Would you dedicate company time and money to corporate giving initiatives if you knew you weren’t going to be recognised for it?

According to the Fred Hollows Foundation, corporate giving, also known as corporate philanthropy, refers to the act of businesses donating money, resources or time to support social causes and initiatives. This is done for several reasons: living company values, allowing employees to feel an increased sense of purpose and reputation-building amongst key stakeholders, to name a few.

While Britain’s biggest listed companies donated £1.82bn to charitable causes in 2023, businesses of all sizes are increasingly committing to giving back where it’s needed – Life Size included.

For the past few years, we have been a participant of 1% for the Planet, a fantastic global initiative supporting businesses worldwide to make a manageable, yet impactful, contribution to environmental causes. Through the organisation, we, along with another 7,000+ partners across 110 countries, donated 1% of our revenue to charities working to protect the environment. Half of the donation was a purely financial contribution, while the other half was provided in the form of volunteering hours for worthwhile causes.

Talking the talk vs. walking the walk: Finding the balance

While the initiative reflected our values and offered an easy, structured way for us to facilitate our corporate giving, we began to wonder whether we could forge our own path when it came to donations and volunteering. 

For example, with a growing team scattered across the UK, Germany and Sweden, it wasn’t always easy to find network-recognised volunteering opportunities near our homes or that allowed us to easily meet and volunteer as a team. It meant forgoing local volunteering opportunities for organisations that excited us in favour of travelling long distances to satisfy the volunteering element for 1% for the Planet.

It begged the question: If it feels like a box-ticking exercise, are we living our values the way we intend to? Is it right that we should feel discouraged from exploring the charities we’d like to donate to and volunteer for, all to keep the certification?

These questions were carefully considered by the team – we wanted to explore our options, yet we felt an affinity for the initiative. After all, the badge was more to us than just a self-promotional tick-box to improve our reputation. It was a symbol of community and a way to share the 1% of the Planet mission with the other businesses in our network. 

The power of curating your corporate giving process

During our Annual Adventure in 2024, we decided to try our own Life Size corporate giving process. We had outgrown the 1% for the Planet initiative, although the experience had given us a zest to continue pursuing environmental and social impact and the framework to do it ourselves.

Now, we get to donate 1% of our profits to a cause or causes of our choice – and we decide as a team. It means we can put forward charities and organisations that resonate with us and reflect our values directly, and our volunteering opportunities are the same. We can organise them where, when and how often we want without worrying about whether they are officially recognised. 

As an employee-owned company, this is the approach that felt authentic to us.

Since launching our new company process, we’ve already embarked on our first major volunteer project: Team UK (Lucia, Paige, Martha and Sam) is currently dedicating monthly hours to The Access Project, a six-month coaching programme supporting young people from underresourced backgrounds to access higher education. This one is particularly meaningful because it’s the first volunteering opportunity we’ve found that perfectly marries our diversity and inclusion values with our commitment to giving back to our communities. 

Soon, we will select the first causes we’d like to support with our 1% donation, starting a new yearly tradition and exercising our agency as employee-owners to allocate our profits to causes close to our hearts.

Can you do both?

For us, stepping away from 1% for the Planet wasn’t us stepping away from action and impact. It also wasn’t our way of retracting our support for the initiative itself. We still share the same values and goals as the 1% of the Planet community, even if we’ve taken our responsibilities into our own hands.

As for losing the badge, we’re okay with it. What matters to us is that we’re still taking the action we set out to when we joined the initiative. Plus, we’re confident that our passion for the planet shines through in the work we do every day to support climate tech companies to success.

We’re still able to share our corporate giving experiences with our network on LinkedIn and hopefully inspire our industry peers to join us – whether that’s as part of a community-led initiative, or an independent venture. It all counts and we applaud every business that is doing their 1% for our world.

What corporate giving initiatives have you taken part in? We’d love to know more about what has worked for you. Follow us on LinkedIn if you’d like to keep up to date with our volunteering and charitable support!