Employee resource group (ERG) software helps organizations create, manage, and scale employee communities centered around shared identities, experiences, interests, and causes. The best ERG management software makes it easier for employees to connect with colleagues, participate in related philanthropic events, access resources, and engage in meaningful conversations while giving administrators and ERG leaders the tools they need to oversee membership, communications, and program impact.

As employee resource groups become increasingly important to employee engagement, belonging, professional development, and corporate culture, many organizations are looking for technology that can support ERGs at scale and integrate with their corporate impact initiatives. The right platform should help employees discover relevant groups, simplify event management, enable effective communication, and provide measurement tools to demonstrate business and employee impact.

This article compares some of the leading CSR and employee engagement platforms that offer ERG management capabilities. Because this content comes from YourCause from Blackbaud, our own platform is included alongside other vendors. This comparison is based on publicly available information, third-party reviews, and customer feedback.

1. YourCause from Blackbaud

YourCause from Blackbaud provides comprehensive ERG management capabilities within its broader employee engagement and CSR platform. Organizations can create employee resource groups, manage memberships, promote events, share resources, and connect ERG activities with volunteering, giving, fundraising, and awareness campaigns through a unified experience. Employees can easily discover and join groups that align with their interests, identities, passions, and causes while participating in broader workplace impact initiatives.

“I geek out over YourCause and the tools it has given me to make my work life easier.” — Jacquelyn Hood, Crowe LLP

Pros

• Employees can easily discover, join, and engage with employee resource groups through a centralized employee experience.

• ERG leaders can manage dedicated community spaces to share updates, resources, announcements, and upcoming opportunities with members.

• Employee resource groups can manage volunteer events, fundraising initiatives, awareness campaigns, and community programs without requiring separate systems.

• Built-in reporting helps organizations measure membership growth, participation rates, event attendance, and engagement across groups.

• Organizations can connect ERGs directly to broader employee engagement and social impact initiatives, creating a more cohesive employee experience.

• Global capabilities support ERGs across regions with multilingual experiences and scalable governance.

Cons

• Organizations looking for a standalone ERG solution may find the broader CSR and employee engagement functionality more comprehensive than they require.

• The platform focuses on scalable best-practice functionality rather than highly customized one-off development.

Best For

YourCause is best suited for organizations that want to connect employee resource groups with volunteering, giving, fundraising, and broader employee engagement initiatives through a single intuitive platform.

2. Benevity

Benevity offers employee community functionality as part of its broader employee engagement and CSR platform. Organizations can use the platform to support employee participation across giving, volunteering, campaigns, and employee-led groups.

Pros

• Employees can participate in employee communities, giving programs, and volunteering opportunities through a single experience.

• ERG leaders can use engagement tools to promote events, campaigns, and participation initiatives.

• Organizations can connect ERG activity with fundraising, volunteering, and awareness efforts.

• Global capabilities support participation across multiple regions and employee populations.

Cons

• Administrators frequently report that routine configuration changes and updates can require additional support.

• Reporting on group performance and engagement may require additional modules or add-ons.

• Employees may experience inconsistencies across different engagement modules.

• Pricing is typically designed for large enterprises and may be difficult to justify for organizations focused primarily on ERG programs.

Best For

Benevity is suited for large scale enterprises looking to connect ERGs with social impact programs that don’t require too much configurability.

3. Deed, a Bonterra Company

Deed focuses on employee engagement and participation through a modern employee experience. Organizations can use the platform to support employee communities, social impact initiatives, and employee-led engagement activities. Bonterra’s acquisition of Deed has expanded the company’s engagement portfolio, though platform integration efforts are ongoing.

Pros

• Employees generally find the platform intuitive and easy to navigate.
• ERG leaders can quickly launch participation initiatives and awareness campaigns.
• The platform encourages employee participation through storytelling, campaigns, and engagement-focused experiences.
• Simple administration helps groups get started quickly with minimal setup requirements.

Cons

• Reporting on membership trends, participation, and long-term impact is less robust than enterprise-focused competitors.
• Organizations managing numerous ERGs across multiple regions may encounter scalability limitations.
• Integration between products within the broader Bonterra portfolio continues to evolve.
• Governance and administrative controls are less extensive than some enterprise-focused platforms.

Best For

Deed is a strong fit for organizations that prioritize employee experience and are comfortable with a provider currently going through tech stack integrations.

4. Submittable

Submittable, primarily a grantmaking solution, has expanded their product suite through acquisitions and offers functionality that can support employee resource groups within its Bright Funds platform, while the support for groups in their flagship CSR software is unclear.

Pros

• Organizations using Submittable for grants can use configurable workflows and forms to support employee participation initiatives.
• Administrators generally find the platform straightforward to manage.
• The platform can support certain engagement programs beyond traditional grantmaking use cases.

Cons

• Product experiences can feel fragmented due to multiple acquisitions.
• ERG-specific functionality is less mature than platforms built around employee engagement.
• Reporting and engagement analytics may lack consistency across modules.
• Organizations seeking advanced governance, membership management, and community-building capabilities may require additional solutions.

Best For

Submittable’s ERGs are best suited for organizations already using the platform and seeking light employee community functionality.

5. Groundswell

Groundswell is best known for employee giving and volunteering, with a focus on employee-led participation and grassroots engagement. The company recently expanded into ERG management with Groundswell Communities, a new solution that launched in beta in September 2026 and brings employee communities, chapters, events, and communications into the same platform as giving and volunteering.

Pros

• Modern, user-friendly experience that reduces barriers to participation.
• Employee-led engagement model aligns well with grassroots employee communities and initiatives.
• Community leaders can manage memberships, events, announcements, and resources without extensive administrative overhead.
• ERGs, giving, and volunteering are managed within a single employee experience.

Cons

• Communities is a very new product that is still in beta and has yet to establish a long-term track record.
• ERG management capabilities are less proven than those offered by more established platforms.
• Scalability for large, global ERG programs with complex governance requirements remains largely untested.
• ERG-specific reporting and analytics capabilities are still maturing.

Best For

Groundswell’s ERG technology is best suited for organizations looking for an easy-to-use but nascent and untested solution.

6. Millie

Millie focuses on employee engagement, workplace giving, and culture-building initiatives, offering a lightweight Groups tool that can help employees connect around shared interests and causes.

Pros

• User-friendly experience that makes it easy for employees to discover and join ERGs and affinity groups.
• Community leaders can manage memberships, share resources, and promote events from a centralized group page.
• Integrates ERG activities with broader giving, volunteering, and social impact initiatives.
• Slack integration helps employees find and join relevant communities within existing workflows.

Cons

• ERG functionality appears to focus on community engagement rather than comprehensive program administration.
• Advanced capabilities such as ERG budgeting, governance, leadership succession planning, and mature analytics are less prominent than in dedicated ERG platforms.
• Organizations managing large, global ERG portfolios may require more sophisticated reporting and oversight tools.
• Employee community features are not as extensive as those offered by vendors focused exclusively on ERG management.

Best For

Millie is best suited for organizations seeking accessible employee engagement tools with light employee community functionality.

Making the Right Decision

The best ERG management software depends on your organization’s goals, program maturity, and employee engagement strategy. Some organizations are primarily looking for a way to connect employees and manage community participation, while others need robust governance, reporting, event management, and integration with broader social impact initiatives.

When evaluating ERG software, consider the following questions:

• How easily can employees discover and join employee resource groups?
• Does the platform provide dedicated spaces for communication and resource sharing?
• Can ERG leaders manage events, campaigns, and member engagement without excessive administrative work?
• What reporting capabilities are available to measure participation and impact?
• Can ERGs connect with volunteering, fundraising, employee giving, and other engagement initiatives?
• Will the platform scale as your organization launches additional groups across different regions and business units?

Organizations that bring ERGs, volunteering, giving, fundraising, and employee engagement together in a unified platform can often create a more connected employee experience while reducing administrative complexity for program leaders.

Main Takeaways:

• Effective impact reporting helps corporations understand the reach and efficacy of their philanthropic budgets
• Corporations must balance their internal reporting needs with the realities of nonprofit bandwidths
• To report on the impact of your CSR programs effectively, you must establish clear metrics, utilize the right technology, and communicate results to internal stakeholders

In recent years, corporate philanthropy has rapidly evolved. While simple gestures of corporate social responsibility (CSR) were once sufficient to demonstrate to stakeholders that your organization is pursuing its mission with altruistic intent, modern initiatives now require deeper evaluation. You must be able to show that your CSR efforts, such as sponsorships and employee wellness programs, are producing a return on investment that aligns with your organization’s broader goals.

In this guide, we’ll unpack the importance of effective impact reporting before diving into the strategies you can use to demonstrate your program’s ROI to your stakeholders.

Why Effective Impact Reporting Matters

While corporations are not bound by the same compliance standards that nonprofits face—no need to worry about group exemptions or Form 990—producing detailed CSR reports is often a mandatory requirement depending on your corporate structure and local regulations. Establishing a reliable reporting cadence ensures you stay ahead of these requirements while improving internal operations.

Even if impact reporting is not explicitly required, however, measuring your program’s efficacy still offers many benefits, including:

• Helping corporate leadership understand the true reach and efficacy of their philanthropic budgets, supporting the business alignment.
• Fostering employee engagement by showing the impact they can have by getting involved in giving and volunteering initiatives.
• Increasing external brand trust through a verifiable commitment to social good.

