Awarepreneurs interview - Sona Kholsa

Hi. This is Paul Zellizer, and welcome to the Awarepreneurs podcast. On this show, we dive deep into wisdom from some of the world's leading social entrepreneurs. Our goal is to help you increase your positive impact, your profitability, and your quality of life. Before we get into today's topic, I have one request. If you could hit subscribe and do a review on your favorite podcast out, it helps more people find the show and spread the message of having a positive impact through a values based business. Thank you so much. Today, I'm really excited to introduce you to Sona Khalsa.

And our topic is the business impact of social impact. Sona is the chief impact officer at Benevity, has worked with mission driven organizations for over fifteen years. As chief impact officer, she is responsible for infusing impact into Benevity's business and culture and overseeing the company's own impact and inclusion initiatives. At the helm of Benevity Impact Labs, an incubator and resource hub, Sona and her team bring cutting edge data research and insights and best practices to help organizations and individuals maximize their impact and authentically live their purpose. As host of Benevity's podcast, Speaking of Purpose, she interviews top ESG, impact, culture, DEI, and b leaders who are focused on using business as a force for good. Sona, welcome to the AwarePreneur's podcast.

Thank you so much for having me, Paul. Happy to be here.

Thrilled to dive into the, like, more tactical aspects of impact. I was so excited about this interview as I was doing my homework. Like, everybody likes to throw those words around, but we're gonna gonna get into some real granular, like, how do you all define it and how do you measure it? Before I do that, just to kind of flesh out your background a little bit, that's a very impressive bio. But if there was something you wanted to give somebody a little more texture to your background, Sonja, what would somebody wanna know about you and what you bring to this conversation about impact and measurement and metrics and getting more granular about the dent we're making in the impact universe?

That's a great question, Paul. So, I mean, I guess I would say a few things. One is I did not start my career in data measurement impact. I've accidentally ended up here. I started my career as a writer, accidentally ended up in a marketing career, which I then pivoted out of about four years ago when I became chief impact officer at Benevity. I think I'd say I, I feel like I discovered like the jackpot of jobs when I realized that you could find a role in a company that's all about using capitalism for good and, you know, giving corporate resources out to the world to improve the world. But as part of the part of that role, we ended up spinning up this social innovation lab. And part of what we do is bring data and research.

And so I became really involved in bringing, you know, more data research and insights, to the community. And so now the last four years I've spent my whole kind of role just focused on being immersed in the data and understanding how to measure what I think is one of the hardest things to measure is social impact. And so it's been a super fun journey. And so I kinda feel like I can bring, you know, like that neophyte's eyes. Right? Looks just like, I'm not an expert by any means, but so I've still got kind of some fresh eyes, but I do I have spent the last four years thinking about it and enabling it. So hopefully hopefully your listeners will kind of relate a little bit.

Awesome. And you have some great tips for us that we'll get into a little bit. Just to give people a sense of who Benevity is working, if you go to the site, you see some logos of some companies that might be a little bit familiar. Like, give us a sense of who you all are working with so that our listeners get a sense that these are fairly scaled enterprises that are trying to figure out social enterprise. Is that social impact and how to measure it? Is that fair to say?

Absolutely fair to say. It's you know, Benevity is not a household name. But so we're the software that helps large enterprise companies, a lot of fortune 1,000 companies power what we call their corporate purpose programs. So that's basically how they do good in the world, whether that is through making grants to nonprofits, whether that is engaging their employees in donation matching campaigns or crisis relief campaigns or volunteering or taking social environmental action or, enabling their employee resources, resource groups to come together through our tech platform, as well as enabling their consumers to, you know, round up their purchases to make a donation to a nonprofit. So Benevity is the software that powers that. And, yeah, we've got incredible, set of clients, you know, from Microsoft and Starbucks and, you know, like you name it. If you drink it, if you wear it, if you've seen it, if you, you know, it's probably a company that Benevity works with. So we feel really privileged to power, you know, the the programs.

We have about a hundred enterprise companies that represent about 20,000,000 employees and hundreds of millions of customers around the world.

20,000,000 employees. Wow. That's exciting. So we're gonna get into the how you do all this. But before we do that, Sona, why are businesses trying to, like, measure, get some data about impact, and then turn that into, like, an articulation, a narrative. Why does that matter? Why does that matter right now in 2025?

That's a big question, Paula. One of, like

I could ask you what color your sweater is if you'd prefer.

