Learning Series | Why Companies Can't Just Donate for Engagement

Summary: Companies can no longer rely on donations to drive engagement. Engaging employees and bringing them along for the journey is essential!

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Transcript:

Andy - WeHero: Ben, it's great to chat with you again today. Happy Monday,

Ben - WeHero: Happy Monday, best time of the week,

Andy - WeHero: Best time of the week. So much opportunity. Today we're gonna be talking about something that we hear all the time from our clients. You know, they are struggling as they build out their corporate citizenship, corporate social responsibility strategy, and they always ask us, you know, we have a certain budget. We wanna just donate the money, but we also wanna volunteer. What is the right balance of that? And does that balance change per company? So that's kinda the high level discussion. I would love to hear just some initial thoughts or questions that you respond when companies ask you that.

Ben - WeHero: Yeah, let's, let's start with like the most, I don't want to call it the most negative Alec, but let's look at the most extreme case circumstance, right? Let's look at the pessimistic view of volunteering as a waste of time. We should just donate money, cuz that will make more impact and just be done with it. And so let's just take that extreme and let's just talk about the, was in the cons of that and how volunteering can maybe fit in. So if someone asked us that question, we respond, yes, absolutely. By donating funds in that short term impact that range of one week to say a couple months you'll maximize impacts the dollars are well optimized and very efficiently used to focus on the impact if it's a good nonprofit, right? So that's a really good thing. What you miss the con of this, what you miss is when you just do that donation directly is that you brought none of your employee base along for that journey.

Ben - WeHero: And we have all these employees that care about the social cause and care about the social mission of your company. That all of a sudden aren't well apprised of what has actually happened. And more importantly, they don't get to take part in that experience and that's the missing department. So there's the big probe donating directly in the big con of donating directly now to, you know, be devil's advocate against the pessimistic view of volunteering. I think how we really try to encourage companies to think about volunteering is think about this as employee activation. Like our goal more in, in many cases is a to create impact with your employee volunteer time. But another big part of this too, is just to educate your employees about the work your company's doing, educate them about the cause and get them to become long term supporters. I think there's that immediate short term impact that can be created with donor dollars, but the long term impact of having your employees bottom of the bought into the social mission of your company and coming along for that journey, volunteering that very first time through what we call employee activation, then coming back to volunteer again.

Ben - WeHero: And then again, cuz we're having these powerful experiences that creates a lot of long term impact and that's something we really try to help companies with and help them understand. Cuz it's really easy to think about it that way. It's really easy to donate money, but how do we take that a step further? How do we engage our employees? So those are very, in many cases, the conversations we're having with companies around how to best execute, you know, a CSR or corporate citizenship program.

Andy - WeHero: Yeah. And, and I think you described kind of the one extreme right of all donation versus no volunteering from an impact delivery standpoint. And I think you described some of the pros and cons obviously where we end up is we think a balance is appropriate, but I would be curious to hear, you know, your opinion. And let's say we swung the pendulum all the way over to a company that only volunt that only offers volunteering, but actually no donations and no other, you know, support of nonprofits or important causes. What do the pros and cons of, I guess that other pendulum, other side of the pendulum,

Ben - WeHero: The pros are of that case right. Is consistent employee engagement, right. Which is great for culture great for brand. Great. But the, the con of that, that I would say is that your support can in some ways become limited. Right? and so when you're just donating volunteer time and just donating goods, in some cases, there's still in many cases, a lot of value for the nonprofit, but to your point, Andy, we really try to, to encourage a blend of this. We really try to encourage a blend of volunteering and donor dollars, cuz that's a really good mix for creating a huge amount of impact. And I think, you know, the it's really fair to say that the nonprofits in many cases are expecting that. Their in many cases is to build relationships with great companies, just like companies are trying to build relationships with great nonprofits.

Ben - WeHero: And the hope of that is that as those relationships become strong, that those nonprofits can gain some funding from these companies to support key programs and initiatives that they have. And so they're expecting that. And I think we do our nonprofits of a disservice sometimes when they're donating a huge amount of time to activate employees about a cause spending time with that company, if we're not at some point kicking in donations. And so to your point, that mix is really critical. And hopefully I answered your question around some of the pros and cons that we just noticed that are high level pros and cons.

Andy - WeHero: Yeah. The, the one thing we at is I always really enjoy speaking to, you know, top executives is they're trying to think about the high level strategy here and you know, they're wondering is this worth it, what's the point, what's our relationship with nonprofits. And I know we always go back and, and we always lean on it. You know, do you have any strategic partners in your business, right? Companies or other partners that you you've worked with over the last five years? You know, you're not the same company, but you're working towards the same mutual goal and you really rely on each other that that's what we want your relationship to be with a nonprofit, right? You know, the nonprofit can give so much to you in, you know, educating your employees, making your employees care about what they're doing, what your company's doing, but for that to work, it really needs to be a two-way relationship where you're helping them and giving them the tools to deliver impact. And, you know, I think we could share some of our most successful client stories or where, where, you know, a company partners with a nonprofit that aligns with their mission and there is a great two-way street so that all employees know about that mission are delivering impact and the company is supporting even further to deliver the deliver impact through the nonprofit.

