In this E4E Relief Partner Spotlight, VP and Director, Marketing & Partnerships, Ashley Wilson Oster, interviewed Chief Impact Officer at Benevity, Sona Khosla who explored the intersection of corporate purpose, social impact and innovative philanthropy. Sona shares her unique perspective on Benevity’s mission, the evolving corporate giving landscape and the powerful momentum driving the organization forward. Sona also sheds light on how Benevity and its partners are shaping a more purposeful and responsive business environment, empowering employees and organizations to make a meaningful difference in the world.
Ashley: Tell me a little bit about your role at Benevity and what keeps you motivated after 10 years?
Sona: As Chief Impact Officer at Benevity, I often joke that I have the best job in the world (as I’ve learned many other Chief Impact Officers agree, too!). In a nutshell, my role was recently described to me by our CFO as “the conscience of the company.” That’s a mantle I am incredibly proud to attempt to carry!
More specifically, as part of my role on Benevity’s executive team, I have the privilege of playing a dual role for the company. First, I oversee the corporate purpose strategy for Benevity, which is inclusive of our work in social impact, climate, ESG, DEI and values and ethics. I also lead our social innovation lab, which is called Benevity Impact Labs, and has a mission to accelerate impact and inclusion through the pursuit of innovation publishing proprietary research and data to enable companies, nonprofits and individuals to maximize their efforts. As part of the work in the Lab, I also host our podcast called Speaking of Purpose, where we highlight the real people making real change in the world – whether that’s in business or in communities, or both. Season 3 was released on June 18, so check it out!
Most leaders in the impact space will tell you that 10 years is barely long enough to see the change you want in the world. So that’s genuinely what keeps me waking up every day and continuing to do what I do with some of the most purpose-driven brands and teams in the world.
Ashley: I know your founder has remained involved since the beginning in one way or another because of his passion for the social good ecosystem. What is Benevity’s mission? How did the organization start?
Sona: Benevity was founded in 2008. Our founder, Bryan de Lottinville, saw an opportunity to do things differently. It was at a time when we were seeing consumers become more empowered, co-designing their experiences with brands. He saw an opportunity to bring that level of personalization to the corporate giving space. That was primarily driven by a top-down approach where company leaders forced employees to engage with company-partnered causes rather than empowering and supporting their people to engage with the causes that are close to their hearts. At the same time, it was clear that there was a lot of manual work and inefficiency for nonprofits who wanted to engage with corporate funders. So, when we built the platform, we built it in a way that would bring unprecedented scale and efficiency to both the nonprofits and corporations engaging, while also making the giving more personal and meaningful to employees. The thesis was that if it were done this way, we could generate both social and business outcomes with greater impact for nonprofits and the communities they serve.
It turns out, the founding vision wasn’t wrong. Our recently released Impact Report shows that, over the past 17 years, Benevity has facilitated more than $18.5 billion in donations and 99 million volunteer hours in support of over 500,000 unique nonprofits across the globe. And all of this was done by bringing together almost 1,000 purpose-driven businesses with 2 million nonprofits that represent over 20 million employees. And yet, we know we’ve only scratched the surface which is why we were excited to launch our enterprise impact platform at Benevity Live!, which is aimed at making impact sustainable and measurable, enabling companies to generate long-term value by driving long-term impact.
Ashley: It is always wonderful to see you engaging with leaders across so many industries and organizations. I have seen the positive influence you have had on many CSR leaders. What common thread do you see between the corporate social impact leaders you are connecting with today? What do you identify as challenges and opportunities?
Sona: The one thing we all have in common is that we are living through a massive corporate-purpose shakeup. Our recently released 2025 State of Corporate Purpose trends report revealed that nearly two-thirds of company leaders significantly changed their corporate purpose strategy in the past year and that over half of impact leaders had a departmental or leadership change at the same time. And all of this is happening amidst one of the most volatile macro-environments where we are dealing with shifting geopolitics, changing political, legal and regulatory policies, changes in the generations in the workplace, economic uncertainty and the fast-paced rise of AI. These external pressures are putting internal pressure on these already small and mighty teams. One thing all the leaders I speak to agree on is that they are engaging with more stakeholders across their companies than ever before, including increased communication with CEOs and corporate communications departments, legal, compliance, risk, HR, DEI — you name it!
But here’s the thing: all of this is telling us that we are witnessing a major evolution in our discipline; one that will change who we are as leaders and as professionals. An evolution where social impact is no longer a siloed function, but instead a business imperative that spans the enterprise because it’s strategic. And, frankly, whatever becomes more strategic, is more scrutinized. The more purpose and impact become central to corporate strategy and success, the more we as impact leaders will be expected to play a role. This is the new world of enterprise impact. And we are leading it!
