Corporate social investment in Brazil has similarities and differences with practices in the United States. Comunitas has been leading a cross-sector collaboration called Juntos to bring together corporate and public sector actors to drive important changes in major cities in Brazil.
Also, for many years Comunitas, has tracked corporate social investments in Brazil. Our findings are published annually in the BISC (Benchmarking of Corporate Social Investment) report. We were pleased to share our most recent insights with the Global Exchange network during a recent network meeting.
Did you know that…?
- Education was the top focus area (35%) for private social investment made by BISC companies, followed by culture (13%) and health at 5%.
- There are legal requirements enforced by the government that required some BISC companies to make mandatory social investments mainly concentrating on focus areas related to infrastructure (43%), education (25%), and income generation (14%), for a total amount of R $.67 billion vs. R $2.6 billion of voluntary investments.
- Only 36% of the 292 responding companies increased their social investments between 2014 and 2014 vs. 64% of companies that decreased their social investments, although the percentage of their social investment in relation to revenue, gross profit, and net profit all increased during that same period.
- Comparing the percentage of social investments in relation to gross profit between BISC companies vs. CECP companies, we can see that BISC companies invested more from 2009 – 2013, but had a large decrease in 2014, due in large part to the economic crisis in Brazil. In 2015 though, we see an uptick to 0.89%.
- 94% of BISC companies have at least one volunteer program.
- More than 58,000 employees (or 10%) of employees from BISC companies participated in volunteer programs with a total of R$ 14.6 million invested:
These BISC findings represent just a portion of insights from their research on the latest from social investment in Brazil. To learn more, please visit our site: https://comunitas.org/.