Ben - WeHero: I think it's so easy to fall into the trap of, of feeling like we're giving so much to this nonprofit, you know, why do we need to give more, why do we need to donate more? I think it's something to realize in that two is that think about how much the nonprofit gives to your employees. Right? We have so many cases where employees are picking up new skill sets, learning new skills having opportunities to have team building experiences with other members outside their core team. And throughout their company, like right now we see a lot of global experience has taking place. And in many of these cases, this is the first time employees have ever connected. And I think we have to think about that in that two way street. Remember the value that the nonprofit's also giving to your company. It's so key.

Andy - WeHero: Yeah. Yeah. And, and I just wanna touch on one other point that, that I think is really important is, you know, the potential of a single company to give back is the dependent on the company's culture and the company's employees and their desire to give back. And so if you go to that one, pessimistic extreme, I don't think it's pessimistic. I think it's realistic for a lot of companies. It's just, Hey, let's donate our $10,000 and that's great. You're doing a lot of good and we thank you. But at the same time, if you want to over the long term, build a cultural of giving back within your company. Me, you can't do that by just writing a check and not bringing the team along, just like any, you know, any new, new product launch at a company or any new initiative. It's really about bringing the team along with you. And the only way you can effectively do that is by making them feel like they're part of the mission. And that's why volunteering is so important. So yes, you get a huge boost, an impact if you write that check, but if you're willing to continuously invest in volunteering over the, the short and long term, you're gonna create a cycle where it's not even really about writing checks anymore. You know, your employees are leading this charge themselves, and that really defines the culture and, and a really strong culture, you know, at that.

Ben - WeHero: So I have a question for you. So we talked about like active employees, right? And, you know, volunteering is just like one of those points of activation, but I mean, we've seen the, the expanding definition of what corporate volunteering actually is like, what are some other ideas of how companies can engage and activate their employees related to a giving experience like, oh, we're gonna donate this matter where support this nonprofit, how can we activate and engage our employees is outside of just traditional volunteering?

Andy - WeHero: Well, I think that's kind of the cutting edge of what's happening right now. And I think we're starting to realize that, you know, you can really engage your employees while not making a physical impact, but really making a mental impact, which drives lifestyle changes, which drives increased donations, which drives change in future volunt tiering. And so we think a lot about engaging employees through really immersive educational and emotional experiences so that they care even more. And I'll give a few examples of this. You know, let's say you really care about the environment, you know, at your, and you guys are your company's planting trees, you're offsetting your carbon and that's great, right. But if you really wanna immerse your employees, I think one of the coolest things is at your large conference, you have a VR headset and you immerse your employees physically and, and visual in just an area of the Amazon.

Andy - WeHero: It's been completely completely cut down, totally deforested. And they see the impact of that before and after. And then they see the impact over five years of the trees that you've planted and you can watch the growth, you can watch the animals come back, cause that's much more visceral, you know, not everyone has ever been to a rainforest to see what it's like before and after. So that's one example. I also think you can do a lot, you know, in this virtual world that we live in, you know, at home, right? How can you build an immersive experience for employees to experience the root issue of the cause in a way that they couldn't and really immerse themselves in what it's being homeless, whether it's dealing with childhood marriage, whether it's being a refugee and trying to cross the us Mexico border, how can you use technology to immerse people in that experience so that they are not only just a, a doer of volunteer event, they're a net promoter of the cause, cuz that is what's gonna drive a lot of change and recruit more employees. I, I could talk about this all day. Cause I think it's the most exciting part of the industry that we're operating in right now.

Ben - WeHero: Yeah. And why I ask the question and the point you're making so good and what we want to make companies aware of is that there's so much more than just that traditional form of volunteering. You don't have to feel like you're stuck there. There's so many ways that we can activate employees around the work that you all are doing. So don't feel you have to be stuck in that, that one avenue just corporate volunteering. A cool example is we just did a, a design, a project for a company where they were gonna donate a large sum of money for a reforestation project or an education project. But they wanted to not do volunteering, but to somehow activate their employees. So they had their hosting a huge onsite conference. And in that lobby area, they're gonna have, for example, the reforestation project, this whole grow of trees with the different species of trees that were being planted with facts about how the trees were being planted and how many you know, pounds of carbon they're ING those groves of trees to sequester and we're talking hundreds of thousands of trees and people can, you know, grab seeds as a parting gift and plant their own trees.

Ben - WeHero: And so just one of many cool, unique ways that people are thinking outside of the box to create experiences, to activate these employees.

Andy - WeHero: Yeah. And, and those pair incredibly well with donations.

Ben - WeHero: Yeah.

Andy - WeHero: Right. And, and so I think, you know, being creative on how you engage individuals doesn't need to be volunteer, but as long as they're engaged around that, I think is a great thing.

Ben - WeHero: Yep. Absolutely.

Andy - WeHero: Any last minute thoughts here, Ben

Ben - WeHero: Have a plan. You know, I think, I think it's really hard to go, you know, in, in, in the immediate time that you're actually placing the donation like, oh, how do we activate employees? I think having a structure plan of the dollars that you're gonna donate, how you're gonna activate employees within a given year or two years just is really important. And we're here to help. We hope a lot of companies do this work and idea, you know, how to make this all happen in a really structured fashion. So make a plan and, and focus more on activating your employees than the actual volunteers itself. Any, any other thoughts we should share?

Andy - WeHero: No, I would just acknowledge. It's a hard, hard question to answer and you know, we always answer with more questions and I think that's the right way of attacking these problems.

Ben - WeHero: Yep, absolutely.

Andy - WeHero: Awesome. Thanks Ben. Appreciate the time. I'm look forward to our next conversation.

Ben - WeHero: Thanks Andy.