Benevity: Nurturing DEI Causes Internally and Externally

Businesses have the power to do a great deal of good, and their diversity, equity, and inclusion efforts have the capacity to reach far and wide. Benevity, a Calgary-based software company, not only connects businesses with the resources they need to build purpose-driven corporate cultures, they have deeply embedded diversity, equity, and inclusion into the core of who they are and what they do.

We spoke with Janeen Speer, Chief People Officer of Benevity, about how this organization is fostering a culture of DEI and belonging internally to empower global impact.

Tell us about Benevity’s mission.

Benevity’s mission is to build more purpose-driven corporate cultures by engaging employees, customers, and communities around causes that resonate with them. We also aim to drive automation, scale, and technology efficiencies on the charitable side of the landscape.

What inspired your founder to start Benevity?

Benevity Founder Bryan de Lottinville always wanted to leave the world better than he found it. In 2007, he discovered that of the then-$300 billion in donations in North America, less than 5% were being made online, less than 5% of donation volume was coming from companies, and 67% of employees were not engaged in their jobs. Benevity — one of the earliest B Corporations — was founded to constructively disrupt this status quo.

To better integrate business impacts and social outcomes, Benevity created a multi-sided tech platform that democratizes and empowers passionate, proactive, experiential participation in giving back. This is in contrast to the often dutiful, obligatory, transactional interactions that flow from the traditional once-a-year fundraising program for company-chosen charities.

What were some of the challenges Benevity’s founder encountered?

Benevity was initially built as an application program interface and was used by early clients by embedding the technology into their own platforms. In essence, it was an engine that powered things like disaster relief matching programs, employee donations, and sending and receiving electronic charitable gift cards through a company’s own giving website. 

But to make the difference that the team aspired to, we knew we’d have to build a software as a service product to make it easier for companies to “plug-and-play.” We needed to build the car for the engine and had heard a lot about the challenges with current employee giving programs. Soon after, Benevity’s main product offering, Spark, was born in early 2011.

What do you consider Benevity’s biggest success?

Canadian Pacific Railway was the first company to buy Spark, and Maui Jim was one of the first internationally recognized companies to become a client. But Nike was the big tipping point in 2013. Nike considered 38 workplace giving software vendors before ultimately choosing Benevity. This was a major win for Benevity, with only 12 employees at the time! 

Now, with nearly 1,000 companies using Benevity’s software, including more than 25% of the Fortune 500, Benevity’s client community is comprised of the most iconic and mission-driven companies in the world.

What makes Benevity unique?

It’s not every day you get to wake up knowing you could literally change the world — unless you work at Benevity! We have a purpose-driven culture where doing good and doing great work go hand-in-hand. We hire passionate, smart, authentic people who are at the top of their game, and we want to make sure they don’t check important parts of themselves at the door. We’ve worked hard to build and nurture a culture that creates a sense of belonging at its core, where all of our people feel seen, heard, and valued, not despite their differences, but because of them.

Our diversity, equity, inclusion, and belonging initiatives include panels for 2SLGBTQIA+ issues, International Women’s Day, and Black History Month, with speakers from all of Benevity’s offices talking about their diverse experiences and perspectives to help us understand how we can become better allies for each other.

We also have several employee resource groups, including groups for employees with visible and invisible disabilities (Benev-ability), for the 2SLGBTQIA+ community (Beneviqueers), our Black Employee Network & Friends (BEN & Friends), and more. Additionally, our Belonging Champions are Benevity-ites who work with the leadership team to identify more opportunities to create an even deeper sense of belonging at Benevity. 

Another hallmark of our culture is our creative efforts to challenge the status quo, our recognition that we are not perfect but can always be better, and our willingness to go the extra mile for each other and our clients. It’s the kind of culture one gets when you’re able to connect people’s work with a genuine sense of purpose, meaning, and impact.

How do you feel Benevity makes the world better?

While Benevity is a relatively small business, we power impact from some of the biggest, most beloved brands out there. And in that way, we show the world that profits don’t have to be sacrificed in pursuit of purpose; in fact, the opposite is true. When companies lead with purpose, they are more likely to thrive. Benevity’s Talent Retention Study shows that robust employee users of our software had 52% lower turnover rates in their companies than non-users, making the pursuit of a higher sense of purpose a win for companies, their people, and society.