Even the best CSR program may fail to generate desired results without proper reporting frameworks in place. Measure your impact consistently to ensure the longevity of your CSR efforts and to clearly guide your program’s future investments. Incorporating periodic audits of your reporting data can reveal hidden operational inefficiencies or simply offer encouraging progress data to inspire further engagement.

The Challenge of Mutually Aligned Goals

Establishing shared expectations between your organization and your nonprofit partners often presents a significant operational hurdle. You need definitive data to prove the value of your philanthropic investments, yet demanding excessive reporting strains the limited resources of charitable organizations.

Implementing principles of trust-based philanthropy bridges this gap. By focusing on transparent, two-way communication while simplifying and streamlining the paperwork of impact data collection, you can minimize the burdensome administrative duties of nonprofit partners while still capturing the core qualitative and quantitative impact data you need to satisfy internal stakeholders. Consider practices like unrestricted funding or offering support beyond the check (such as skills-based volunteering) to go even deeper in bolstering trust and extending the longevity of your corporate-nonprofit partnerships.

Prioritize open dialogues with your charitable partners to identify reporting metrics they already track. Try to align your corporate data needs with their existing measurement frameworks to build stronger, long-term partnerships and streamline the entire evaluation process.

Key Strategies For Impact Reporting

Establish Clear Metrics

Clear metrics are the foundation for impact reporting, guiding the rest of your measurement process. However, to evaluate the true impact of your corporate funding, you must gather meaningful data beyond simple metrics like total dollars donated.

To measure the actual social changes resulting from your CSR efforts:

• Define quantitative success: Track specific quantitative changes in the communities you support, such as the exact number of individuals who gain stable employment through a company-sponsored job training initiative. This can also include internal metrics, such as volunteer participation rates.

• Create standardized frameworks: Develop uniform reporting templates that make it easy to compare programmatic results across different departments, regional offices, and fiscal years.
• Align key performance indicators: Set mutually agreed-upon key performance indicators with nonprofit partners before funding is distributed, ensuring corporate expectations align with the receiving organization’s operational capacity.

Establishing baseline metrics early prevents stressful, last-minute data collection at the end of the fiscal year. Review these KPIs quarterly to ensure your initiatives remain on target and accurately reflect your evolving corporate mission.

Utilize Technology for Impact Reporting

Manual tracking is highly error-prone, making specialized platforms essential for accurate reporting. Adopting dedicated impact measurement software solutions streamlines data collection, reducing administrative burdens for both your corporate staff and the nonprofit team.

With the right tech, you can automatically track key metrics like volunteer hours, donations made, and project milestones. The Blackbaud Verified Network, for example, is a great tool that enables easy communication, impact data sharing, and faster donation processing from companies to charities.

When your tech is constantly collecting data, you can feel confident that the results of your impact measurement are accurate and up to date. When evaluating software vendors, consider how platforms integrate with your existing HR systems, and if the tool is capable of managing data across your giving, volunteering, and grantmaking programs. This creates a single source of truth for all corporate impact activity.

Communicate Results to Internal Stakeholders

Translating raw impact data into a compelling narrative for your workforce and executive team is vital for maintaining long-term funding approval. Without clear visibility into the results, internal support for your philanthropic investments will wane.

Use these tactics to communicate your results effectively:

• Publish annual impact summaries: Distribute comprehensive internal reports that highlight the exact community return on investment, solidifying the value of the broader CSR program.
• Showcase tangible community stories: Best practices for storytelling often involve pairing quantitative data with real-world success stories to give corporate boards and staff members a clear, human connection to their financial contributions. For example, a national tech firm might share a video interview of a student who directly benefited from their corporate education grant.
• Integrate employee feedback loops: Use the reported data as a baseline to survey employees on which philanthropic initiatives the corporation should prioritize, ensuring staff feel involved in the company’s giving strategy.

Consider hosting a brief internal presentation to debut your annual impact report. Walking through the data visually and fielding live questions reinforces transparency and trust among your staff.

Mutually Aligned Charity Partnerships

Robust, enduring CSR programs rely on clear, data-driven communication and a mutual respect for organizational capacities. Treating nonprofits as true partners rather than mere beneficiaries ensures long-term, scalable impact that elevates your company’s entire philanthropic portfolio, enabling more sustainable community support over time.

Main Takeaways:

• Grant application tracking becomes more difficult when information is spread across multiple systems and stakeholders.
• Applications often slow down between review stages, making workflow automation as important as the review itself.
• Limited visibility creates additional work in the form of status updates, meetings, and spreadsheet maintenance.
• Reporting is easier when data is captured consistently throughout the grant lifecycle rather than assembled after funding decisions have been made.

No one launches a grant program hoping to create another spreadsheet.

Yet spreadsheets, inboxes, shared folders, and manual tracking processes often become the unofficial system for managing applications as they move through review, approval, funding, and reporting.

As applications move through the grantmaking process, they accumulate supporting documents, reviewer comments, budgets, approval records, and applicant communications. Then, over time, grant teams end up spending just as much energy managing applications as they do evaluating them.

If any of this sounds familiar, you’re not alone. Many of the most common tracking challenges can be traced back to a handful of process bottlenecks: information, handoffs, context, visibility, and reporting. So, in this article, we’re going to break down a few practical ways you can use technology for immediate impact.

1. Keep Application Information in One Place

One of the fastest ways to improve grant application tracking is to reduce the number of places staff need to look for information.

For every grant application there are:

• supporting documents
• reviewer notes
• applicant communications
• budgets
• approval records
• reporting requirements

When those materials are stored across multiple systems, even basic questions require a significant amount of time and administrative work to answer.

A centralized grant management system helps eliminate those unnecessary searches by keeping application materials, supporting documents, review activity, and applicant information together in one location. Reviewers and administrators can then access the information they need immediately instead of tracking down the latest version of a document or searching through email chains.

2. Remove Manual Handoffs Wherever Possible

The moment an application arrives someone assigns it to a reviewer → the reviewer completes their assessment → the application moves to another round of approvals → more stakeholders weigh in → eventually a decision is made.

Now, none of those steps are inherently difficult, but managing them manually often creates delays.

Workflow automation, on the other hand, can reduce many of these manual handoffs by routing applications automatically based on predefined criteria such as funding amount, geography, program type, or application responses. Approval paths can then be standardized so that every application follows the appropriate grant approval workflow and review process without requiring staff intervention at every step.

As programs scale, reducing these manual handoffs not only accelerates processing times but also improves consistency by ensuring applications move through the same workflow regardless of volume.

3. Give Reviewers Context Before They Start Reviewing

Every review creates new information that needs to be tracked, including reviewer comments, scoring decisions, recommendations, supporting documentation, and approval notes.

The more time reviewers spend searching through lengthy applications and attachments, the longer applications remain in the review stage and the more difficult it becomes to maintain visibility across the process.

This challenge often becomes even more noticeable as application volumes increase. Even small delays at the individual application level can compound across dozens or hundreds of submissions, creating bottlenecks that affect the overall timeline and make it harder for grant teams to predict when decisions will be made.

Providing reviewers with key information at the start of the review process can help applications move forward more efficiently. For example, AI Application Summaries can surface project objectives, requested funding, and program alignment before formal review begins, helping reviewers quickly understand the application without searching through multiple documents.

When reviewers can access the most relevant information immediately, applications spend less time waiting in review and grant teams gain a clearer view of where each submission stands.

4. Replace Spreadsheet Tracking with Real-Time Visibility

At some point, every grant team has experienced some version of the same question:

“Where does this application stand?”

In this moment, a grant maker can opt to:
a) Set up a follow-up meeting to discuss

b) Send a Teams message to a reviewer and wait for a response

c) Open the latest tracking spreadsheet (only to realize it’s no longer the latest tracking spreadsheet)

Or d) Pull up a dashboard in their grantmaking platform to see exactly where the application sits in the review process in seconds.

The irony is that spreadsheets and meetings efforts are all intended to make information easier to find, yet they often create more information to maintain.

Dashboards and real-time application tracking, however, allow stakeholders to see progress for themselves, reducing the need for manual updates while giving grant teams a clearer view of where applications may be slowing down.

5. Capture Reporting Data as You Go

Many organizations treat reporting as a task that happens after funding decisions have been made. In reality, the effort required to produce reports is largely determined by how information is captured throughout the application process.

When application data, review outcomes, budgets, awards, payments, and outcomes are collected consistently from the beginning, much of the work needed for reporting has already been completed. Teams can access then program insights more quickly because they are working with data that has been structured and maintained throughout the grant lifecycle rather than assembled after the fact.

Ultimately, capturing reporting-ready data from the start, not only reduces the administrative effort required to produce board reports, funding summaries, and program performance analyses, but also helps organizations maintain a clearer connection between applications, awards, payments, and outcomes.

Simplifying Grant Application Tracking Starts with Reducing Administrative Work

The short version is, grant application tracking becomes more manageable when organizations focus on eliminating unnecessary complexity. Using grant management software to centralize information, reduce manual handoffs, provide reviewers with better context, improve visibility, and capture consistent data throughout the grant lifecycle can make applications easier to manage from submission through reporting.

