CLIENT STORY
Hootsuite reimagined social impact during uncertain times
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As a social media management platform, Hootsuite's purpose is to help companies connect more deeply with their audience. And one of their six guiding principles is to help their people connect to each other and their communities to be good neighbors and allies. That's what their social impact program, Hootsuite for Good, makes possible.
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Software company
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11 countries
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900 employees
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Benevity Modules used:
Donate, Volunteer
The challenge
Tech companies (and tech employees) were hit particularly hard by the 2022 economic downturn. How could these companies continue engaging their people during this difficult time? Hootsuite knew their corporate impact program was key, but they'd have to get a little more creative with it.
The solution
Hootsuite decided to reimagine their two largest company-wide initiatives: Beyond the Nest and HootMatch. And they removed barriers to their program by embedding Goodness into everyday meetings with their five-minute social impact challenges.
Using Benevity’s employee engagement solutions enabled them to scale these initiatives globally and effectively measure and report on their impact.
Beyond the Nest
Historically, Beyond the Nest was a week-long, mostly self-led, virtual volunteering event. So, the team decided to make a big change and focused on creating one high-impact global day of service. Events were planned by both employees and the company, and it was easier to participate with virtual and in-person opportunities.
HootMatch
Plus, they evolved their weeklong donation matching event, HootMatch, into a more interactive, two-week virtual “Festival of Goodness.” While they still used Benevity to match donations, now the event included nonprofit panels, workshops, speaking events and — the big hit — Hootsuite’s first ever live, telethon-style fundraising show, benefiting the nonprofits employees personally chose to support.
5-minute social impact challenge
To top it off, people managers were empowered to engage their teams in live donate-a-thons during meetings. Managers could leverage their team's event budget to "gift" donation funds into each employee’s Benevity giving account, which was announced at the beginning of a meeting for a little surprise and delight. This helped remove barriers to participation and embedded Goodness even further into the company’s DNA.
The result
Not only did Hootsuite see huge gains in participation, but their efforts were impacting their people in a positive way, too. In an internal survey, 78% of employees reported feeling connected to their team members, 86% felt connected to the community and 83% felt a positive impact on their mental well-being as a direct result of volunteering. An overwhelming majority of employees credited Beyond the Nest as being a bright light during hard times.
In 2022, Hootsuite’s social impact program saw:
- Volunteer participation increased 573% year-over-year for their Beyond the Nest event
- 42% of all employees participated in Beyond the Nest
- Engaged 30% of their people with their Festival of Goodness
- $173,266 CAD donated to 230 nonprofits
- Overall annual participation lift by 6%
With creativity and innovation always top of mind, it's no wonder Hootsuite won the 2022 Buzz Award and was a finalist for the 2023 Moonshot category at Benevity's annual Corporate Goodness Awards.
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