Companies everywhere see the value in philanthropy and other corporate social responsibility (CSR) efforts. With the right strategies, corporate giving can boost your business’s reputation, engage employees and increase customer loyalty—all while driving positive change in your community. But in order to see any of these benefits, you first need a way to accurately measure and report on your company’s philanthropic impact.

That’s where this guide comes in. We’ll discuss several strategies for tracking and analyzing impact data so your company leaders can better understand how your programs make a difference. Let’s get started.

1. Set clear KPIs.

First, refer to your corporate philanthropy programs’ goals and choose key performance indicators (KPIs) to track internally. You’ll need clear KPIs for your matching gift program, volunteering opportunities and any other workplace giving programs you implement (such as a grantmaking or payroll giving program).

Some basic KPIs to start with include:

• Total dollars donated by employees.
• Total dollars matched by your company.
• Average matched donation amount.
• Number of hours volunteered by employees.
• Number of organizations or causes contributed to.
• Employee participation rates.

This information will help you identify the general success of your programs and whether employees take advantage of them. For instance, tracking matching gift metrics like dollars matched and average matching gift amount tells you how much your employees give through your matching gift program. You can compare these amounts to the total dollars donated through payroll giving or charitable spending accounts (CSAs) to see which strategies employees prefer.

2. Leverage corporate giving software.

Simplify data tracking and impact measurement with corporate giving or CSR software. Corporate giving platforms help companies manage all aspects of their CSR programs, from employee engagement to grant distribution to impact reporting.

These tools come with a variety of features to help you streamline, track and analyze data from your corporate giving programs. Specifically, the following features can be instrumental in your impact measurement efforts:

• Automated KPI reporting: Set KPIs directly within the platform, and your software will automatically create detailed reports to help you monitor them.
• Custom dashboards: Analyze your employee giving programs’ impact at a glance with custom visual dashboards that update in real time.
• Automatic requests for impact reports from nonprofit grant recipients: If your company awards grants to nonprofits, certain tools streamline the reporting process by automatically reminding nonprofits to send you their impact reports.
• Employee engagement reporting: Go beyond basic metrics and access reports on the specific ways employees engage with your programs.

As you search for corporate giving software that aligns with your company’s needs, look for a platform that supports several types of corporate philanthropy, from matching gifts to payroll giving to volunteer time off (VTO). This way, you can easily scale your CSR efforts in the future and continue to manage all programs within the same platform.

3. Get deeper insights from nonprofit partners.

While basic metrics like the total funds your company donated and the number of causes you supported are important, this data doesn’t tell you much about the impact of your donations. Fortunately, you can gain more tangible, detailed insights into your company’s philanthropic impact by requesting information from your nonprofit partners.

Ask nonprofits for concrete data about the programs and projects that corporate gifts go toward. These insights will tell you exactly how your efforts impact communities, rather than just what resources you provide, resulting in impact data that’s more compelling for internal and external stakeholders alike.

For example, look at the difference between the following two reports about the impact of a team volunteer outing at a community food bank:

1. “On March 1, 20 team members volunteered for 4 hours with the Feeding Tulsa Food Bank as part of our CSR initiatives, totaling 80 volunteer hours.”
2. “During the March 1 Volunteer Day, our volunteers sorted through 200 cans of donated food and packaged meals to feed 300 food-insecure community members in Tulsa.”

The second example is much more specific and connects your company’s contributions directly to a tangible, meaningful impact (feeding 300 community members). This data is more inspiring for team members and provides stakeholders with a more accurate picture of your company’s CSR results.

You can ask for nonprofits’ insights into the impact of any corporate giving program. If 50 employees requested matching gifts for their contributions to your local Habitat for Humanity chapter, for instance, ask chapter leaders which programs that funding went toward. They may not be able to give you an exact answer, but they can provide a general idea of the gifts’ tangible impact. Grant recipients, on the other hand, should provide you with detailed data about exactly where grant funding went.

4. Survey employees.

Measuring your programs’ impact on the organizations and causes they support should be your first priority, but you should measure their effect on employee engagement levels, too. When your giving programs are aligned with employees’ interests and tailored to their preferences, they can boost team morale and give employees a greater sense of purpose at work, ultimately leading to increased employee engagement, satisfaction and retention.

To measure this impact on employees, track quantitative data like employee participation rates along with qualitative data from surveys and interviews. Ask employees questions to gauge their satisfaction with your programs. These questions might look like:

• Do you enjoy participating in our corporate giving programs? Why or why not?
• How often have you participated in our philanthropy programs in the past year?
• Do you find our philanthropy programs meaningful? Why or why not?
• How much do our giving opportunities align with your values?
• Do you feel like your donations and volunteer hours make a difference on causes you care about?
• Have your personal philanthropy efforts increased due to our corporate giving programs?
• Are there any ways we could improve our programs to better align with your preferences and interests?
• Is corporate philanthropy a factor in your decision to stay with the company?

If you have virtual or hybrid employees, include additional questions about their experience with giving and volunteering online. Ask how engaging your online programs are, if they’ve encountered any technical difficulties and whether they feel they’re making an impact with their participation.

The answers to these questions will not only help you understand your programs’ impact on employees; they should also provide clear direction for future programming decisions. Since employees are the drivers of your workplace giving programs, their input is extremely valuable. If several employees say that they want more flexibility in how they volunteer, for instance, it’s in your best interest to expand your volunteer program’s options to maximize participation.

5. Analyze your data.

Finally, compile all your quantitative and qualitative data to get a holistic view of your programs’ impact. Your corporate giving software should do this for you, but make sure to verify that any automatically created reports include all your key data points to see the full picture.

Start analyzing your data by looking for trends, such as increased employee giving around the holidays or differences in cause distribution for employees of different generations. If you see a sudden increase or decrease in participation, investigate further to determine the potential cause. Take note of any patterns you identify within the data, and consider what changes you could make to your programs to increase their impact.

For instance, you might notice that both employee participation and total dollars donated spiked in August when you added new giving options like credit card and payroll giving. This trend may indicate that you should give employees even more flexibility or expand the specific programs they supported.

If you need help measuring your programs’ impact, making adjustments or designing new corporate giving programs, consider partnering with an advisor who helps corporations boost their CSR performance. These experts can help you improve your programs and make the greatest impact possible.