Together, these small changes can help grant teams spend less time managing the application process and more time supporting applicants, making funding decisions, and overseeing active grants.

Main Takeaways:

• Highlighting CSR efforts early in recruitment can attract purpose-driven candidates.
• Hands-on CSR programs enable employees to feel more connected to your organization.
• Position CSR programs as a notable benefit of employment and list them in the perks your business offers.
• Employee engagement software can help new employees get involved with CSR early in their employment.

Today, employees expect more from corporations. They want to work for businesses committed to making a tangible social impact. As such, corporate social responsibility (CSR) programs have evolved from a nice-to-have to a potentially deciding factor for many socially minded candidates.

Fortunately, you can meet job seekers where they’re at by featuring your business’s CSR initiatives in your hiring process. In this guide, we’ll share tips for how you can showcase your programs to boost recruitment and offer acceptance rates.

1. Start discussing CSR initiatives early.

Waiting until the final interview stage to mention your CSR programs is always a mistake. Discussing these programs early can increase candidates’ interest and give them an opportunity to discuss how their values align with your business’s.

Advise your recruitment teams to include CSR in your hiring process from the very beginning by:

• Revamping job descriptions: Add a brief statement about your organization’s values and commitment to social good impact into your job descriptions to catch candidates’ attention. For example, you might share your business’s commitment to carbon neutrality or your dedication to uplifting your local community.
• Including CSR initiatives when discussing perks and benefits: CSR programs, such as volunteer grants and matching gifts, are benefits and can be considered as part of a holistic compensation package, as they are direct value-adds to the employee experience. Whenever you discuss benefits, ensure you include your CSR programs in the conversation.
• Showcasing company culture: Provide candidates with examples of past CSR initiatives. For instance, in a conversation about company culture, you might discuss a team volunteer day you organized with a local nonprofit or share how a group of employees volunteered together to maximize your nonprofit’s volunteer grants program.

Use conversations about CSR programs to both highlight that you offer these initiatives and move the hiring process forward. For example, you might ask candidates what types of programs interest them as an opportunity for them to discuss their values and help them determine if they’re a good cultural fit for your organization.

2. Highlight employee participation and incentives.

While all types of CSR programs can motivate candidates to join your organization, many are most excited about hands-on initiatives that let employees get involved. Communicating these perks emphasizes the value your business provides employees and also encourages them to envision themselves as part of your team.

While discussing CSR with candidates, ensure that you:

• Highlight direct engagement opportunities: If you have any programs that involve employee participation, highlight them. This includes the following popular CSR programs: volunteer grants, matching gifts, and volunteer time off.
• Address current participation rates: Be transparent about how much your current staff participates in your CSR program. This can help set expectations, while also giving you an opportunity to discuss your efforts to continually improve your CSR initiatives.
• Discuss any participation incentives: If you provide any incentives in exchange for program participation, share them with candidates to emphasize how your business can support their interest in giving back. For example, you might explain how your matching gift program gives employees the freedom to support the causes they care about or how your volunteer time off policy means that your employees have more paid time off than average.

If your hiring process includes peer interviews, encourage your current staff to discuss their experiences participating in your CSR programs. This provides prospective hires with an authentic view into what it’s actually like to get involved with your initiatives.

3. Emphasize community impact.

Employees want to know that the work they do is supporting a good cause. Employees feel more connected to their workplaces when their employers show that they care about the same causes they do. Even more important is moving beyond outputs to the outcomes of your social impact programs.

You can accomplish this during the hiring process by explaining exactly how your programs benefit your community. Share specific examples and impact measurement statistics that show off your CSR initiatives’ achievements. For example, you might share how many total hours employees volunteered last year or describe a specific program your business helped a nonprofit launch.

4. Make getting involved easy.

A common mistake many CSR programs make is making getting involved needlessly complex or challenging. Prevent this and encourage long-term involvement by getting new hires started with your CSR initiatives as soon as possible.

You can help your new team members start participating in CSR immediately by:

• Leveraging employee engagement tools: Teach new employees how to use any engagement or CSR tools they will interface with, such as showing them how to search your CSR platform’s database of verified nonprofits to find organizations to support. Ensure new hires are enrolled and onboarded onto any internal CSR platforms during the first week to encourage engagement early.
• Planning early engagement opportunities: Schedule events and activities related to CSR early in a new hire’s tenure. For example, you might schedule a corporate volunteer day as a team-building exercise immediately after onboarding several new hires to get them involved in CSR.
• Communicating programs clearly: New hires will have a lot of questions when they join your business, and details about your CSR offerings might slip through the cracks. Have documentation about all of your programs readily available in your employee handbook, so they can confirm specific details at any time.

The easier and faster it is to get involved in CSR, the more likely employees are to engage long-term. This approach makes CSR a routine part of employees’ work life, boosting participation rates and even encouraging others to get involved.

By Nathan Froelich, Global Head of YourCause from Blackbaud

I’ve spent much of my career working with corporate giving programs, including running them myself before joining Blackbaud.

When I first entered the space, I was surprised by how much complexity existed behind what seems like a straightforward process: an employee makes a donation, and a nonprofit receives it.

The reality is that a lot happens in between.

Funds move through multiple systems. Compliance requirements continue to evolve. Employees and nonprofits expect more visibility than ever before. And the pressure on program leaders to deliver a seamless experience keeps growing.

That’s why I believe the conversation around workplace giving is changing.

Historically, many organizations focused on participation rates, matching gift utilization, and dollars donated. Those metrics still matter. But increasingly, the organizations that are getting ahead are asking different questions. They’re looking beyond engagement to understand whether their programs are equipped for the future.

If I were evaluating a giving program today, these are the three questions I’d be asking.

1. How quickly and reliably do funds reach nonprofits and can you prove it?

Speed has become one of the most important indicators of program health. Employees expect their donations to create impact quickly, especially during disaster response efforts or urgent community needs. Nonprofits need access to funding when it matters most, not weeks or months later.

What I often encourage organizations to examine is not just how long the process takes overall, but how money actually moves through the system.

• Who receives the funds first?
• What happens next?
• Where are delays most likely to occur?
• How is success measured?

If you don’t have visibility into those answers, it’s difficult to improve the experience for employees or nonprofits.

The best program leaders I work with treat speed as more than an operational metric. They see it as a trust metric.

2. Can every stakeholder clearly see where funds are and what happens next?

Transparency has become a requirement, not a nice-to-have.

Employees want confidence that their donations are moving through the process as expected. Nonprofits want visibility into incoming funds and donor information. Program administrators want to spend less time answering questions and more time improving outcomes.

When transparency is lacking, everyone feels it.

• Employees wonder whether their donation arrived.
• Nonprofits spend time tracking down information.
• Program teams find themselves managing avoidable escalations.

One exercise I often recommend is mapping the donation journey from three different perspectives: the employee, the nonprofit, and the administrator.

Can each stakeholder easily answer the question, “What’s happening with this donation right now?”

If not, there’s usually an opportunity to strengthen the program experience.

3. Is your program designed to adapt to regulatory change or react to it?

This is the question I believe deserves the most attention right now.

The regulatory environment surrounding charitable giving continues to evolve. We’ve seen changes at the federal level, state-level legislation emerge in places like California, and increasing complexity around privacy, reporting, and eligibility requirements.

The challenge isn’t simply understanding a single piece of legislation. The challenge is building a program that can adapt as new requirements inevitably emerge.

That’s why I encourage giving program leaders to build strong relationships with the teams already thinking about these issues inside their organizations. Your tax, legal, compliance, privacy, and finance teams can be valuable partners in ensuring your program remains aligned with a changing landscape.

The most resilient programs aren’t reacting to every new development. They’re building processes that allow them to respond confidently when change occurs.

A Final Thought

The workplace giving landscape is being reshaped by three forces: increasing expectations around speed, growing demands for transparency, and continued regulatory change.

I don’t believe this is something organizations should view as a challenge alone – it’s an opportunity.

An opportunity to evaluate how giving programs operate, strengthen trust with employees and nonprofits, and ensure those programs are built for what’s next.

So if you’re responsible for a corporate giving program, I’d encourage you to start with three simple questions:

• How quickly and reliably do funds reach nonprofits, and can you prove it?
• Can every stakeholder clearly see where funds are and what happens next?
• Is your program designed to adapt to regulatory change, or react to it?

The answers may tell you more about the future readiness of your program than any participation metric ever could.

Main Takeaways

• CSR teams are gaining visibility and strategic influence across their organizations.

• The demand to measure impact and demonstrate business value continues to increase.

• AI adoption has become nearly universal, helping teams improve efficiency and scale their work.

• Lean CSR teams are managing growing responsibilities, contributing to rising burnout and resource pressures.

Corporate social impact teams are being asked to do more than ever before. They are navigating increased visibility with leadership, adapting to a changing external landscape, embracing new technologies, and facing growing expectations around impact measurement and accountability.

The latest 7th Annual CSR Insights Survey from the Association of Corporate Citizenship Professionals (ACCP) and YourCause from Blackbaud offers a detailed look at how the profession continues to evolve. The survey gathered responses from 120 companies representing approximately $1 billion in community investment, providing a valuable snapshot of the state of corporate social impact in 2026.

The findings reveal a field that has become more strategically integrated within organizations but is also facing significant resource and measurement challenges. Here are seven trends every CSR leader should be watching.

