The annual CECP Giving in Numbers™ Survey is now live. That means 200+ large global corporations are currently gathering, scrubbing, and finalizing their 2020 data across a number of critical areas – community investment, employee engagement, measurement of their impact, and more – as they prepare for their year-end reporting and to submit to this industry leading research.
This year, more than most in recent memory, the ability for companies to evaluate what they are doing, where they are leading, and where they have opportunity to improve, is top of mind as they, together with nonprofit partners, determine the strategies they will employ going forward to rebuild and reinvigorate communities and relationships that have suffered over the past year.
Companies routinely request and use benchmarking insights from Giving in Numbers to bolster Board and executive presentations, strategic discussions, CSR and impact reports, press releases, and a number of other outlets. They use the data to make their case for bigger budgets and staff, refined focus areas and partners, expand employee programs, and more. As a trusted advisor to companies, CECP’s priority is ensuring our insights drawn from companies’ data are as relevant and accessible to companies as possible. Here’s how we do it:
By engaging leading organizations in the space:
In an effort to make sure CECP’s dataset is increasingly representative through more companies responding each year, CECP engages in a number of partnerships with industry and regional associations. This year for the first time, CECP and Association of Corporate Citizenship Professionals are collaborating to strengthen and expand this industry-leading community investment dataset, in service of companies’ need for the highest quality benchmarking.
Through innovative technological solutions:
Launched last year, CECP again will partner with two leading software providers, YourCause, a part of Blackbaud, and Benevity. Companies using software from either of these Innovation Partners will have access to a standard CECP Giving in Numbers report that they can run to more easily pull their companies’ data in a way that aligns with the Giving In Numbers research. Want your tech provider to become an Innovation Partner? Let us know!
Recognizing that there are many demands on the time of a corporate leader; these collaborations seek to streamline corporate measurement work and improve user experience both with their software platforms and with CECP’s Giving in Numbers Survey.
In partnership with companies:
Given the volatility of the last year, 2020 Giving in Numbers Survey data collected in 2021 are highly anticipated to provide a window into how corporate social investments changed or sustained. Stakeholders want to know what a company believes and how it is standing up to help solve social challenges; Giving in Numbers allows a company to share that information in context of other leading corporations. As such, CECP takes steps to include relevant new topics to the survey each year.
This year, we’re collecting information from companies on new areas including: giving and volunteerism with relation to Covid and/or social justice support; changes in the use of virtual volunteering as a result of current global health circumstances in 2020; more granularity on how companies are giving to STEM, as well as companies’ total Social Value – building on CECP’s Total Social Investment (TSI) work. TSI is a forward-looking metric that aggregates the myriad ways in which companies create social and economic prosperity through monetary contributions, non-monetary contributions, and a wide array of other efforts that are unique to the corporate sector.
If you’re interested in learning more about how to participate in, or partner with CECP on Giving in Numbers, reach out to insights@cecp.co. The current survey is open through March 31, 2021.
ABOUT GIVING IN NUMBERS
Chief Executives for Corporate Purpose’s © (CECP) Giving in Numbers is the unrivaled leader in benchmarking on corporate social investments, in partnership with companies. It is the premier industry survey and research, providing standard-setting criteria in a go-to guide that has defined the field and advanced the movement. CECP has the largest and most historical data set on trends in the industry, shared by more than 550 multi-billion-dollar companies over 19 years, representing more than $290 billion in corporate social investments over that time span. The report is embraced by professionals across all sectors globally to understand how corporations invest in society, with topics ranging from cash and in-kind/product, employee volunteerism and giving, and impact measurement. From quick questions to presentations to company teams, boards, and CEOs, CECP is a trusted advisor to companies, analyzing Giving in Numbers data to provide customized insights to advance strategy and measure the business value.