And that's an easy answer. But, yeah, it's a big question. You know, I'd say that, you know, as you look at the evolution of, you know, corporate social responsibility or social impact as as people know it a little bit more now, You know, the evolution of it was really it was it emerged more as kind of a exactly as the label says, more of a responsibility or an obligation to give back and kind of a license to operate for businesses in their communities. And so it was, you know, less important at that time to really be able to measure these things because it was almost acting as a a compensatory function for, you know, companies who needed to do business in certain areas and needed to endear communities to them. Over the last, I'd say ten years that I've been with Benevity, it's really the work has shifted from, I'd say, feel good work to business driven work. And what I mean by that is you've seen with the with the massive shift in demographics, especially with, you know, Gen Z and Millennials now making up more than 50% of the workforce. That's a generation that really cares about purpose and values at work. And so they are in on almost every measure picking companies to work for or buy from that are purpose driven, that do stand up for their values, that care about climate, that care about human rights.

And so now something that was feel good, that was more of a moral imperative, has become a business imperative because in order to attract that talent and attract those consumers, and also what is known is that you can increase willing to pay, like they will willingness to pay. They'll pay a premium for the brands that they believe align with their values. So it's now kind of become, those demographics has really shifted it. I'd also say that investor demographics have changed. We're now seeing, you know, more millennials on on boards and shareholders. Right? And so millennials are also asking different things of companies. So when we look at, you know, I think in by 02/1935, you know, these demographics are gonna have, you know, most of the purchasing power. Doing good is actually really linked to business resilience and survivability.

If you're not right, like if you're not engaging on that on that front, then you're really risking the future of your business. So that's where it started to, you know, once it be it shifted from a purely moral imperative to more of a business value driver. And we started over the last decade seeing a lot of studies that came out about how investing in this actually drives business value. Well, now we're being held accountable as impact leaders to say, okay, great that you're doing good in the world, but what value is this driving? And so like I could, you know, some of the examples of some of the data we've seen around the business value it drives is, for example, Benevity actually published a study back in 2022 that showed that companies who engage their employees in these programs, they will see a 52% reduction in turnover for employees who do participate in employee giving and volunteering. And so that's significant, bottom line impact. I I don't know how many employee programs or experiences deliver that kind of ROI. We've also we did a a case study with Cisco, and they actually did a three year longitudinal study that showed that employees who gauge at these programs are more likely to to stay, which was something we knew, but also more likely to be promoted, more likely to be positively recognized by their peers, and more likely to have higher bonuses. So all of this leads to greater productivity and greater bottom line value for a business.

So as that, you know, data started to emerge, we started to see companies demanding more of that ROI. And then of course, in the last five years, there's been tremendous economic volatility. We saw the great resignation and quiet quitting and you know, like, I mean all these terms that we probably haven't talked about in a while. Right? And, and so all of a sudden these, these programs, especially with the pandemic and the social racial justice movement of twenty twenty, all of a sudden these programs became ways in which companies were very actively engaging with their consumers and with their talent. But as the economy started to get volatile over the last few years and companies had to look at areas to downsize or reduce, the question becomes, well, show us the money, show us, you know, how this is delivering value. And so leaders in this space have just now had to really prove that this is more than feel good work, that it's actually bottom line driven work, that it delivers business value. And so the focus on measuring impact has really, really increased, I'd say, in the last five years.

So I think I hear kinda my my brain likes to sort things into buckets. Right? So there's a there's a bucket around talent, attracting and retaining, and helping engage at the highest possible level talent, and certainly on the startup side of things. But actually, at least small to medium, I don't work as many large, large corporates. I think it's true there, but certainly in small to medium sized businesses and startups. Once you get, like, a survival revenue, the biggest challenge people are talking about is talent. Attracting, retaining, and engaging talent. So there's that bucket that being very thoughtful and knowing that your energy and investment into programs like this is 52% reduction of turnover is huge, and I don't know too many programs that I also see it attracts talent to come there. People actually wait in line.

Right? We have a very large solar company here that's employee owned called Positive Energy Solar. And, they're employee owned, so it pays well, and they do great. They treat their employees well, and they're always doing proactive things in the community. 20 person company, which in New Mexico is a good sized company. And they they haven't had an opening for, like, you know, a year, and they've got a waiting list of people who wanna work there, partially because it's employee owned, but partially because they do an incredible amount of really innovative programming. And there are other solar companies that are struggling to get talent in New Mexico, in the same market. Right? Pay somewhat similar, and that is when you ask them, how did you get a waiting list? Do people wanna work there? It's what they're doing in the CSR department. Yeah.

Yep. Yep. So so the talent's one. And then the other thing I'm hearing you say is profitability. That that if you're smart about what kinds of impact programs you're doing, it actually has a business enhancing effect in a variety of ways. I was thinking as you were talking, what happens when you don't do it well? A story in the news right now is Target. Target made big promises of in in DEI training and and was very public about it and then pulled back in that recently. And as we speak today on LinkedIn, on one of their top 10 things that are talking about as a target seeing a significant decrease in customer and in profitability because people are saying, I don't wanna do business with somebody who, like, says, we're all in on whatever impact area and then pulls it way, way, way back.