1. CSR Has Never Been More Visible Inside the Organization

One of the strongest findings from this year’s survey is the growing visibility of CSR within companies. Eighty-three percent of respondents reported increased visibility across their organization, up substantially from previous years. At the same time, 63% reported growing pressure to make the business case for CSR, while 66% experienced increased demand to measure impact.

This reflects an important shift in how corporate social impact programs are viewed. CSR is increasingly seen as a strategic business function that supports employee engagement, community investment, reputation, and business goals.

For CSR leaders, increased visibility creates new opportunities to influence decision-making. However, it also raises expectations around demonstrating value, outcomes, and alignment with broader organizational priorities.

2. The Demand for Impact Measurement Continues to Grow

As expectations rise, many teams are facing a measurement challenge.

For the first time, the survey asked respondents about their confidence in measuring impact and making the business case for their work. While 44% described themselves as confident and 36% as slightly confident, only 13% reported being very confident.

The results highlight a gap between what organizations expect from CSR teams and the tools, resources, and frameworks available to support those expectations.

This is particularly important as executives increasingly look for evidence that CSR initiatives contribute to business priorities such as employee engagement, talent attraction and retention, community relationships, and corporate reputation.

Organizations that invest in stronger measurement capabilities, reporting tools, and data-driven decision-making will likely be better positioned to demonstrate impact and secure future investment.

3. Business Alignment Is Reshaping the CSR Function

If there is one theme that runs throughout the survey, it is alignment.

CSR teams are increasingly working across departments and connecting their strategies to organizational goals. According to the survey, HR saw the largest increase in cross-functional integration at 42%, followed by Legal at 33% and ESG initiatives at 29%.

The findings suggest that corporate social impact is becoming more embedded across the enterprise rather than operating as a standalone function.

The survey also observed a growing shift toward “community investment” language and other investment-oriented terminology. This evolution reflects how many organizations are positioning social impact efforts as strategic investments tied to business outcomes rather than purely philanthropic activities.

For CSR professionals, stronger integration can help elevate programs, build executive support, and create deeper partnerships across the organization.

4. AI Adoption Has Accelerated at an Unprecedented Pace

Artificial intelligence has rapidly moved from experimentation to mainstream adoption within CSR.

According to the survey, 93% of respondents reported using AI in some capacity in 2026, compared with 53% just two years earlier. Additionally, 73% reported having formal AI guidance or policies in place.

Today, teams are primarily using AI for communications, storytelling, productivity, and efficiency-related tasks. Adoption for more advanced use cases such as grant analysis, benchmarking, and strategic decision support remains relatively limited.

The rapid growth of AI reflects a broader desire to improve efficiency as teams manage increasing responsibilities with limited additional resources. Looking ahead, many organizations may find opportunities to expand AI use beyond content creation and administrative support toward deeper impact analysis, reporting, and program optimization.

5. Lean Teams Continue to Manage Expanding Responsibilities

Despite growing visibility and broader responsibilities, most CSR teams remain relatively small.

The survey found that 55% of CSR teams consist of just two to five people, regardless of company size. At the same time, 73% of respondents said their teams have taken on additional responsibilities during the past year.

Many teams are managing employee volunteer programs, grantmaking, employee giving initiatives, ESG-related work, ERGs, community partnerships, and impact reporting simultaneously.

As workloads increase, resource constraints are becoming more apparent. When asked what resources they need most, respondents most frequently identified additional financial resources for community investment, stronger executive support, better alignment between business and social impact goals, and improved impact measurement capabilities.

The findings underscore a reality many CSR professionals already know firsthand: expectations are growing faster than team capacity.

6. Burnout Has Reached a Record High

One of the more concerning findings in this year’s survey is the sharp increase in burnout.

Sixty-four percent of respondents reported burnout as a result of increased responsibilities, up from 39% in 2025. The survey also found increases in longer working hours and fear of not meeting expectations.

This trend comes at a time when CSR professionals are balancing growing compliance requirements, expanded reporting expectations, technology adoption, and increased internal visibility.

While increased influence and executive attention can be positive developments, organizations must also consider how to sustainably support the people responsible for delivering these programs.

Investment in staffing, technology, leadership support, and operational efficiency will be critical to preventing burnout from becoming a long-term challenge for the profession.

7. Corporate Giving Priorities Continue to Evolve

The survey also highlights shifts in where companies are focusing their community investments.

Food insecurity emerged as the top issue area for 2026, cited by 48% of respondents, followed closely by K-12 education (47%) and workforce development (44%). STEM-related investments also continued to rise.

These priorities reflect growing emphasis on areas that directly impact communities while also connecting to workforce readiness, economic mobility, and talent development.

At the same time, environmental sustainability showed signs of stabilization after declines in previous years, with 43% of organizations identifying it as a priority area. ESG integration also increased, suggesting many organizations continue to view sustainability as an important component of their overall social impact strategy.

For CSR leaders, these evolving priorities reinforce the importance of regularly evaluating community investments to ensure they align with both organizational goals and evolving community needs.

Looking Ahead

The 2026 survey paints the picture of a profession that has successfully established itself as a strategic business function. CSR teams have greater visibility, deeper organizational integration, and growing influence on business conversations than ever before.

At the same time, the findings reveal persistent challenges. Teams are being asked to deliver more with limited resources, measurement expectations continue to rise, and burnout has reached concerning levels. Meanwhile, AI adoption is creating new opportunities to improve efficiency and scale impact.

The opportunity for corporate social impact leaders now is not simply to prove the value of their work. It is to build the infrastructure, measurement capabilities, and organizational support needed to sustain that value over the long term.

To explore all of the findings, download the full 7th Annual CSR Insights Survey today.

Main Takeaways:

• Corporate philanthropy succeeds when giving reinforces how a company operates, makes decisions, treats employees, and engages with stakeholders.
• Most philanthropy failures occur when visibility, public perception, or speed are prioritized ahead of impact, accountability, and stakeholder input.
• Strong programs align external commitments with internal actions, involve stakeholders early, measure outcomes, and report progress transparently.
• Stakeholders evaluate philanthropy alongside business practices, making consistency one of the strongest drivers of trust and credibility.

When it comes to corporate philanthropy, the formula is often seen as quite simple:

Donate to a good cause → support communities → engage stakeholders → reap business benefits.

What could go wrong?

With 71% of consumers citing trust as a deciding factor in whether they buy from or boycott a brand, corporate philanthropy can strengthen employee engagement, community relationships, and brand perception. But those outcomes largely depend on whether people see a company’s efforts as genuine.

Problems typically arise when philanthropic commitments feel disconnected from a company’s broader values, decisions, or behavior. Yes, donations might still reach a worthy cause, but when charitable claims do not align with what stakeholders observe about a company, philanthropy can amplify inconsistencies rather than repairing them. That perceived hypocrisy can then generate negative emotions, unfavorable attitudes, and negative consumer behavior toward the company.

So, how do you avoid this?

The following six mistakes explain where corporate philanthropy often goes wrong and what leading programs do differently.

1. Greenwashing

Greenwashing occurs when a company makes environmental claims that are false, exaggerated, vague, or unsupported by evidence. Similarly, there is also greenrinsing, where organizations scale back, delay, revise, or abandon environmental commitments after publicly promoting them.

While greenwashing overstates progress, greenrinsing undermines confidence that stated commitments will be followed through. Both practices, however, create the same underlying issue: a gap between what a company communicates and what stakeholders observe in reality.

A recent survey spanning 13 countries in North America, Europe, and the Asia-Pacific found that 62% of people believe companies are greenwashing, which is up from 33% in 2023, and 52% in 2024. Studies further show that businesses suspected of greenwashing might face increased skepticism, confusion, and perceived risk while reducing trust, purchase intent, brand credibility, and negative word of mouth.

The risk for CSR leaders is that environmental philanthropy can draw more attention to the parts of the business the company is not discussing. A prominent campaign creates expectations that environmental responsibility extends to every facet of the business; and if the evidence does not support that expectation, the campaign gives stakeholders a clearer inconsistency to challenge.

Successful Corporate Philanthropy in Action

Patagonia is a strong example of how a company can reduce that risk by aligning environmental philanthropy with business operations.

In 2022, founder Yvon Chouinard and his family transferred ownership of the company to the Patagonia Purpose Trust and Holdfast Collective, which directs excess profits toward environmental causes. The move extended environmental priorities beyond philanthropy and into the company’s governance structure, making it harder to separate Patagonia’s environmental commitments from the decisions that shape how the company operates.

In its latest fiscal year, FY2025, the company repaired nearly 175,000 products and donated $14.7 million to more than 800 nonprofits through its 1% for the Planet program while also disclosing 182,646 metric tons of CO₂e emissions and acknowledging that approximately 85% of its products still lack an end-of-life solution.

Rather than highlighting environmental giving while remaining silent about larger environmental challenges, Patagonia reports achievements and shortcomings together. This approach has contributed to Patagonia’s reputation for authenticity among environmentally conscious consumers and demonstrate that sustainability commitments can support long-term business growth alongside environmental impact. The lesson, then, for CSR professionals is not to avoid communicating environmental giving, but to ensure those communications can withstand comparison with the rest of the company’s environmental record.