Ashley: How do you see purpose growing as a business-wide strategy? Why does it matter?
Sona: For the past number of years, businesses have been the only institutions that have public trust and whose leaders are seen as competent. That has put those leaders in a unique position with a lot of expectations that they should use their power not just for profit, but for good. When they do, they will realize even greater financial, business and social returns. It’s a big responsibility to be viewed as a curator of that kind of social hope. It’s also why, in the current complex geo-political environment, a company’s investment in culture and purpose can pay off significantly. These are the moments when showing up for employees, customers and communities authentically matters. They don’t just want it or expect it; they need it. And who else is better positioned than the leaders of corporate impact programs to meet the moment?
Ashley: What trends are you seeing in corporate giving and social impact, especially in the wake of global challenges like the pandemic and climate change?
Sona: The most interesting trends data we published in the past year is this study exploring the way people give in a polarized world. In the wake of changing policies and sentiment around climate, the COVID-19 pandemic, the Black Lives Matter movement, losses in the rights and protections for LGBTQ individuals and reproductive rights for women, a question came up for us: How has this influenced people’s giving? Is their advocacy and vocality on these issues reflected in their giving patterns? And if so, does this mean that companies — who have become deafeningly silent on these topics in the past year or so — might not want to continue to support these programs? It turns out the noise to signal ratio is extremely high — only 4% of all donations on Benevity’s platform go toward polarizing issues, and the other 96% support issues most of us are unified on: things like feeding the hungry, providing education opportunities, supporting healthcare initiatives and more. It turns out the risk of these programs seeing support for issues that might cause any concern for executives and PR teams is lower than we might have expected.
Ashley: We are grateful to partner for many years as one component of a meaningful crisis response – whether that be a natural disaster or a geopolitical conflict. Our mutual clients can raise funds to directly support individuals facing unexpected financial needs. How have you seen the growth of trust-based philanthropy, like grants directly to employees in need, rise with greater impact?
Sona: In a world that’s experiencing the highest number of disasters, wars and conflicts, it’s no wonder most of us feel overwhelmed and helpless. It can be easy to feel like what we do might not make a difference at all. Many are asking the question, “Does my donation over here even make it all the way over there?”
But what the pandemic taught us was that small actions can make a huge difference — especially when we take these actions directly for our neighbors, colleagues, friends and family. I believe that this is partly why we have seen a rise in mutual aid, trust-based philanthropy and employee relief funds. We want the ability to help those closest to us in a time of need in the way that would suit them best. And the more companies can facilitate this, the more loyalty, affinity and pride they will earn from their employees, yet again showing that these investments have both social and business benefits and should not be seen as charity but should be seen as strategic.
Ashley: Where do you sense Benevity’s momentum for the remainder of this year?
Sona: As our client and nonprofit communities ride the waves of changing policies and public sentiment, we’ve made it a priority to focus on helping guide our community with data, research, resources and access to peer networks.
For example, after the federal funding freezes in the U.S., we created a resource hub responding to the current environment and answering what we knew were questions many leaders were asking themselves and providing them with the data and evidence they need to continue to do the important work amidst greater budget and business scrutiny.
We’re also increasing our engagement with nonprofits, making sure that we understand their needs and that we are advocating for them to ensure the health of the giving ecosystem. We’ve started a new stream of research focused on nonprofits to ensure that we are helping make things better, not worse, as we navigate these uncharted waters.
Finally, as leaders in this space, we feel it’s important we continue to set the vision for what’s possible, so we are continuing to invest deeply in our enterprise impact platform, enabling more companies and nonprofits to do their work with greater control and efficiency.
Ashley: At the 2024 Benevity Live! conference, you shared updates about the Benevity Impact Index. Tell us about how the Impact index is helping your clients.
Sona: The Benevity Impact Index is a highly comprehensive self-assessment tool that enables companies to understand how well they are executing their corporate purpose strategies across eight categories, including everything from communication, reporting and storytelling, investment and culture, employee engagement, disaster relief, granting and more.
We now have over 150 companies who have completed their self-assessment, which provides them with new views into the relative strengths and opportunities across all of these areas. We’re also conducting some benchmarking analysis to offer that trend information to those who completed the BII so far. We’ve had many clients say that this is the first time they’ve brought together a holistic view of their corporate purpose programs and that it’s helped inform their strategies and priority-setting so they can ensure they are driving the most impact possible with their current resources. For others, it’s helped them level-set with leadership on the relative maturity of their programs.
The most exciting thing is that we are continuing to gather data and plan to release research that will include benchmarking data aimed at helping companies understand what the most common and most well-executed granting tactics are, as well as where there are opportunities to innovate. So, stay tuned for that!