And that kind of whiplash and impact is just not good for business. That's an example of what not to do. I'll put a link of an article on what's happening in that realm. So those two buckets, like, if you're trying to make sense of the why, I think I hear you saying, here's where to look. Look in the talent and look in the profitability. Is that fair to say, Sona?

That's absolutely fair. And those are, you know, those are the business impact metrics. Right? So that's how we measure the business value of these things. I think where things get a lot more esoteric is how do you measure the social impact?

Yeah. That was my the hows. And now we know why. Okay. My head's shaking if I'm listening. But, yeah, sounds nice, Sona. But, like, how the heck do you do that?

Yeah. Yeah. And that is like that that is the the question. And some will say it's a pool's errand to try and figure it out. You know, I think I often think about our friends in climate. And the beautiful thing is that they've gotten it to like one molecule of measurement, which is, you know, carbon emissions, greenhouse gases, like they've got one measure that everyone can measure against. It's one standard measure. And if only social impact were that easy, just a, you know, a unit, a single measure unit, but it's not.

It is so deeply textured. Right? So so, you know, how do you measure when you go and volunteer at a soup kitchen and the impact that has on someone's life? So, yes, you can count, you know, the number of meals served or the amount the value of the clothing donated. How how do you measure the impact of, you know, giving animals a stable living condition? And how does that positively impact lives, not just for the animals, but for the people? You know, so it's it's it's very textured. Social outcomes vary across many different, you know, it's education. It's appreciation for arts. It's STEM. It's it's it's access to basic needs. It's access to critical needs and disaster.

There is no single measure for, you know, lives positively impacted. And so that's where, you know, folks in in my role get spend a lot of time thinking about that because, yes, we're we're called to the mat to prove that there is business value, but at the same time, we're making social investments. And so we need to make sure that, you know, when we when we make a grant to an organization that is actually driving the impact, we, you know, we seek that it's delivering on the hypothesis. And oftentimes, you know, I think the thing that I really had to wrap my head around, you know, from the shift from marketing to impact was marketing is like instant, you know, within like twenty four hours of what that open rate is going to be like, you know, like within a few hours what that click through rate is going to be like. Even us, we know if if a LinkedIn post goes up within ten minutes, if you don't have a certain number of impressions, God help you, no one's going to see that post. Impact is totally different.

Totally.

Totally different. Right? It's like and I think sometimes we bring that mentality to this work. But really, like, when you're thinking about things like mental health, for example, it's rare that someone has a mental health issue because of something that happened in this lifetime. It's usually intergenerational trauma or now now we're also seeing more genetic components around mental health. Like it's not, it's not it's kinda you're just born into circumstances that end up creating this event and that it actually can take a full lifetime to overcome. And then in the next generation, you can see the change. Well, not enough people around for seventy six years. The average span to measure that and businesses operate on quarters.

Right? And so large businesses operate on quarters. And so this concept of measuring impact is, is incredibly difficult, but there are, you know, there are a lot of ways that companies are doing it. But what I'd say is that the hardest thing about it is there's no single way.

Yeah. So in that so it's nuanced. It depends on the impact you're trying to have. Let's say, if you are gonna use the United Nations seventeen sustainable development goals, there's 17 of them. And if you're talking about water, you're talking about gender equity, there's gonna be a lot of nuance there. Right? And you all have thought about this, and you are advising clients. So, like, give us an example maybe in a couple of impact areas where somebody you you help somebody get more granular, understanding that it's complex.

Yeah. So, you know, let's talk about the major social investments that companies make into communities or into single issues. Right? Like whether they're trying to increase literacy rates or financial well-being. So and they're putting millions, say, of dollars into it or, you know, maybe even thousands of dollars into it. So the first thing they're gonna ask is, okay, we need to find organizations who are working in this area. We need to understand what part of the change are they actually affecting. You know, are they are they looking at early childhood or are we looking at graduation rates? Where exactly in the change are we working? So they'll they'll identify organizations. And then usually those organizations, those nonprofit organizations have a, you know, specific set of measures.

So they're called outputs. So what is it that we're actually doing? We're hosting trainings. We are providing, you know, meals. We are running programs, for example. So those are what are called outputs, but the actual outcome is a different measure, which is, and how many people actually graduated, how many people actually have social and emotional well-being and skills. And so there's different measures for kind of different, you know, stages of the of the of the impact cycle. And so a lot of companies will start with the really basics, which is actually inputs, which is what are the resources that we are putting into an issue? That's usually the the the dollar amount, the volunteer hours, the number of organizations they're supporting. It could be how much their employees have supported these issues.

