Stocktoberfest Insights with Benevity’s Sona Khosla, Chief Impact Officer

As Chief Impact Officer and host of the Speaking of Purpose podcast, Sona heads up Benevity Impact Labs. Since joining Benevity in 2015, she has helped companies stay at the forefront of emerging trends around corporate purpose, ESG and stakeholder engagement, enabling them to identify and adopt ground-breaking strategies to maximize their social and business impact.

A futurist and passionate proponent of purpose, culture, and diversity, equity, inclusion and belonging, Sona is a sought-after speaker and makes guest appearances on radio shows and podcasts. She is often cited in business, CSR, HR, sustainability media.

DonateStock: Tell Us About Benevity

Sona: Benevity, a certified B Corporation, is a leader in global corporate purpose software, providing the only integrated suite of community investment and employee, customer and nonprofit engagement solutions. A finalist in Fast Company’s 2020 World Changing Ideas Awards, many iconic brands rely on Benevity’s cloud solutions to power their purpose in ways that better attract, retain and engage today’s diverse workforce, embed social action into their customer experiences and positively impact their communities. With software that is available in 22 languages, Benevity has processed nearly $8 billion in donations and 43 million hours of volunteering time to support 326,000 nonprofits worldwide. The company’s solutions also facilitated 530,000 positive actions and awarded 1.2 million grants worth $12 billion. For more information, visit benevity.com.

DonateStock: Your mission is to power purpose-driven business. What is the state of the industry?

Sona: The last 18 months have led to significant change for all of us--as individuals and citizens, as employees, companies and nonprofits. If the pandemic and the racial justice movement have taught us anything, it’s that we shouldn’t underestimate the power of passionate people to stand up for what’s right and lead movements in support of justice and equity. It’s noteworthy that by the end of 2020, Benevity saw 51% more donors supported nonprofits through their companies. This is perhaps the clearest indication that individuals are turning to the companies they work for and buy from to be a source of trust, hope, connection, and action. As more companies meaningfully invest in providing their employees and customers with the ability to volunteer and donate with matching dollars and volunteer rewards, it’s not surprising that individuals are continuing to turn to business to help them amplify their impact and drive collective action. We don’t see this trend changing anytime soon.

DonateStock: What are the biggest hurdles to corporate adoption?

Sona: One of the most encouraging signs from the last 18 months is that we’ve seen more companies lean into purpose and impact like never before. The good news is they are also doing it differently than they have in the past. Whereas companies used to select a few nonprofits and then rally people to support only those chosen organizations, they are now turning to their people and communities to engage in a more participatory process. This includes enabling employees and customers to select the causes they wish to support (with matching dollars and volunteer rewards), providing the opportunity for employee-nominated grants or employee-led fundraising and matching campaigns. Many companies are also turning to passionate employees and members of Employee Resource Groups (ERGs) or Affinity Groups—like Working Mothers, or BIack Professionals--to make recommendations on which causes to support. This provides an unprecedented opportunity for employees and nonprofits to amplify their impact through corporations who are now more open than ever to supporting a wider range of causes.

As more companies look to make an impact in a way that drives more engagement and meaning from their employees, customers, and communities, they require investments in technology and communication to help them identify local, grassroots organizations and automate all of the work that is involved in empowering their stakeholders to engage. It’s not a small hurdle to overcome, but it’s one we are very familiar with at Benevity!

DonateStock: How has the pandemic impacted employee and corporate giving?

Sona: Benevity has seen record-breaking support for nonprofits from companies and their people over the past 18 months, not just in terms of donations, but also in terms of volunteering and what we call acts of goodness. When the pandemic became a global crisis in March of 2020, we at Benevity were inspired and moved by how the corporate sector stepped up to drive an unprecedented volume of donations through matching programs that ranged anywhere from 2:1 to 5:1! Within just eight weeks following the onset of the global lockdowns, Benevity saw more than 500 companies and 450,000 of their people give $640 million in donations, 786,000 volunteer hours, 53,000 small acts of Goodness and 8,648 corporate grants to support 79,000 global causes.

What’s even more remarkable is how corporations and nonprofits pivoted to digital engagement and experiences and started broadening their view of impact. They also started to broaden their definition of volunteering, including what we call “volunteer acts of kindness” which go beyond supporting nonprofits to support individuals directly. This included things like taking time to learn about key topics like how to slow the spread of the virus, or more behavioural-based actions like sewing masks, growing and donating food from their gardens, or even supporting neighbours or colleagues.

This marks an evolution from companies promoting “charitable activity” to pro-social learning and action that is much more all-encompassing. Every corporate leader we speak to says they don’t see this trend reversing as time goes on.

DonateStock: Where do you see new possibilities for innovation within the social impact industry?

Sona: Earlier this year, we released our first-ever “State of Corporate Purpose” Report. In it, we discuss the five key trends that we believe will shape the future of giving for years to come:

1. Corporate purpose shifted from statements to action, with companies listening and acting on the needs of all stakeholders, especially their employees and ERGs.
2. Grassroots passions fueled collective movements at a global scale when the need to feel a sense of meaning and impact were at an all-time high
3. Companies expanded their definition of impact beyond traditional approaches to granting, giving and volunteering to meet people where they were (literally), finally catching up to how individuals have defined “doing good” for years now
4. Trust-based philanthropy took hold with companies streamlining requirements and restrictions on their nonprofit partners to provide them with more autonomy and decision-making power in a challenging year. 
5. Purpose-driven customer engagement rose to new heights, with a record number of companies investing in customer-giving initiatives for the first time

DonateStock: What else would you like the audience to know?

Sona: As I reflect on an incredibly difficult 18 months, I can’t help but think about how we have changed—as individuals, citizens, and a global community. It seems to me that we are more aware than ever of how fragile our lives are, how vulnerable our planet and systems are, how inequity was always there—just not apparent to those of us with systemic advantage—how each of us can have a material effect on each other and the global community, how interconnected we truly are. 2020 taught us that a single change, and a single individual, can spark a movement that can drive greater collective impact than we ever could have imagined. We need to continue to engage business and CEOs in supporting these grassroots movements based on what matters to us. It's the greatest opportunity for change that we have.