There’s a stunning statistic we’d like to share with you.
Charitable giving in the U.S. stands at 2% of GDP and has since we started measuring it in the 1970s.
That figure comes from one of uBack co-founder Kaitlin Reimann’s favorite TedTalks, by activist and fundraiser Dan Pallotta. The title: The way we think about charity is dead wrong.
In the talk, Pallotta makes the case that nonprofits — and the world in general — would benefit if they were allowed to behave like their for-profit counterparts: Incentivize talent with salaries that grow depending on the value people produce. Advertise and market liberally to broaden impact and drive fundraising dollars up. Grant themselves permission to take risks on new revenue ideas.
By not behaving like a for-profit company, nonprofits have been stuck in place for four decades, Pallotta says.
Given that, Pallotta argues for an overhaul in nonprofit behavior, making sure “overhead” is no longer a bad word and giving those organizations the freedom to think big.
We see a more immediate solution: increasing corporate giving.
In 2016, corporations contributed about $18 billion in charitable donations in the U.S. – just 5 percent of the $373 billion total. That number could be substantially higher—particularly when you examine the other problems plaguing the corporate giving space.
Employee engagement in corporate giving stands at about 9%. Some of the most successful companies when it comes to corporate giving hover around 22%. That still leaves a huge chunk of the employee population untapped and unengaged—and research shows creating a more engaged workforce can yield myriad benefits for a company, from better retention to increased productivity.
In addition to that damning 9%, there are also billions of dollars left on the table each year in corporate matching—as much as $10 billion, to be exact.
To put that in perspective, it’s estimated that it would take just $11 billion to solve our global fresh water crisis.
Bottom line: There is room for growth. Part of the solution lies in technology — creating solutions that make the giving process as easy as everything else in our lives has become. But another part is perspective. When you see the good that results from making corporate social responsibility a robust part of your corporate culture — both the societal and the internal impact — you will want to strengthen your commitment to changing the world.
We certainly did.
For more information about how uBack can streamline corporate giving, click here.
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