So that's basically what are the resources we're putting in? Those are the inputs. The outputs are what I described in terms of programs, trainings, what the what the nonprofits tend to be delivering in terms of services and and products or, you know, opportunities. And then the outcomes are what you can expect of, of those trainings. What is it that is actually gonna be the result of those? So you've got companies who are measuring along that entire spectrum. What's interesting right now is that, we've been in an era where there's been a lot of reporting on the inputs, the resources. Look at how much we put into this, and it's very impressive. But at some point, when every company is doing x millions of dollars or x pounds, it's like, okay. Well, what does that even mean anymore? And so then then you look at, okay.

Well, what are all these nonprofits doing? And some of the things I love that companies do is that they will actually use those opportunities to not only like, they'll they'll ask the nonprofits for data. So given the amount of money we gave you, how many programs were you able to run? How many people were able to go through those programs and complete them? How many people completed STEM education? Right? For example. Okay. So great. You get those numbers, you can report what your company did. That's, that's like even more texture. The next one is it's much more trickier is getting, getting your nonprofits saying here are the longer term outcomes that we would have generated over. You know, it can be twelve, twelve months a year or it can be over five years or ten years that can be set by the corporation.

But there's a really interesting solution that's starting to emerge. I'll talk about that in a minute, but you can imagine a lot of that is manual data collection. So, right. It's a lot of manual data collection. And so essentially that's what like software, like Benevity enables clients to do, which is to set up the surveys, to collect that data, to understand exactly what their investments are doing. And so that they can report on it to their boards, to their executive, you know, to the community, to consumers and employees as well, who care about this. So that's like, you know, one solution that's standard. Most companies who invest a material amount of money will do that work.

Yeah.

There's kind of a a new horizon coming in, which is, okay. This is if say we have, like, almost a thousand companies in our community alone. If each one of them is going and asking a nonprofit to to fill out these applications and and one nonprofit can have hundreds of corporate partners, then they're doing it a hundred times in the way that that corporation is asking.

Everyone different. Yep. Not about making a lot of work for people who are trying to do good.

Exactly. Right? And so so there are a number of kind of, I would say, more progressive companies who have said there's gotta be a more scalable way to do this. And so they're thinking about standardizing. So standardizing the measures and capturing those measures across all their nonprofits so that they also can have like a standardized view of which partners are delivering on, you know, their desired outputs or outcomes more effectively, so I think you make better investment decisions. But there's another layer of standardization that's coming, which is broad social impact standardization. So there's companies the one we work with right now is called Impact Genome. And the founder of it, Jason Saul, is way more in-depth on this. He's been doing this for twenty years, but they've created something almost like the, like the, like the, human genome project.

It's called the Impact Genome Project. And basically what it is is a registry of social outcomes. They basically looked at all of the language around these outcomes and said, actually, there's really only a hundred and, you know, 44 standardized outcomes. They're described in different ways by different companies and different nonprofits. But when you boil it down, it's actually only a 44 outcomes. And they have a portal where nonprofits can go and register those outcomes and say, here are the outcomes that we achieved in the last twelve months. And then they have social impact analysts who then verify that data and say, yes. Okay.

This is this is legit. It meets, you know, there's evidence strength here. There's they meet a bunch of criteria and yes, we can kind of verify this. And so there's there's a, you know, a movement of companies who are adopting that to say, okay, this is a much more efficient, much more standardized way of doing it. And so and and they're they're layering that onto their reporting and then figuring out what they can drop from the other less standardized, more manual, more some work. So we're starting to see that shift. And I I think that's good. I think what's valuable about that is that it brings standardization across the ecosystem.

So now, like, if I'm a nonprofit, I can actually benchmark myself against like, there are competitors in not in the nonprofit sector. Let's not kid ourselves. Right? So I can now benchmark myself against other nonprofits and see how I'm performing. Now you'll hear a lot of nonprofits say, well, I don't really wanna register my outcomes because that's not all I wanna be measured on. And that's totally fair. I don't believe that companies or consumers or employees should be making any of these investment decisions based on one measure. But I do think that it's important that there is a measure and that it is standardized and that it's easy for people to, you know, for nonprofits to to complete. So I think it's beneficial to the nonprofits.

It's also beneficial to social investment professionals who grant makers who are having to make these decisions and who have to report up to to their boards. Because if I'm saying, well, this nonprofit did this and it's slightly different than this and these numbers you can't quite compare. It's like I'm not earning credibility in the boardroom. My chances of getting more investment or something like that. I gotta simplify it, standardize it and show that we are making sound investments based on a single definition. So it's it's a balance. It's a real fine balance to strike.

