes that you don’t elevate to the corporate level, a volunteer platform will empower employees to pursue many different interests as a part of their volunteer work.

3. Do your research. When it comes to selecting specific nonprofits to ally with or support, tools like Charity Navigator provide insight into organizational history, financial health, accountability and transparency. Make sure that you do your due diligence in assessing how your company can make the biggest impact at the most minimal cost.

4. Get help. Experts in the field can serve as invaluable translators helping companies and nonprofits speak the same language, align expectations and goals and establish relationships destined for success. Guidance from a trusted expert in the nonprofit world can help steer your company to the cause area and nonprofit that is the best possible match.

Since confessional churches rely on word and sacrament, perhaps activism related to literacy, wheat farms, and grape growing is the best fit. Here‘s a story about wine cellar workers at Woodbridge who want to join the Teamsters. Perhaps your diaconate could help.

Also, the National Association of Wheat Growers has several items on its list of policies that might guide a session or diaconate’s thoughts about social justice.

Too bad, though, that cellar workers and wheat growers are not high on the list of causes that motivate millennials. The top five are:

Civil rights/racial discrimination 29%
Employment (job creation) (tie) 26%
Healthcare reform (tie) 26%
Climate change 21%
Immigration 19%
Education (K-12) 17%

The runners up:

Respondents also sited wages (15%), environment (14%), college/post-secondary education (13%), poverty and homelessness (13%), mental health and social services (12%), criminal justice reform (11%), women’s rights (10%), women’s health and reproductive issues (9%), early education (8%), sexual orientation-based rights (8%), and literacy (4%) as issues they care about.

That’s a boat load of activity for any single congregation. Even a denominational agency, like the Committee on Social Justice, would have a hard time meeting at most three times a year to give due attention and resources to all of these matters.

The encouraging news, though, is that millennials have a fairly low bar for what constitutes social activism:

Researchers also asked respondents what types of actions they take on behalf of the causes important to them. Voting topped the list, in order or priority, followed by signing a petition, no action, posting on social media, and changing purchase of products and services. Voting, researchers surmised, is seen as a vital form of activism; the survey found that nearly two-thirds (65 percent) of respondents said they had voted in the 2016 presidential election.

So, if your officers are voting, Tweeting, and posting on Facebook, they already have a social-justice ministry.