Benevity, the Calgary-based tech company that has become a global leader for its corporate social responsibility (CSR) platform, is moving into the mobile app market.
The company is set to officially announce the launch of the app on Thursday, which it calls the “next evolution” of its platform. The app is an extension of Benevity’s desktop-based giving platform, and is meant to help companies make their CSR programs more inclusive and accessible to employees.
“It’s an essential and logical next step in the evolution of our platform.”
“Being an app, being with you, it will provide a more immediate and experiential, well experience, for these employees, and it opens the door to broader location-based opportunities,” Jason Becker, co-founder and interim CTO of Benevity told BetaKit.
Becker noted that one of Benevity’s major goals with the app was to help its corporate clients reach a larger percentage of workers, many of whom are “desk-less.”
The launch of the app follows shortly after Benevity announced the close of its $40 million Series C round, with a valuation and revenue generation that makes it one of Canada’s largest early-stage tech companies.
A certified B Corporation, Benevity was co-founded in 2008 by CEO Bryan de Lottinville, and a group of tech innovators, as a platform that enables companies to engage their employees and customers around social responsibility and community investment. Benevity’s ultimate goal and vision is for there to be no need for a separate category of ‘B Corporations,’ “because every company will pursue hybrid goals of profit and purpose.”
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Benevity currently sits at around 600 employees, with a customer base of more than 600 clients spanning large, global enterprises like Microsoft, Coca-Cola, Google, and Honda. The startup’s software is currently available in 17 languages and accessible to a reported 12 million employees or users. Since it was founded, Benevity claims to have processed almost $4 billion dollars in donations and 23 million volunteering hours for an approximate 200,000 charities around the world.
The announcement of its move into the app space comes the same week as Giving Tuesday, a global charitable movement that began in 2012, in response to the popularity and mass amounts of consumer activity during Black Friday through to Cyber Monday. The campaign is one of Benevity’s biggest days of the year. At AWS re:Invent conference, which is currently taking place in Las Vegas, Benevity VP of engineering John Mortimer reportedly noted that Benevity’s estimated “giving number” for all of 2019 was $1.6 billion (BetaKit confirmed with Benevity that the correct dollar amount is $1.6 billion, not $1.9 billion). Benevity is still reconciling its exact Giving Tuesday reports but stated it is currently tracking to 40 percent year-over-year growth in donation volume.
“Companies can make their CSR programs and purpose-driven initiatives more experiential and inclusive for everyone.”
Benevity’s app is currently available for free, having launched in mid-November, and is available in iOS and Android. Benevity is touting the app as a way for corporations to more quickly respond to events, like natural disasters, as they happen, allowing employees to donate in real-time.
Through the app users can more easily track volunteer hours at events, monitor how specific donation missions are going, as well as see the impact individuals are having through a Personal Impact Card. The app also allows users to discover more giving opportunities by providing targetted “Trending Now and Popular Causes” content.
The tech company, which processes millions of dollars globally each year, highlighted that its app is built to meet the highest privacy and security standards, is GDPR compliant, and does not store sensitive data.
“By engaging more people, more often in Goodness – no matter where they are located – companies can make their CSR programs and purpose-driven initiatives more experiential and inclusive for everyone, strengthening employee engagement and retention,” said de Lottinville.
“With the addition of mobile, our clients now have another way to empower their people to support causes they care about, which in turn helps to create a workplace culture distinguished by meaning, engagement and a passion to make the world better,” he added. “It’s an essential and logical next step in the evolution of our platform.”
Image source Benevity via Twitter
UPDATE 09/12/19: This story has been updated to reflect that the $4 billion dollars in donations that Benevity has processed is over an 11 year time period, not just 2019.