2. Treating Philanthropy like a PR Campaign

Corporate philanthropy becomes a PR exercise when the communication plan is more developed than the impact plan. Common warning signs include:

• announcing donations before defining intended outcomes
• measuring success through media impressions rather than community results
• promoting a campaign without reporting what changed after the funding was distributed

A Cambridge study found that companies most often increase philanthropic activity after reputational crises. But this strategy has proven ineffective at rebuilding corporate reputation. Consumers often viewed post-controversy donations as superficial virtue signaling rather than evidence of a meaningful change in behavior.

The thing to remember is, publicity is not inherently the problem. Companies need visibility to attract participants, communicate opportunities, and report results. Risk emerges when media coverage becomes the objective and the company can’t connect its public narrative to a sustained commitment or measurable result.

Successful Corporate Philanthropy in Action

REI’s #OptOutside campaign illustrates the difference between a philanthropy initiative designed for publicity and one backed by operational commitment. In 2015, REI closed its stores on Black Friday, suspended online order processing, and gave employees a paid day off to go outside. The company then repeated the policy annually, making it a permanent part of its operations in 2022.

While Black Friday is one of the biggest revenue-generating periods of the year, the campaign generated substantial visibility, including a reported 7,000% increase in social impressions and more than 2.7 billion media impressions during its first 24 hours.

Over its first decade, #OptOutside provided employees with 150,000 paid days off and more than 1.2 million hours outdoors, while attracting participation from more than 7,000 parks, nonprofits, public agencies, and outdoor brands.

Unlike companies that treat philanthropy as a communications exercise, REI changed how it operates, creating a clear connection between its public message and its actions. REI then earned attention through that decision. In this case, the communications campaign was a mode that amplified that decision; it did not substitute for it. CSR leaders looking to enact similar strategies should therefore evaluate visibility as an amplifier of an existing commitment, not as evidence that the commitment is meaningful.

3. Tone-Deaf Campaigns

Imagine a company launches a mental health awareness campaign after seeing growing public concerns about employee burnout. Leadership invests heavily in marketing materials, social content, and community partnerships promoting wellness resources; however, employees quickly point out that the company has not addressed the workplace issues contributing to burnout in the first place.

Many tone-deaf philanthropy campaigns follow the same pattern. Organizations identify a cause, develop a solution internally, and only later engage the people they hope to support. In the end, even if a CSR team creates a well-funded, professionally executed campaign/program, the underlying concern may remain unresolved if the intended participants, beneficiaries, or community partners are brought in after the central decisions have already been made.

Successful Corporate Philanthropy in Action

Bombas, on the other hand, took a different approach. Bombas was founded after its founders learned that socks were the most requested item in homeless shelters. Rather than deciding what communities needed and building a campaign around that assumption, the company started by understanding a specific problem identified by the people it hoped to support.

That insight shaped the company’s business model. For every item purchased, Bombas donates an essential clothing item, including socks, underwear, and t-shirts, through a network of nonprofit partners serving people experiencing homelessness. Since 2013, the company reports donating more than 100 million items.

Unlike our fictitious example, Bombas didn’t define the problem internally and ask communities to embrace the solution. Instead, the company built its giving strategy around an existing need identified by those communities themselves. The philanthropic commitment was then reinforced through a long-term operational model rather than a short-term awareness campaign.

The takeaway for CSR leaders is that stakeholder engagement should happen before solutions are designed. The earlier communities help shape a program, the more likely it is to address real needs (and the less likely it is to miss the mark).

4. Excluding Employees from Program Design

Company-selected causes can simplify program administration, but they also restrict participation to employees whose interests and circumstances match the options provided.

Employees may not choose to participate in programs that aren’t aligned with their preferred causes, or in volunteer events that didn’t take into account their schedules or accessibilities. A program can therefore offer meaningful opportunities and still reach only a small portion of the workforce because participation was designed around a narrow set of preferences.

Our internal data shows that companies with Employee Resource Groups (ERGs) see higher engagement as these groups can actively partner with CSR teams to develop social impact initiatives that align with employee passions. These findings suggest that employees are more likely to participate when opportunities are accessible through different contribution methods and embedded within trusted, peer-led communities rather than defined exclusively through top-down corporate priorities.

Successful Corporate Philanthropy in Action

Now, let’s zoom in on Ryan’s employee giving program. Ryan designed its employee impact program around flexibility and choice rather than a limited set of company-selected causes.

Over time, the company moved away from directing employees where to give and volunteer and instead focused on supporting the causes that mattered to them. Employees can nominate charities for matching, participate in donation matching, earn grants through volunteering and board service, and receive paid time to volunteer.

The approach has since produced 93% participation rate in its social impact programs, with the company reporting significant increases in both giving engagement and total donations.

While top-down programs ask employees to support causes selected by the company, Ryan’s model allows employees to support causes they already care about. By expanding both the number of organizations employees could support and the ways they could participate, the company created more opportunities for employees to engage on their own terms.

5. Selecting Partners Without Examining Strategic and Operational Fit

Not every nonprofit partnership is a good fit simply because both organizations care about the same issue.

A company’s mission, resources, geographic footprint, employee interests, and desired outcomes all influence whether a partnership will succeed. On the nonprofit side, delivery capacity, local expertise, safeguarding policies, funding requirements, reporting capabilities, and the ability to scale affect whether an organization can achieve the intended impact.

A partnership may look compelling but still struggle to deliver results if the nonprofit lacks the necessary infrastructure, operates in different target communities, or requires a different level of funding and support than the company is prepared to provide.

Research suggests that corporate-nonprofit partnerships influence stakeholder perceptions of both organizations, including perceived credibility, competence, and willingness to engage. Therefore, before entering a partnership, a company must first determine whether the partner can deliver the intended intervention, in the intended communities, with the available funding, reporting expectations, and implementation support.

Successful Corporate Philanthropy in Action

The LEGO Foundation’s partnership with the International Rescue Committee demonstrates what strategic and operational alignment looks like in practice.

The LEGO Foundation focuses on learning and child development through play. The IRC specializes in delivering education and support programs in crisis-affected communities. The organizations built their partnership around a specific intervention designed for children living in conflict and displacement settings.

Together, they have reached more than seven million children across 12 countries. In 2026, the organizations announced an additional $97 million, five-year investment intended to reach more than five million children across East Africa and the Middle East. Beyond funding levels, the partnership also saw positive outcomes including improvements in literacy, numeracy, social-emotional development, empathy, and emotional regulation among participating children in Ethiopia.

This partnership is successful because the funding, expertise, delivery model, and intended outcomes reinforce one another. Rather than funding a broadly related cause, both organizations agreed on who they wanted to help, how they would help them, and how success would be measured. That alignment makes it possible to evaluate whether the partnership is creating meaningful results, not simply confirm that funding was distributed.

6. Measuring Activity Instead of Impact

Most corporate philanthropy programs can tell you how much money was donated, how many volunteer hours were logged, or how many employees participated. Those figures measure activity, but they do not explain what changed because of the program.

Moving from activity reporting to impact measurement requires more than adding outcome questions to an annual report. Companies first need consistent data, shared definitions, reliable validation processes, and enough visibility across programs and regions to determine what can be compared.

Without that foundation, CSR teams may struggle to identify changes in participation, compare results across markets, assess whether resources are reaching intended groups, or give leadership reliable information about program performance. Reporting can become slower and more resource-intensive while still producing data that cannot be compared confidently.

Successful Corporate Philanthropy in Action

As Capgemini’s global social impact efforts expanded across more than 50 countries, impact measurement relied on regional databases, spreadsheets, Microsoft Forms, and local systems with limited standardization. The company identified several resulting challenges, including difficulty measuring engagement, comparing participation across countries, sharing best practices, and producing reliable, audit-ready reporting.

In 2024, Capgemini moved to a unified global system for volunteering, grantmaking, reporting, and data validation. In its first full year of reporting, the company recorded 102,478.75 volunteer hours, more than 19,800 unique volunteers, and 310 nonprofit organizations supported. The company also expanded reporting coverage from 15 countries to 23 countries without increasing resources.

Capgemini’s experience highlights a common challenge in corporate philanthropy: organizations often struggle to measure impact because the underlying data is fragmented across systems, regions, and reporting processes. Before companies can demonstrate outcomes externally, they need confidence in the information they’re using internally.

Effective programs therefore treat measurement as a design requirement rather than an exercise completed after the work is finished. Intended outcomes, required data, reporting responsibilities, and validation standards should be established before programs launch. Otherwise, teams may collect large amounts of activity data without being able to answer the more important question: what changed because of the investment?

What the Strongest Corporate Philanthropy Programs Do Differently

• Integrate giving into business decisions, governance, and operations.
• Prioritize impact over visibility.
• Involve stakeholders before defining solutions.
• Give employees flexibility and choice.
• Align external commitments with internal practices.
• Choose partners for execution capability, not just mission alignment.
• Build measurement and reporting into programs from the start.
• Be transparent about both progress and remaining challenges.

The common thread across all of these practices is consistency. Strong corporate philanthropy programs do not ask stakeholders to evaluate giving in isolation. They ensure that donations, partnerships, employee programs, public commitments, and business decisions reinforce one another.

Effective corporate philanthropy is therefore less about the size of a donation and more about the quality of the strategy behind it. The strongest programs align commitments with action, making it easier for stakeholders to see not just what a company supports, but how that support shows up across the business.

