Blackbaud Releases Ninth-Annual Trends Report on Corporate Social Responsibility and Employee Engagement

By HRTech News Desk On Jul 19, 2021

Blackbaud, the world’s leading cloud software company powering social good, released its ninth-annual Industry Review: Employee Engagement and Corporate Social Responsibility Report, which provides key learnings and trends related to companies’ corporate social responsibility (CSR) programs and employees’ philanthropic behavior. The 2021 report analyzes data from a subset of Blackbaud customers, including more than 280 companies and over 7.2 million employees, collected between January and December 2020 within Blackbaud’s YourCause CSRConnect and GrantsConnect solutions.

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“In 2020, companies activated corporate responsibility and employee giving and volunteering to help people around the world, as well as their own neighbors,” said Rachel Hutchisson, vice president, global social responsibility, Blackbaud. “Companies were required to rethink CSR and the very definition of disaster prevention and relief, and they stepped up to the plate. The report shows that COVID-19 and social justice causes received 83% of the more than $9 million in disaster relief donations.”

“Our Industry Review provides data-driven insights for CSR and employee engagement professionals to benchmark their programs and learn from others so they can continue to expand and maximize the effects of their philanthropic efforts,” said Brandon Sharrett, president and general manager, Corporate Solutions, Blackbaud. “This will help practitioners develop CSR strategies to help serve what will be an increasingly virtual workforce as we emerge post-pandemic.”

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Key findings from this year’s Industry Review:

While the challenges of 2020 did impact participation in employee volunteering and giving, employees that were able to participate in corporate philanthropic efforts made strong contributions. The median employee donation amount increased by $447, and the amount given by the top 10% of givers increased by $1,667.
Employees consistently contributed most of their volunteer hours at individual or non-team events.
Companies with less than 1,000 employees had the highest overall giving and volunteering engagement rate. Companies of this size also had the highest average employee donation amount of $2,414, and the highest average hours per volunteer at 18 hours.
Disaster campaigns saw a significant increase in donation amount reaching over $9 million. Of those campaigns, COVID-19 relief campaigns received $4.7 million in funding (52%), Social Justice campaigns received $2.8 million in funding (31%) and all other campaigns (earthquake, wildfire, etc.) received 1.6 million in funding (17%).

In addition to 2020 data, the report also provides context on the overall change in employee engagement from 2019. Given that employee giving and volunteering was affected across the board in 2020, companies will be able to compare their change in engagement to the overall industry change in engagement to benchmark themselves and explore strategies for boosting employee engagement to pre-pandemic rates. The robust report looks at programs and employee engagement by geographic region—both U.S and globally with a 20% increase in number of countries included this year. Companies of all sizes are included to provide a holistic view of the current industry.

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