Absolutely. And I tend to hear I hear from for profits, b corps, social benefit corporations, nonprofits. Right? But for a moment, I'm looking at you nonprofits in this economy where people are having to be very thoughtful of where they invest. I hear from the nonprofits who have a more social entrepreneur worldview, so they may be organized. I used to run a nonprofit. And our accountant, he was awesome. He used to say, non nonprofit is a tax structure, not a mindset. Right? He's he taught me that as an executive director.

Don't think as a typical executive director. Think like a social entrepreneur, and then it's hard to make a it can be hard to make a profit in certain impact areas, which is why we have that category, but use your donor money and your grant money to make the difference between area. That was what he was trying to say. But long way to say, those folks in the nonprofit world who are most resistant to talking the and and being accountable through in impact measurements, those are the ones that are most struggling. If there is any correlation, the ones who are more willing to have the kind of accountability that a for profit company typically has, a start up company has to go to their investors and said, here's what we did with our investment and here's our books. Right? And nonprofits aren't as used to that. At least smaller, medium sized nonprofits working in hard areas sometimes bristle at that. But I'm thinking of accountant Marty who's a nonprofit.

It is a tax status, not a mindset. Right? So so this is a trend, and especially as there's less funding to go around because the economy is uncertain, I definitely see a correlation between those that are thriving and those mindset that you're talking about. Okay, yeah, I'm willing to show I'm willing to be in an open honest dialogue, And, yes, I don't want it to be single metric, but I am willing to have metrics and to share those generously and be in conversation with the people who funded us. In general, those nonprofits do better in my experience.

Yeah. I mean, luckily, you had Marty, like, that sage wisdom. Yeah.

That is

sage wisdom and probably ahead of ahead of his time.

I I haven't been in the nonprofit world for eighteen years. So, yeah, he was way ahead of his time. So way ahead of his time.

Absolutely. And I and I think you're right. What we have seen is that the nonprofits who have adopted this, it's just a tool. Like, adopt the tool. Adopt the mindset. Then they actually can go and advocate for greater funds. Like, they're more efficacious in fundraising because in this day and age, the level of, scrutiny and transparency that can like, even donors want. They're like, there's so many donors who don't give because they don't trust.

If you can show up with data, I fundamentally believe you can unlock a segment of cynical people who who actually want to do good. Because what what I you know, what I know to be true is every single one of us actually wants to contribute positively to this world. And so if you can help me do that, overcome my doubt, my cynicism with data, we're unlocking a whole segment of givers. And right now we know individual giving is going down. And a lot of that has to do with the generational differences I talked about earlier, which is, you know, Gen zed and millennials, they're not like, supporting a nonprofit is not really the way they think about doing good in the first place.

Entrepreneurship is one of the fastest growing majors on the planet. They're doing it with their time and in where they choose to work. So I don't think that that takes giving off the table, but we have to be very aware that the next generation has very different mindset than, let's say, a boomer who is giving historically a lot to nonprofits. I love my parents. Right? But my parents and I have very different ways we think about having social impact. Right? And I'm I'm Gen x. Right? Gen Gen z is really different. Right? Really different.

Yeah.

Yeah. Well and it was so interesting, Paul. Recently, we had a number of nonprofits, speaking. It was Benevity's seventeenth birthday. And, so we invited a few nonprofits from around the world to kinda just share, you know, what their challenges are right now and what they're thinking about. And there was this organization based in Spain. The executive director came and he said, you know, one of the struggles we have is that the younger population is saying, why do you even exist? Shouldn't the government just do this? Like, shouldn't the government just feed its people? Like, isn't that their job? Why are you even doing this? And so it's just it's such a different mindset. Like, we've grown up with the problems.

We know that there has to be a third sector. Like, you know, and and social entrepreneurship has risen again in part to bridge. I mean, I Benevity is a social enterprise. We're a b corp. And so, you know, we're we're kind of saying, listen, these things can happen in concert with one another. You can you can be for profit, but for good. Right?

Yes.

But because of that, partly, I think they're also like, well, then why do nonprofits need to exist? Which I had never heard before, but I thought, man, that's a challenge. Like, people don't think you should exist.

That's and these data points can help you articulate what you're doing and why you need to be there. So, again, whatever the sector somebody's working on in my coaching and consulting, I'm always like, can we be on our front foot as opposed to our back foot? If you've got Gen z telling you why should you even exist and you have no data to Gen z, you're done. Yeah. You're done. As soon as you say, I don't wanna do that, like, you need that as part of the story. It's not the only story. And I'm gonna ask you this in a moment when we come back, Sonna. I wanna ask you about how you turn the data into certain outcomes that you're working for in your impact work, how it can contribute not just to the funding, but how it can actually move the needle on your impact goals.