We are showing the world that they can count on businesses to be a positive force in society. Whether it’s the fight for justice, equity, and accessibility, or responding to other devastating world events, Benevity, our clients, and networks are right there doing all we can. 

So far, our clients and their people have generated more than $12 billion in donations and 56 million hours of volunteer time to support 418,000 non-profits worldwide — and 92% of those funds have been paid electronically. The company’s solutions have also facilitated 900,000 micro-actions and awarded 1.2 million grants worth $18 billion.

Our platform has also helped to rally companies and their people around DEI causes. For example, in June 2020, we saw a 15x increase in support of racial justice causes following the murder of George Floyd, with $166 million contributed in June versus $10 million in May. Countless more people got involved through their company’s corporate purpose programs, tracking 434,000 volunteer hours and 29,000 positive actions. 

How would the world be better off if it were more diverse, equitable, and inclusive?

When differences are valued and everybody has access to the same opportunities, it’s easy to see that diversity, equity, and inclusion benefit everyone. And when people feel a sense of belonging, and the safety and security of being accepted, they can be their true selves.

Our team has over 50% representation of women both as a company and at the senior leadership level. Our team is also about one-third Black, Indigenous, and people of colour. We have reached this not by setting targets but by focusing on the behaviours that we felt were needed to drive a truly inclusive culture. And we’ve seen firsthand that the good created from a diverse, equitable, and inclusive workplace reaches far and wide, allowing for business, personal, and societal growth.

Tell us about Benevity’s goals.

At Benevity, we have something called a “Moonshot,” that is to act as a catalyst to infuse a culture of goodness into the world. Our main goal is to help companies help people be their best selves in their everyday lives by connecting them with a sense of purpose and belonging while delivering business and social impact.

Are there any upcoming initiatives or projects you’d like to share?

We’re constantly innovating within our product ecosystem, sifting through data to uncover new trends and speaking with trailblazers to stay ahead of the curve. One initiative is our Benevity Impact Labs, an incubator and resource hub that helps companies, non-profits, and individuals maximize their impact and authentically live their purpose.

Another initiative is the Speaking of Purpose podcast, hosted by Sona Khosla, Benevity’s Chief Impact Officer. Sona speaks to some of the world’s most disruptive brands, leaders, and changemakers whose unparalleled insight, inspiration, and advice help us understand how critical purpose is in business and the world. The episode, “DEI&B – More Than Another Corporate Acronym,” provides a deep dive into diversity, equity, inclusion, and belonging.

There’s also the weekly Social Impact Show. We have episodes that explore important DEI-related topics, including how it impacts business today, modern strategies to promote DEI in the workplace, how CSR and diversity build better workplaces, and more. 

What do you most want people to know about Benevity?

Benevity is not just a fintech engine to process donations to non-profits. Our goal is to inspire everyday goodness in people, and our products provide many ways to do that, including volunteering time and skills, participating in learning and activism, or making small, everyday behavioural changes like confronting unconscious bias and creating less waste at the office. All these things help to activate one’s sense of personal purpose and make a positive change in the world.

How can people help or contribute to Benevity’s mission?

When a tragic event happens in the world, we encourage you to look for avenues to take action and gain back the empowerment, connectedness, and hope that we all have intrinsically within us.

One way to do this is to find out about your company’s workplace giving program and get involved in it. Ninety-three percent of companies that use Benevity’s employee engagement software enable donation matching for their people. The most common match is one-to-one to the cause of the employee’s choice, although we are seeing more and more companies do two-to-one, three-to-one, and even up to five-to-one in special circumstances. 

While Benevity has seen an incremental increase in participation across corporate purpose programs from 11% in 2021 to 12% in 2022, it is estimated that $10 billion dollars in matching funds go unused every year, and a big reason for this is because people simply don’t know it’s being offered! Imagine the social impact that could be made if more people took advantage of these powerful programs.

This story was featured in the Make The World Better Magazine: