One of the BIA questions in the Community section asks,
“What was the equivalent percentage of revenue donated to charity during the last fiscal year?”
I’m wondering if others count their pro bono work in this tally? It’s not a % of revenue as it earns no income, but it’s a $ figure which we do give away in services.
I’ve only implemented our Pro-Bono Purpose Project (PPP) since last certification so getting my head around this.
I’m assuming it is not counted, but appreciate insights from others!
Thanks Karen. We current donate between 0.5-1% of our revenue, however if we included the money we spend on our pro bono work it would easily put us in the 1.1%-2.4% tier. So how would you answer this question? Cold hard cash only? I know they ask about volunteer work also…
(Aiming to get to 1.1% + this FY on cash/giving alone, so this might be a redundant question. Just trying to understand how others think about this.)
I’m pretty sure if you can quantify your volunteer hours then it counts towards the giving. From memory that’s what I did but would probably need to review. Our volunteer percentage of hours are given to the same organisation as our $$ but I don’t think that makes it more quantifiable
Hey… yeah, this is a tricky one and not sure if interpretation varies between auditors. Our model freaks them out a bit and we tend to end up in the too hard basket - leading to long time certifying & re-certifying.
We invest a target of 10% of our REVENUE in our Dynamic4 Good grants & Dynamic4 Ventures - which are mostly probono. When I say target is 10% it’s because I’ve been working at bringing it down from 35%+ which isn’t sustainable.
Conversations I’ve had with B Lab on that is none of this counts as donations - only traditional donations count. From memory I don’t think our social investment programs got us many points, the priority was cold hard cash…
I’d love to see the BIA reflect and reward models where impact is truly embedded and less of a focus on corporate philanthropy/CSR and profit redistribution.
Hi @alisonmichalk
I am not sure if that is the correct way to do it…but I wanted to share how we do it at 4DP.
As a member of 1%FTP, we calculate the billable hours each year that we have spent on pro bono work (our annual goal is 5% of billable hours, same like @KarenPorter’s) and then we translate that into revenue gone towards those projects. At 1%FTP this amount will then be deducted from the annual fee towards 1%FTP plus the donations and promotions you paid for (eg when we run and pay for digital advertising or printing).
Hope this is helpful.
Kindly,
Sonja
I’ve asked this question separately on here somewhere when I was calculating mine for recert. The pro bono hours don’t count as a converted $ value in the equivalent percentage of revenue question because the hours are not tax deductible. Ally’s right, the hours are captured elsewhere but I’m not sure that it would provide the equivalent points if you could capture them in this question.
But, like @benpecotich, I’d love to see embedded giving recognised more in the BIA. Stepping away from the ‘traditional’ cash donation because we have a lot of revenue model is, after all, what it’s all about. And it is a little imbalanced when you can convert in-kind product to $$. At the end of the day, both of these situations are giving up something that you would normally exchange for revenue.
I realise that the tax deductible element is how they decide if it’s a valid donation but that’s to determine whether the organisation you’re donating to is a recognised charitable body. So, to my mind, donating hours to an organisation with DGR status should also be recognised. Basically, you’re missing out on both counts - you can’t get a tax benefit from donating hours and you also can’t get the extra points. And this is often the only way a small business can afford to provide effective donations because they simply don’t have the revenue to provide cash.
@Talia, you may have similar issues to @benpecotich for your in-kind Impact Grants. However, they might be able to be captured as pro bono hours, depending on how they’re structured.
G’day! Yeah, we’re just doing recert again now, so I’ll get to test how they treat our model again. From first pass of the BIA, it looks like our model is still mostly not recognised/rewarded.
We’re also a social enterprise and 100% of our work is aligned with our purpose and theory of change - without a cross subsidy model. Our model is 100% embedded impact… and on top of that invest a pool of 10-35% of annual REVENUE in our social/environmental grants and impact venture programs. We mostly support non-DGR early-stage social enterprise startups and eco-system building initiatives. It’s investing in impact that matters to us, not DGR.
DGR skews the funding landscape in Australia. Ironically the BIA would reward us donating to a climate denying think tank with DGR but not a climate action social enterprise. I know we’re an edge case but I do find it annoying. Our last recert took 15 months because their peak workload in 2018… and we don’t fit traditional models. It will be interesting to see how long this time.
My goal is to recertify with 110+ this time and We should make it… but without changing to a more waste producing product/business model, I think we might have reached our ceiling with the current BIA.
Stoked to celebrate the 5,000 B Corp mark too. Love being part of the movement with you all!