And I also wanna ask you specifically how companies can leverage what they're finding in their impact in these two buckets that we mentioned earlier. What would a company who wants to leverage data to attract talent to? And what would a company that wants to optimize data that you're collecting to enhance profitability do? And how are they similar? And how they do how are they different? Before we do that, I just wanna take a really quick break and hear a word from our sponsor. Are you passionate about making a difference, but feeling stuck on how to take your mission driven business to the next level? You don't need a lengthy coaching program. You need targeted advice from someone who understands the unique challenges that social entrepreneurs face. With my strategy session package, we'll focus on your most pressing decisions, whether it's clarifying your value proposition, optimizing your marketing strategy, launching a new product or service, or adjusting your pricing to align with your mission. These sessions are perfect when you know the direction you wanna go, but you need someone with the experience to help you get there. If you're ready to unlock your potential and amplify your impact, book your strategy session now. The link is in the show notes.

So welcome back, everybody. I am honored to be here with Sona Khalsa, and we are talking about the business impact of social impact. And right before the break, Sona gave you some other big questions, But let's dive into the one here about the specific use of data and storytelling. This is a passion of mine that impact organizations who have data can be more effective and can tell better stories. And we know that impact organizations that tell better stories in general have better impact and either raise more money if you're a nonprofit or make more money if you're a b corp or for profit. But in particular, these two buckets. Right? Let's let's start with talent. If you wanna be a world class organization or you are a world class organization and you're reading some of the studies, like, you talked about your study about reducing turnover 50%.

That's pretty major. Anything that can reduce turnover 25% usually, you know, raises people's eyebrows at 50. How do you proactively now that you've made this investment as a company, let's say, our listeners are the proactive people. I've made this investment. I wanna leverage it in an ethical way to help me attract, retain, and engage top talent. What are your top suggestions for that purpose of the kinds of measurements we're talking about?

Yeah. I mean, so once you know that the business case exists and you've said, okay, we're investing, then it comes to how do you how do you leverage the power of purpose or impact to drive those, you know, to attract the talent. So there's a few ways. One is you've described building it into your brand and your storytelling. So really communicating your values. One of the things that we've heard is that the number of people asking in interviews about what you do to be a force for good has skyrocketed. Even a few years ago, it was something like 70% of candidates were asking about that in one of our client companies. And so having the story but concrete benefits.

Yes, we have a $2,500 matching budget. We allow you eight hours a year of volunteer time off that's paid. We give you $25 an hour and dollars for doers. So if you volunteer and you track your time, we'll donate, you know, we'll give you $25 to donate to the charity of your choice or to the charity that you volunteered with. Or if you volunteer with the team, we'll give you a grant. So making it very concrete and true because, you know, you're kind of alluding to this earlier with Gen Zed, but it's like they just have a higher level of scrutiny and demand for transparency and authenticity. Like they've lived through the greenwashing and the purpose washing and they just don't buy it. Right? And so you need to show that that there's proof.

So being able to actually explain those as benefits in the recruitment process, I think storytelling and actually like what we see is a lot of clients showing their people out in the community through their social. Like, so yes, like these are real people doing this. This is not us just pretending. And having their employees act as ambassadors and share those stories. So that's, that's probably one of the most authentic ways. The other thing we'd say is really embedding it into your, into your culture right from day one. So if you have formal onboarding, making sure that they know that, showing them how they can donate it and like actually having them experience it. So the beauty of that is that you've made a promise through your brand and now on their first day at the company, they're actually experiencing it.

And so that say do ratio builds a lot of confidence. And it's like, okay, I wasn't just sold on this. This is real. Yeah. And then they're more likely to use it, which means then, you know, you may get more of that turnover benefit. And I will say, like, that is not correlated. Sorry. That's not causal data.

It's correlative. Like, I I I won't claim it's anything more than correlated. But but I do I do think that as as you embed it in the employee experience, you do build stickier relationships. I mean, I've seen that because when you went and volunteer with the team, there's actually a neuroscientific thing that's happening, which is you're releasing oxytocin when you do good and you're bonding and those bonds just strengthen. So there's a very biological thing happening when you've got groups of people volunteering together. It's fascinating. So that's kind of how the data can translate into tactical action, but authentic action. I think the other piece we're seeing a lot right now, Paul, you were getting a kind of the polarizing environment that we're in when you were talking about target.

One of the things is that enabling your people to donate to the causes they care about or support the causes they care about in, in, in our parents time working, it would have been like you give to the large, you know, United Way. Well, now most Gen Z doesn't know who United Way is. They're like, no, I want to give to a small grassroots organization that is supporting trans people with, you know, mental health supports, for example, or gender affirming care. And so that choice is incredibly important because when people have that choice and do the good, that's really when the oxytocin goes. So lots of tactics there from a talent perspective to leverage this data to turn it into real results.