Sources:

1. https://globemediagroup.ca/the-story-behind-nikes-dream-crazy-campaign/
2. https://www.emerald.com/ccij/article-abstract/27/2/205/68840/The-impact-of-CSR-on-nonprofit-outcomes-how-the?redirectedFrom=fulltext
3. https://www.patagonia.com/progress-report/
4. https://www.patagonia.ca/ownership/
5. https://www.rei.com/newsroom/article/10-years-of-optoutside-rei-co-op-continues-to-close-its-doors-on-black-friday
6. https://www.edelman.com/work/rei-opt-outside
7. https://www.rescue.org/IRC-and-LEGO-Foundation
8. https://www.fastcompany.com/40445016/how-one-sock-brand-is-helping-startups-step-up-their-social-good-game

At some point, every CSR leader will be asked to justify a program, defend a budget, explain participation rates, or demonstrate business value.

Sometimes those questions come from a CFO reviewing investments. Other times they come from a CHRO evaluating employee experience priorities or an executive team deciding where to allocate
resources.

The challenge is that most executive teams already agree that supporting communities matter. What
they want to understand, is whether a workplace giving program creates meaningful value for employees, communities, and the organization itself.

This guide is designed to help you prepare for those conversations.

Main Takeaways:

• Workplace giving can create value across multiple business priorities at once, including employee engagement, retention, recruitment, brand reputation, and community impact.
• Employees increasingly expect opportunities to create social impact through work, and program design plays a significant role in participation rates.
• The business case extends beyond philanthropy, with research linking purpose-driven strategies to stronger talent outcomes, customer loyalty, and business performance.
• Success should be measured across participation, impact, company investment, and business value rather than donations alone.

Why Should We Invest in Workplace Giving?

Most employee programs are designed to address a single organizational priority. A learning and development program helps employees build skills. A wellness program supports employee wellbeing. A recognition program strengthens culture.

Workplace giving, however, allows organizations to create value in multiple areas through a single investment. It reaches employees through causes they care about, helps organizations strengthen relationships with talent and consumers through shared values, and supports the community by directing much needed resources to nonprofits.

It’s also one of the most established forms of employee social impact with approximately $5 billion donated through workplace giving each year in North America, and 50% of companies reporting that they contribute to charitable causes because it builds strong communities and business success.

For organizations with limited budgets and competing priorities, workplace giving offers a practical way to generate value both inside and outside the organization rather than pursuing those goals through separate initiatives.

What Business Value Does Workplace Giving Actually Create?

One of the challenges with evaluating workplace giving is that many of its benefits can feel intangible at first glance. However, a growing body of research suggests that giving programs can create measurable outcomes across talent, brand, business performance, and community impact.

Improved Employee Engagement

Workplace giving gives employees a tangible way to connect with the causes and communities they care about. Rather than simply hearing about a company’s values, employees have an opportunity to actively participate in them. And when they can see how their actions contribute to society and the communities around them, they are more likely to feel connected to both their work and the organization behind it.

In turn, employees with a strong sense of purpose at work are more than 5x as likely to be engaged in their jobs as those with a low sense of purpose – which is particularly relevant at a time when global engagement is at a 5-year low, costing businesses an estimated $10 trillion in lost productivity every year.

Stronger Retention

Employee turnover is expensive, making retention one of the clearest ways to connect giving programs to ROI.

Today, 51% of U.S. employees are watching for or actively seeking a new job, while 2 in 10 Gen Z employees are changing jobs or industries to better align with their values. Corporate giving helps strengthen that alignment by providing employees with a meaningful way to support causes and communities they care about. In fact, nearly 8 in 10 employees at companies with a workplace giving program say their company’s values do align with their personal values, compared to 56% at organizations without one.

Of course, rarely the sole reason employees stay; but values alignment can play an important role in retention.

Among younger employees, 35% of Millennial and Gen Z employees actually cite their workplace giving program as a factor in their decision to stay – and with the average cost of turnover reaching $45,236 per employee (up $10,000 from the previous year), improving retention by even a modest amount can result in significant cost savings, particularly for larger companies.

Example Retention Value by Workforce Size

The following estimates illustrate the potential savings if workplace giving contributes to a 0.5 percentage point improvement in employee retention. Actual outcomes will vary based on turnover rates, compensation levels, industry, and workforce composition.

Estimated savings are calculated using the rounded number of employees retained multiplied by the average turnover cost of $45,236 per employee. This model becomes stronger when companies use their own turnover rate, their own replacement cost, and internal retention data.

How to Calculate Your Retention ROI

To put retention value into terms an executive team can evaluate, companies can use their own workforce data to estimate how much they could save if a giving program contributes to lower turnover.

Companies with strong CSR programs that include giving have been associated with 31% lower turnover rates, so organizations can use 31% as an illustrative reduction when modeling potential savings.

Employee headcount

× company annual turnover rate

× 31% potential reduction in turnover

× average cost per turnover

= estimated savings

Talent Recruitment and Attraction

Workplace giving can also strengthen a company’s ability to attract talent. For example, 75% of Gen Z employees consider an organization’s societal impact before accepting a position, and 44% of Gen Z employees and 40% of millennials have turned down employers that did not align with their values.

This suggests that for younger employees in particular, social impact is increasingly part of how they are evaluating and selecting potential employers.

That doesn’t mean workplace giving should replace competitive pay, career growth, or strong benefits. It just means that giving programs can add another layer to the employee value proposition by showing candidates that the company’s values are visible in practice. Ultimately, this visibility can make giving programs a meaningful differentiator in recruitment, particularly when candidates are comparing organizations with similar roles, compensation, and benefits.

Consumer Loyalty and Brand Reputation

Beyond simply offering giving, customers are also looking at whether a company’s giving feels meaningful, authentic, and connected to its values. A Harvard Business School study found that consumers care more about how companies donate than how much they donate, with people favoring brands that give a larger share of profits even when the total dollar amount is smaller.

Additionally, 46% of consumers overall and 51% of millennials pay attention to a company’s social responsibility efforts when making purchasing decisions, while more than half of consumers aged 18-34 are more likely to buy from brands that support charitable causes.

Since reputation and trust influence everything from customer acquisition to long-term loyalty, giving programs can deliver value far beyond the donation itself. When customers see a company’s actions align with its stated values, they gain additional reasons to choose that brand, remain loyal to it, and recommend it to others. And in a market where products and services can be difficult to differentiate, that trust can become a meaningful competitive advantage.

Increased Profitability

The important thing to remember is that giving programs should not be viewed as direct drivers of revenue or profit. Instead, they can help strengthen broader CSR and purpose-alignment strategies that have been linked to stronger business performance.

CECP’s Giving in Numbers report found that companies aligning business practices with corporate purpose reported 25% higher revenue and 22% higher pre-tax profit. In the same report, companies with purpose-alignment metrics saw median pre-tax profit rise 31% from 2023 to 2024, compared with 3% among companies without those metrics.

Workplace giving supports those broader efforts by turning social impact into something people can actively participate in. Furthermore, it provides measurable proof points around employee participation, company investment, nonprofit funding, and community reach, giving leaders a more tangible way to demonstrate progress against social impact commitments.

And when combined with other CSR activities such as volunteering and grantmaking, those efforts can contribute to stronger CSR programs which have the proven potential to raise profitability by as much as 21%, boost B2B and B2C sales by up to 20%, increase market value by up to 6%, and improve employee productivity by up to 21%.

Will Employees Actually Participate? And How Do We Make Sure They Do?

The short answer is yes. Employees increasingly expect opportunities to create social impact through work. In fact, due to positive trends in giving, 94% of major US companies plan to heighten or maintain their corporate philanthropy over the next few years.

That said, participation does not happen automatically. While every workforce is different, findings from the latest YourCause Global CSR Industry Review suggests that successful workplace giving programs focus on specific program elements to drive stronger results:

• Make giving simple and flexible. The fewer steps required to donate, the more likely employees are to participate. For example, payroll giving consistently achieves the highest participation rate of any donation method suggesting convenience plays a major role in engagement.

• Keep giving visible throughout the year. Visible calls to action, reminders, and campaign promotion often help turn awareness into participation. For example, companies using Engagement Elements within the YourCause platform to promote giving opportunities achieved a 9.7% giving engagement rate, compared to 7.5% for organizations that did not use them.

• Use targeted campaigns to create momentum. Organizations running pledge campaigns reported a 10.9% engagement rate versus 8.3% for year-round programs alone. These campaigns also generated higher average and median donation amounts, showing the value of focused giving moments.

• Leverage employee networks. Companies using Employee Resource Groups (ERGs) to raise awareness and encourage participation reported an 8.5% giving engagement rate and higher overall engagement levels.

• Offer incentives that encourage employees to take part. Many organizations use incentives like matching gifts and volunteer reward programs to encourage initial participation and keep employees engaged over time. In fact, 46% of all donation dollars in 2025 were funded by company contributions, demonstrating the important role employers play in encouraging giving.

• Ensure leadership are actively participating. When executives and managers actively engage in campaigns, employees are more likely to view giving as part of company culture rather than a one-time initiative. Leadership participation helps signal that community impact is something the organization genuinely values, not simply another program competing for attention.

