WeHero 2021 Corporate Impact Report

2020 in Review & Revisiting the Data

At the end of 2019, WeHero set out on a journey to prove what we already fundamentally believed: investments in Corporate Social Responsibility and Corporate Volunteering have positive ROI for both B2B and B2C businesses. From our experience in the space, we had experienced this, but we spent a month diving into the research to ensure that we fully understood the drivers of these trends. We wanted to be able to partner with our clients to get the highest return on their investment across social impact strategies and corporate volunteering. What came out of that journey, was our first ever WeHero Corporate Impact Report. Just over a year later, we wanted to refresh our work and reflect on 2020 and look ahead to 2021. 2020 will always be remembered as one of the most challenging years of our lives. Millions died while families were torn apart due to social distancing. The ripple effects of COVID-19 spread far as lower-income students struggled to keep up in school and families struggled to avoid eviction and keep food on their tables. Unfortunately, we were reminded again about the lack of racial and social equality in our country and the need for systemic change. To make matters even more complicated, those who wanted to lend a hand were challenged at how to support in a safe and impactful way. Businesses, who play such an important role in giving back, lost their entire workforce to home-offices far from where support was needed. Not to mention, many corporate budgets shrunk and corporate philanthropy became harder to justify.

The CSR community was dealt a challenging hand this year, but almost a year into the global pandemic, we’ve never been more proud to be part of this community. CSR professionals found ways to overcome the challenges of distance and virtual meetings to deliver impact to the people and places that need it the most. Whether it was delivering medical supplies to first responders, or educating their company around the importance of diversity and inclusion, CSR professionals found ways to make it work.

Predicting what’s going to happen over the next 12 months is always a fool's errand. Don’t ask us to show you our predictions from last year! We largely expect status-quo for the first nine months of the year as the world struggles to vaccinate our entire population. However, because we’ve adapted to this new normal, we expect the CSR world to largely keep moving in the same direction, but more efficiently. This will be a massive driver for impact around the world. It’s hard to predict where help is going to be needed the most, but with changes in the Presidential Office, we expect increased social programs. However, this won’t go far enough to eradicate homelessness and starvation. With the trend of increased income inequality becoming too difficult to stop, lower-income people will still need to be supported. One of our fundamental beliefs is that the importance of environmentalism will gain more traction and we expect increased CSR focus on supporting our environment. This isn’t going to happen overnight especially when it will require heavy supply chain change. However, over the next 5 years, employees and customers will demand these changes to happen.

While a lot has changed this year, the data and our fundamental belief in the importance of Employee Volunteering and Corporate Social Responsibility has not changed at all. People want to buy from and work for, businesses that give back to the community. We saw these trends continue through powerful data:

• Employees who feel that their organizations are involved with and give back to their communities are up to 13x more likely to enjoy going to work than those who do not see that connection.
• Nine out of ten employees feel that companies that sponsor volunteer activities cultivate better work environments than companies without these programs.
• Firms with high employee engagement see increased earnings per share over their peers, and 1% changes in engagement can drive significant fluctuations in revenue.

All businesses need to be thinking about their own social impact strategies. WeHero is here to be your partner as you build a CSR strategy from the ground up or if you just need help executing the components of your strategy. Don’t hesitate to reach out. In the meantime, get your copy of the WeHero Corporate Impact Report below!