Beautiful. Thanks for those great suggestions, Sona. Let's talk about profitability. We were just starting to get into this is a complicated dance because we have seen some greenwashing and the younger end of the, you know, younger end of millennials and gen z, but but even myself, if somebody's telling me a story with data, I have same Marty, you are an awesome dude. He he taught me a language. Some things just don't pass the smell test, Paul. Right? Like, we're getting more sophisticated when somebody's using data and when it's a real genuine commitment and when they're just trying to check the box to get our money. And certain behaviors, making a lot of promises and not delivering on those promises, making big public commitments when it's popular, and then retracting when an issue maybe gets a little push back.

Certain behaviors are not helpful in terms of profitability, and it wants to be done skillfully. So what are some of your suggestions as you're assuming you're a company who's collecting this data and really being on the forefront of understanding why it's important? How do we use it skillfully? And also, on the other side, what do we wanna not do when we're a company who's thinking about social impact and profitability, and we really wanna do it in a genuine way and not be one of these examples that's getting written up in large media outlets as, like, they kinda blew it, and now they're paying for it.

I mean, I think really it goes back down to first principles of trust. Like, if I if, Paul, you and I knew each other for a year, for example, and every time I met you, you showed up with a different opinion, My trust level in you wouldn't be the I wouldn't know what to expect. Maybe that's your brand. If that's your brand, that's fine. But, like,

most brands Erotic Incorporated. Right? Exactly. Right?

It's the exact same thing with a brand. I'm having a relationship with something. And frankly, brands are really projections of like what we want them to be. And so and they're reflecting that back of who I want to be. Right? And so, so I think that there is some magic in there, but it comes down to trust, which is, are you consistent with what I believe you stand for? And if you're inconsistent, then I'm gonna lose trust. And the moment I lose trust, you know, I'm I'm gonna stop engaging as deeply because biologically, again, when there's low trust, you don't want to be in those situations. It's actually not good for survival. So like there's a lot of biology in this stuff that's So I would say the most important thing and actually we're, we're having this, you you know, it's a very active conversation in the social impact space right now because of all of the executive orders and memos that have come out around, you know, banning certain DEI practices, freezing, you know, almost $300,000,000,000 in in funding for nonprofits, especially those who support underrepresented communities.

So there's been a lot of like companies starting to double back on these things because of the, the political risk. And what we're saying is you you can't do that without consequences. Because the moment you double back, like you like you pointed out earlier, there are very real consequences from your consumers, from your talent. Like right now there's a lot of discussion amongst employee resource groups about how devastating these rollbacks are. When you sit in a company and they actively roll these things back, they are saying, but the way people are receiving it is you don't care about me. Why should I care about you? And that productivity and that morale and that engagement goes down like that is your bottom line performance. And then if they turn over the cost to replace is more than the the salary. It's not.

It's like one and a half times the salary. I'm not an HR expert, but I know it's, you know, it's more than

where you are in the hierarchy of the organization. But if you are in the c suite, it can be multiples of your yearly salary. If you're a top engineer or something, it might be between 5080% of your salary. But, yeah, it's expensive. Let's just say that.

It's expensive. And then, you know, the thing I would say is that there's a lot of really interesting longitudinal data as well. So chief executives for corporate purpose, which is an industry association for social impact professionals or corporate giving professionals is, you know, said that high purpose companies are valued four times higher than, you know, than than the others. So like that's really valuable data to keep in mind. I think the, you know, the other thing is it's really interesting, you know, all the ESG backlash. It's kind of funny because actually ESG is really around just managing non financial risk. It's climate risk, it's social risk, it's governance risk. Like that's actually just good for your business because if there's major, you know, extreme weather events where you have factories, like, it's gonna be expensive.

The insurance is gonna be high, taking care of the people, the damage, the loss of right? Like, it is just expensive. So I get that it was politicized, but the reality is is it was trying to make sure that companies are aware of nonfinancial risks because those are increasing. And when you are resilient enough to withstand those nonfinancial risks, you're gonna be able to borrow money, more money at a lower rate. And so that affects your bottom line as well. And so there used there were, you know, in in in the last few years, a lot of studies coming out of, you know, like Bank of America and whatnot saying, like, actually companies, you know, who score well on ESG are more profitable, have a higher earnings per share, like, you know, a lot of those things. Now you can take that, write it down to smaller companies. It's the same thing. Borrowing rates, risk, it's all still there.

It's just on a different scale.

And they tend to navigate disruption, whether it's disruption in the market, disruption because of environmental factors, better is also some research that I Yeah.

Exactly.