• Provide employees with clear insights into their impact. Participation often increases when people understand where funds are going and what those donations are accomplishing. Many companies use dashboards and AI to synthesize complex information to make results to make impact easier to understand and share.

• Combine giving with other social impact activities. Organizations offering both giving and volunteering programs see a higher engagement rate (16.5%), compared to those offering giving only (5%).

Small improvements in each of these areas can help create a stronger culture of giving over time and increase the likelihood that employees not only participate once but continue engaging year after year.

What Tangible Scale of Impact Can a Giving Program Create?

The exact impact a program creates will depend on participation levels, company investment, and program design. However, leading workplace giving programs demonstrate how employee donations, company contributions, and targeted campaigns can direct meaningful resources toward nonprofits and communities.

For example, Cencora used its giving program to support more than 840 charities worldwide, raise more than $1.6 million for charitable causes, and direct $300,000+ in disaster relief funding following Hurricanes Helene and Milton. These results show how workplace giving can support both long-term charitable priorities and urgent community needs.

YourCause’s network of purpose-driven companies further demonstrates the scale that employee giving programs can achieve collectively. In 2025 alone, organizations using YourCause’s employee engagement and grantmaking platforms engaged more than 7 million employees in social impact initiatives across 193 countries. Employer-funded contributions such as matching gifts, rewards, and incentives accounted for 46% of all donation dollars, the average gift reached $1,127 per donor when company contributions were included, and more than $652 million in grants were distributed.

While individual program results depend on workforce size, participation rates, and company investment, these examples illustrate the role workplace giving plays in nonprofit funding and community investment. Particularly as corporate giving programs generate an estimated $2.86 billion for nonprofits each year, making them an important source of charitable revenue.

For executives, the value of giving programs thus lies in the ability to direct measurable funding toward causes that align with corporate priorities while providing employees with a direct role in creating that impact. Every donation, match, grant, and campaign creates a record of where resources were allocated and what outcomes they helped support, making workplace giving one of the more visible and measurable forms of corporate social impact.

How Will We Know If Our Giving Program Is Working?

A workplace giving program should be measured across three areas: employee participation, community impact, and business value. As a result, no single metric can tell the whole story. Instead, leaders should evaluate performance across participation, impact, investment, and business value to understand whether the program is achieving its intended goals.

Workplace Giving Measurement Framework

The metrics that matter most will vary by organization and program goals. However, the strongest executive dashboards typically showcase participation data, impact metrics, and business indicators to provide a balanced view of performance. By tracking both activity and outcomes over time, leaders can better understand how workplace giving contributes to employees, communities, and the organization as a whole.

Main Takeaways:

• CSR provides a framework for turning company values into action.
• CSR can include employee giving, volunteering, community investment, sustainability initiatives, and disaster response.
• Successful CSR programs make participation easy, flexible, measurable, and relevant.
• CSR continues to grow in importance as employees, investors, consumers, and communities place greater expectations on businesses.
• CSR and ESG are related, but they serve different purposes.

Imagine your company wakes up tomorrow to hundreds of employee messages asking the same question:

“How can we help?”

A natural disaster has impacted a community where employees live and people are ready to donate, volunteer, and take action.

But who approves that campaign? Where should donations go? Will contributions be matched? How will employees find opportunities to get involved?

Without a plan, even the best intentions can stall. That’s why today’s top organizations usually have systems, processes, and programs in place long before these moments arise.

In many organizations, those efforts fall under a broader strategy known as corporate social responsibility (CSR).

The thing is, despite being a familiar term, CSR is often misunderstood. Some people associate it with charitable giving. Others think of sustainability initiatives or community investment programs. So, in this article, we’ll explore what CSR is, why it matters, and how it helps organizations respond with purpose when employees, communities, and causes need support most.

What is CSR?

Corporate social responsibility (CSR) is best defined as a business approach that helps companies create positive social, environmental, and economic impact through activities such as employee giving, volunteering, community investment, ethical business practices, and sustainability initiatives. CSR helps organizations align business goals with the needs of employees, communities, and other stakeholders.

Think back to the scenario we started with.

When a community faces a crisis, when employees want to rally around a cause, or when an opportunity arises to make a positive impact, organizations need a clear way to respond. CSR helps make that response possible.

In many ways, it answers a simple but important question: How does a company act on the values it says it cares about?

The response looks different from one organization to the next. But the goal is often the same: creating a repeatable way to transform concern into positive outcomes, whether the need comes from employees, communities, nonprofit partners, or the world around them.

What Does CSR Look Like in Practice?

CSR can present itself in a variety of forms. So, let’s break them down:

• Employee giving: Donation campaigns, matching gift programs, and year-round giving opportunities that allow employees to support causes they care about.
• Employee volunteering: Opportunities for employees to donate their time and skills through individual, team-based, virtual, or skills-based volunteering. Many organizations also encourage participation through Volunteer Time Off (VTO) and other volunteer incentives.
• Community investment: Nonprofit partnerships, grants, sponsorships, and other initiatives that address community needs.
• Responsible business practices: Environmental initiatives, employee wellbeing programs, ethical sourcing efforts, and other actions that reflect an organization’s values and commitment to positive impact.
• Disaster relief: Campaigns and emergency support programs that help employees and communities respond to crises.

While some organizations may focus heavily on one aspect of CSR; most often, businesses combine multiple approaches to create a CSR strategy that reflects their goals, values, and community priorities. Together, these efforts create a more well-rounded approach to impact, and allow organizations to support causes, communities, and employees through a variety of channels at multiple points during the year.

Who Actually Owns CSR?

In some companies, CSR is managed by a dedicated social impact, corporate responsibility, community engagement, or corporate citizenship team. In others, ownership may sit within Human Resources, Sustainability, ESG, Corporate Affairs, Communications, or another business function.

The thing to remember is, while day-to-day responsibility often belongs to a specific department, effective CSR programs don’t operate in isolation.

• Leaders help establish priorities
• Employees drive participation
• Nonprofit partners provide expertise
• Cross-functional teams often support program delivery and measurement.

Ultimately, CSR tends to be most successful when it is viewed as a shared responsibility across the organization rather than the responsibility of a single team.

CSR vs ESG: What’s the Difference?

Although they’re often used interchangeably, CSR and ESG are not the same thing.

Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) refers to the programs, initiatives, and actions organizations use to create positive social and community impact. This can include employee giving, volunteering, nonprofit partnerships, grantmaking, disaster response, and sustainability efforts.

Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) refers to a framework used to evaluate how organizations manage risks and opportunities related to environmental impact, social responsibility, and corporate governance.

Put simply:

• CSR is about what a company does.
• ESG is one way those efforts may be measured and evaluated.

Many CSR activities contribute to broader ESG goals. For example, an employee volunteering program may be part of a company’s CSR strategy while also supporting the social component of its ESG reporting.

While the two are closely connected, CSR focuses on action and engagement, while ESG focuses on assessment, reporting, and accountability.

Why Does CSR Matter in 2026?

A decade ago, CSR was often associated with charitable giving and occasional volunteer events. Today, it includes everything from employee giving and volunteering to sustainability efforts, disaster response, employee wellbeing programs, and community partnerships.

More importantly, stakeholders want to understand not just what organizations support, but how they demonstrate their values through measurable action. Employees, job candidates, investors, consumers, and communities all want a better understanding of what companies stand for and how they contribute beyond their products and services – and CSR has become one of the primary ways organizations demonstrate those commitments in practice.

Employees and Candidates Expect Purpose

Purpose has become an increasingly important factor for both employees and job seekers. Research shows that 72% of employees are more likely to apply to companies they perceive as socially responsible, while 71% say a company’s societal impact is a strong expectation, or a deal breaker, when considering a job. At the same time, nearly half of Gen Zs and millennials report making career decisions based on their personal ethics or beliefs. CSR can help demonstrate company values in action before a candidate ever submits an application, while creating opportunities for employees to support causes they care about after they’re hired.

Investors Expect Accountability

Investors are paying closer attention to how organizations manage social impact, engage employees, support communities, and respond to emerging challenges. With 76% of investors expecting companies to have a clearly defined corporate purpose, and 93% believing that purpose is necessary to create long-term business value, there is growing emphasis on building lasting growth through stakeholder trust and responsible business practices. CSR programs help organizations demonstrate that commitment by creating measurable outcomes, providing accountability, and enabling transparent reporting on progress over time.

Consumers Expect Authenticity

Consumers have more information and more choices than ever before. As a result, many have more exhaustive criteria around the kind of businesses they support. They seek out organizations whose values align with their own, but they’re also increasingly skeptical of performative initiatives. They want to see actions that support the promises companies make.

For many organizations, CSR helps provide visible examples of those commitments through ongoing programs and community partnerships.

Communities Expect Partnership

Employee giving, volunteering, matching gifts, grantmaking, disaster response campaigns, and ongoing nonprofit partnerships create opportunities for organizations to provide support throughout the year. These programs help strengthen relationships while creating more consistent sources of funding, expertise, and volunteer support.

Despite differing priorities, collectively, these expectations influence many of the factors that drive long-term business success – and CSR offers a practical framework for managing those priorities while still creating value for both businesses and society.

What Makes a Strong CSR Program?

While no two CSR programs are exactly alike, after analyzing 306 companies and more than 7 million employees, here are some common characteristics we’ve seen across the strongest programs.

