e-Commerce/Online Transactions

Your customers want simple, secure and convenient ways to give to causes they care about. Why not deliver?

e-Commerce/Online Transactions

Do you sell to customers online or offer other online customer transactions such as account management or online billing? Do you use a rebate program or other sales incentives in your operations that could be administered online? Do you provide an on-line service on a free or 'freemium' basis but need to qualify or incentify users?

Building a social giving aspect into your site (perhaps with a matching component offered by you or key sponsors/advertisers) to complement your online selling goals or other objectives can deliver more customers, increase sales, engage customers, build brand equity, and differentiate you against competitive businesses.

Rebates and similar incentives can be effective in modifying customer behaviour. Often, an altruistic incentive or alternative can be more effective in gaining take-up of the requested behaviour, especially if it is customized to the user.

The Benevity™ Solution

Benevity’s secure online donation platform can easily integrate into your e-commerce site, online selling community or other online customer transaction process. Using the Benevity platform, you can offer customers the opportunity to participate in online giving at any customer transaction point, such as a sale or online payment, without interrupting the shopping cart or existing flows. It could also be used to aggregate and direct rebates and sales incentives as online giving investments from within your system, with or without a matching component from the customer, and with an electronic tax receipt issued to the donor on which your brand (and any matching sponsors) can appear.

You can choose the best way to implement the Benevity embedded giving engine into your site and how to undertake a number of innovative social business initiatives that can be tied to your business strategy.

See Sample Applications

An online golf clothing and equipment retailer donates 10% of sales to charity. The retailer could select a portfolio of causes that resonate with its customers or social business objectives, and the customer would then be prompted after payment to select the charity he or she wanted to support. Or the retailer could leave it up to the customer, recognizing that the recipient will in all cases be a registered charity. Or the retailer could do both, with a matching component applying to those charities that the retailer wishes to create a bias toward. The customer immediately receives a co-branded donation tax receipt without leaving the retailer's environment.

Alternatively, as with the Product (RED) model, the retailer could select certain items that invite a charitable contribution of a percentage of the sales price or a flat contribution amount, based on seasonality, increased sales goals, a certain cause or whatever other variable is relevant to your strategy. Key suppliers could be used to sponsor elements of the matching program, in return for a limited site presence.

Even more simply (or additionally), the retailer could enable the customer to add an amount to their purchase in the shopping cart, with or without a matching component. Frequent purchasers could 'round up' their purchase price and aggregate their giving until it is meaningful, administering those amounts through their user profile on your site.

The Benevity platform uses an API to connect your company's e-commerce engine or site to the Benevity functionality, which means ease of integration, low technology risk for you, and a choice of how to implement and which features to expose on your customer-facing site.

Key Benefits

Through Benevity, add value to your e-commerce or customer-facing site as you can:

Offer customers a way to feel good and do good while buying or transacting in your online environment
Support causes that matter to your customers in a low-cost, empowered way
Increase sales by tying giving goals to business goals, and through innovative promotional, marketing, merchandising and matching initiatives
Attach sales incentives that have a social business profile on either the corporate level, by product or empowering your customers to add a donation to their purchase
Understand the cause choices of your customers, to better segment and target offers
Measure and report results and build true customer loyalty

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[Did you know...]

The importance of CSR is increasing in the minds of CEOs. When asked to indicate how high a priority CSR was to their companies, 56% stated it was high or very high, compared to only 34% three years ago. The expectation of respondents is for even greater priority in the future: 69% of surveyed CEOs project that it will be a high or very high priority three years from now.

Global Business Barometer, survey conducted by the Economist Intelligence Unit on behalf of the Economist, online survey conducted Nov-Dec 2007
That American Express began the first “embedded giving” campaign in 1983, for the Statue of Liberty restoration project. By donating a penny to the project for every cardholder purchase, the company raised $1.7 million. (Incidentally, American Express card use increased 27%, and card applications rose 45%).
Based on a McKinsey study of corporate executives from around the world, 84% believe that society expects a much more active role in environmental, social and political issues than it did five years ago.
When asked about barriers to supporting charities and non-profits, the top reasons cited included not being asked, not liking the way donation requests were being made, and not knowing how to give.

Corporate Social Responsibility Review Autumn 2007, The Conference Board of Canada.
Implementing the Benevity platform can improve a company's ability to attract and retain key employees. Talented personnel weigh a company's CSR policies among other factors when deciding where to work, and how long to stay there. In recent surveys of corporate employees, a consistent 8 out of 10 report being more motivated and loyal the more socially responsible a company becomes.

Corporate Social Responsibility Review, The Conference Board of Canada, Autumn 2007.
Making Benevity a part of your coherent responsible business strategy will improve your reputation in the marketplace. A Globescan study that asked respondents in 1999 and again in 2005 about the factors most influencing their impressions of companies, showed that in the latter year consumers were much more likely to volunteer corporate social responsibility factors, putting these factors well ahead of brand image.
Integrating Benevity's functionality into your systems can protect against future reputational incidents. A Weber Shandwick survey of CEOs in eleven countries found that 79% of respondents thought a strong corporate social responsibility record enables a company to recover faster post-crisis.
Weaving Benevity into your customer-facing processes can increase sales, market share and customer loyalty. A 2006 study by the Calvert Group said consumers were 77% more likely to buy a product or service from a company that is socially responsible, and 71% more likely to buy the stock of such a company. A 2006 poll by Cone Inc., a marketing agency in Boston, reported 89% of Americans between 13 and 25 would switch from one brand to another associated with a "good cause", if products and prices were comparable.
Traditionally, charities have relied on a small support base to survive. The top one-quarter of donors provided 82% of the value of all donations and the top 10% accounted for 62% of all donations.

Caring Canadians, Involved Canadians: Highlights from the 2004 Canada Survey of Giving, Volunteering and Participating, Statistics Canada, June 2006).
Individuals are a huge part of the philanthropic puzzle. Of the $300 Billion given to non-profits in the U.S. in 2007, only 5.1% came from corporations and their Foundations. Canada's percentages are comparable.

Analysis conducted by "Giving USA", 2007.
Online is the place people want to be: Although still less than 3% of total giving, online giving is growing exponentially; from $250 million in 2000 to more than $6.9 Billion in 2006

e-Philanthropy Report
Online donors contribute more: They give in total (both online and offline) more than 50% more than donors who do not give online

Kinterra/Luth Nonprofit Trend Report.
Easy = Effective: In the January 2008 Keystone Report of online philanthropy markets, 92% of respondents cited convenience as the reason they choose to give online.
Matching programs increase total donations: The existence of a matching gift increases total donation response rates by more than 20%

Analysis conducted by Giving USA, 2007.

Benevity - Enabling Corporate Social Responsibility

Your customers want simple, secure and convenient ways to give to causes they care about. Why not deliver?