So so you all at Benevity have thought a lot about these issues, and you've built a platform and a community to help companies with this. If somebody's saying this all makes sense, but it feels a little overwhelming, like, could Benevity be helpful to me in this? Who would it be a fit for? What kind of things might they expect if they were to raise their hand and say, could you all help me with this?

Yeah. You got it's a great question. So we are an enterprise software platform. So definitely geared towards, you know, companies that have, you know, larger employee sets and mostly globally distributed. But here's what I would say is we've got a lid, a lot of data and research and a lot of kind of best practices, tools and tips that any company of any size could benefit from. Because these, these, you know, the, these principles and these and the data isn't really that different even in a small organization because the talent is kind of the talent. The consumers are the consumers. Right? So so I wouldn't say it's we because Benevity used to actually have a lot more smaller companies on our platform.

And we used to look at this data and it wasn't the business level data wasn't significantly different. So so, yeah, we've got a lot of content and webinars and things that people can join. Just listen and get inspired and think about how they can do that on their scale.

You have a podcast?

I have a podcast, which is called speaking for per speaking of purpose. And we're just going into the next season, production here in the next month or two. Benevity dot com, like you can get all sorts of resources there. And then Benevity.com/impactlabs is where you can get all of our research on annual trends. And we're actually just getting ready. May, May fourteenth, we're going to be launching our next state of corporate purpose trends report with, trends for 2025. So lots of places following Benevity. I also publish data every week on my LinkedIn.

So Sona Khosla on LinkedIn And, yeah, we're we share as much as we can. It's kinda part of our contribution to making business as purpose driven as it can be.

Awesome. So you're getting great resources. Check out the links in the show notes, folks, and I'll put as much of that as I can, the podcast, the reports, Sona on LinkedIn, and some of the other things that we've talked about here as well as the general Benevity site. Sonra, I could hang out with you all day. You're doing amazing work, and I know you're busy. Our listeners are busy busy. As we start to wind down, is there anything you were hoping we'd get to that we didn't get to, or is there something you wanna leave our listeners with as we start to say goodbye?

Well, first of all, thank you, Paul. It's always fun to connect with like minded people, especially when it feels like the world is on fire and where in some places, it literally is on fire. I guess, you know, what I wanna say is I I mean, I'm I'm talking to a lot people in this space right now, and I think as we're living in this fairly politicized and polarized world, sometimes the work we do can be misunderstood and and weaponized or used against us. And I would just say, you know, stay true to your values. It's the same thing I said for companies. Stay true to your values. Stay true to your core beliefs. In the end, we're gonna be we're gonna be shown that this work is critical for resilient business and resilient societies.

And I I have zero doubt that that is how it's gonna unfold.

Absolutely. I'll tell a little story about that as we start to wind down. I'm the cofounder of a network here in New Mexico called NM Climate. Right? It's a New Mexico climate tech, and folks who are servicing, you know, service providers, and climate tech founders, and funders, you know, VCs, and impact investors. And as the political moment has moved not in favor of using climate change, you're literally not allowed to use those words if you work for the US government in certain categories. And they wiped out a whole bunch of weather data and climate data just gone. Right? And people came to me, you know, we're we're changing the way we're talk I'm, like, I'm not changing the way I'm talking about it. Like, this this is the right way to position it and some people are not gonna be happy.

And what's happening in my business is that people who are trying to figure this out are coming to me because I didn't pivot just because there was some folks who were not happy with certain framing. It just it is what it is and I do the work I do, and whereas folks who are trying to appeal to everybody with every change of the wind, some of those folks are circling back around and telling me, I'm really struggling, what are you doing? And I'm staying true. So just a real world story, Sona, to what you're describing. Like, know what your values are and what impact you're trying to have. And sure, there's pivots and different ways of telling the stories as the market matures, but if you're just blowing around because there's some friction around certain topics, then you're probably not doing very impactful work. If you're doing impactful work, you're gonna hit some friction. Right? So I just wanna say thank you for reminding us to be courageous in challenging times. And thank you for coming here and sharing all the great work that you and your team at Benevity have been doing.

I really appreciate it.

Thank you for the opportunity, Paul. It's such a pleasure.

Great. So listeners, let's do what we do. Please go check out the show notes. Tell your friends about this interview and share. Let's get more skillful about using data and leveraging it and telling stories that are informed but not obsessed by data. That's my that's the way I like to talk about it. Listeners, we love your suggestions for topics and guests. If you have an idea, please go to the Awarepreneur's website and on our contact page, we have our guidelines.

If it feels like a fit, please send your ideas in. And lastly, I just wanna say thank you so much for listening. Please take really good care in these intense times, and thank you for all the positive impact that you're working for in Arbor.