1. They make participation easy. Employees are more likely to get involved when opportunities fit naturally into their routines. Our latest data found that payroll giving remains the most popular giving method, while volunteer participation continues to rise even as average hours per volunteer have declined slightly. This trend suggests employees are looking for more accessible and flexible ways to engage, whether that’s through recurring payroll donations, shorter volunteer opportunities, or activities that fit more easily into busy schedules.
2. They offer flexibility and choice. Some employees prefer donating, while others gravitate toward volunteering, board service, or fundraising campaigns that align with their values. Companies that provide multiple ways to engage are often better positioned to sustain engagement over time.
3. They create visible moments for action. Companies that provide timely opportunities to engage often see stronger results. For example, companies using Engagement Elements to promote giving opportunities achieved a 9.7% giving engagement rate, compared to 7.5% among companies that did not.
4. They connect multiple types of impact. Leading organizations often combine employee giving, volunteering, community investment, and disaster response efforts. In fact, internal data shows that companies offering both giving and volunteering programs achieved a significantly higher engagement rate (16.5%), compared to programs with giving (5.0%) and volunteering (6.3%) alone.
5. They prioritize measurement. Effective programs measure both participation and impact. Of the companies we work with, 80% collect both output and outcome data, while 67% also gather participant stories and qualitative feedback to help tell a more complete impact story.
6. They build communities around participation. Some of the strongest programs are those that create spaces where participation spreads through peer networks rather than corporate communications alone. Companies using Employee Resource Groups (ERGs) reported a 19.2% combined engagement rate and a 15.6% volunteer engagement rate, compared to 15.0% and 8.8%, respectively, among organizations without them.
7. Participation is encouraged through incentives. Our data revealed that the average donation tied to volunteer incentives increased by 21%, while incentive redemption rates reached 65%. This suggests that employees are more likely to engage when their contributions are acknowledged and supported through incentives like matching gifts, Volunteer Time Off (VTO), volunteer grants, and more.

So, What Does This Mean for Your Organization?

At the beginning of this article, we were faced with a simple question: “How can we help?“

At its core, CSR provides a way for organizations to offer a meaningful answer.

And once that foundation is in place, the conversation shifts from “How can we help?” to “How much impact can we create?“

Main Takeaways:

• Most charitable needs are local, but enterprise CSR programs are often built for national scale, leaving smaller, community-rooted nonprofits underfunded and harder to reach.
• Employee match programs are a valuable way to support local nonprofits. By combining contributions, collaborative giving can unlock larger grants and deepen community impact.
• Giving Circles, a structured form of collaborative giving, close that gap by empowering employees to surface and champion local nonprofits, while the CSR team retains oversight and reporting.
• Pairing front-end collective giving experiences with enterprise-grade CSR technology enables companies to support thousands of local causes without thousands of new administrative tasks.
• Going forward, the impact leaders pulling ahead will measure more than dollars out the door. They will track participation, retention, and the reach of their dollars into the communities where employees actually live and work.

The Tension Between Scale and Locality in Corporate Giving

Most CSR leaders running national or global programs share a quiet frustration. The communities their employees care about are local: a food bank in Tulsa, a youth mentoring program in Newark, a wildfire recovery effort in Sonoma County. But the giving programs built to serve a workforce of 20,000 or 100,000 were designed for scale, not specificity.

Look at how people give when they have a real say in where the money goes. When individuals come together in structured groups known as Giving Circles, they overwhelmingly fund local causes. Nearly three-quarters (70%) of giving-circle leaders report that their funds stay in their home state, and nearly half (47%) make grants within the same city, town, or county, according to research from the Dorothy A. Johnson Center for Philanthropy.

When people choose collectively, they tend to support the places they live, and employees are unlikely to be an exception. Yet most corporate giving programs default to large national nonprofits with established intake processes, recognizable brands, and the staff capacity to navigate enterprise compliance reviews.

The result is a disconnect between where employees feel the most pull and where corporate dollars actually land. Employee match programs do reach local nonprofits, and that matters. But individual contributions amplified by match are typically small relative to what a community-rooted organization needs to grow or sustain a program. The largest corporate philanthropic dollars — discretionary grants, foundation investments, and cause partnerships — are allocated through processes employees have little influence over. There is a model that changes that dynamic: Giving Circles.

What Is a Giving Circle?

A Giving Circle is a form of collective giving in which a group of people pool resources, learn about issues, and decide together where to direct support. Members nominate nonprofit organizations, discuss what they learn, and vote on where the group’s combined funding goes.

In a corporate setting, Giving Circles can be organized around an office, an Employee Resource Group (ERG), a shared cause area, or a cultural moment. Funding can come from employee contributions, corporate matching, dollars-for-doers programs, corporate foundations, or CSR budgets, which means employees can participate fully in the nominating, learning, and voting process whether or not they contribute personally. That flexibility is what makes the model both inclusive and scalable.

The category is growing quickly. Between 2017 and 2023, collective giving grew more than 140% in both participation and total dollars, reaching nearly 4,000 groups, around 370,000 participants, and over $3.1 billion donated. The model has moved from the margins of philanthropy into something CSR leaders should understand and consider.

Why Smaller Nonprofits Struggle to Access Meaningful Corporate Dollars

The barriers facing small, local nonprofits are operational, not philosophical.

A neighborhood literacy program with two staff members cannot easily complete a multi-page vendor questionnaire, hold a W-9 in the right format, or respond to a quarterly impact survey. Even when corporate giving teams want to fund them, the cost of onboarding a $5,000 grantee partner can match the cost of onboarding a $500,000 one. The result is that compliance requirements, not community priorities, often determine who gets funded.

This is not a failure of intent. It is a failure of infrastructure. Fifty-five percent of Giving Circle survey respondents support nonprofits with budgets under $1 million, and 83% said their groups prioritized giving to organizations supporting marginalized communities. These are precisely the organizations least likely to appear on a standard corporate nonprofit partner list. Reaching them at scale requires a different model.

How Collective Giving Changes the Funding Flow

Collective giving inverts the usual corporate giving sequence. Instead of CSR teams sourcing, evaluating, and selecting nonprofits on behalf of the company, employees do that work themselves as part of a structured group. They nominate organizations from their own communities, share why those causes matter, and vote together on where pooled funding goes.

This shift does three things at once.

First, it surfaces local nonprofits that would never reach a small, corporate giving team through traditional channels. Employees are the best researchers a CSR program has. They know which after-school program their kids attend, which shelter helped a colleague, which mutual aid network responded fastest during the last storm.

Second, it changes how employees experience giving. Eighty-six percent of collective giving members say participation increased their confidence in taking action to change their community, and 59% report that it increased their advocacy on issues they care about personally. That is a different outcome than a one-click payroll deduction produces.

Third, it deepens commitment over time. According to the GivingTuesday Data Commons, nationally just under 2% of new donors start with recurring giving. On Grapevine, more than 73% of new donors in 2025 chose to give recurring contributions. When people give as part of a group, they give differently.

Operational Efficiency and Centralized Reporting

For CSR leaders, the question is not whether collective giving creates engagement. The data on that is clear. The question is whether it creates more administrative work.

It does not have to. The anxiety around local giving is usually about three things: vetting, distribution, and reporting. Each can be designed out of the employee experience without being designed out of the program.

Grapevine handles the front end. Employees nominate trusted nonprofits, learn together, and direct funds collectively, with the structure of a Giving Circle keeping participation organized and decisions transparent. YourCause from Blackbaud’s employee engagement and grantmaking technology provides the enterprise infrastructure underneath: verified nonprofit data, payment processing, and centralized reporting across teams, locations, and programs.

A CSR team running Giving Circles across fifteen offices does not need to manage fifteen separate vendor relationships or stitch fifteen impact reports together by hand. They get a single view of participation, dollars deployed, and nonprofits funded, with the local specificity preserved underneath. The employee experience stays intimate and community-rooted. The administrative experience stays centralized and enterprise-grade.

What Impact Leaders Should Track in 2026

The CSR programs gaining ground in 2026 are the ones measuring beyond dollars donated. A few metrics worth elevating:

Participation breadth. What percentage of employees engaged with the program at all, not just gave? Collective giving creates opportunities for engagement beyond being a donor: nominator, advocate, voter, group facilitator. Each is a meaningful form of participation. Benchmark participation rates against peers of similar size, industry, or geography using CSR benchmarking frameworks and industry reports such as the YourCause CSR Industry Report to assess program performance and maturity.

Local reach. How many nonprofits with budgets under $1 million received contributions large enough to be consequential to their operations — not just a single employee donation amplified by match — through your program this year, and how many were located in the same metros as the employees who chose them? This is the equity question made measurable.

Retention and recurrence. Are employees coming back? Are they giving recurrently? A program that activates a giver once and loses them is leaving value on the table.

Outcomes reported. Do employees say the program helped them feel more connected to their community, more confident as changemakers, more proud of where they work? Fifty-five percent of collective giving members report a positive impact on their ability to lead healthy lives, physically, mentally, and spiritually. That kind of outcome compounds.

When CSR strategy moves from a one-size-fits-all national program to a model that responsibly supports local causes, the case for impact gets stronger, not weaker. The visibility, governance, and scalability are still there. They are just doing different work.