Rachel Klausner: Democratizing corporate philanthropy

Rachel founded Millie, a workplace giving platform that lets companies of all sizes start social impact programs. Millie started as a strategic giving tool for individuals but quickly pivoted once Rachel found out that smaller companies needed a solution that helped them engage their employees with giving. She’s passionate about democratizing philanthropy and is full of exciting ideas for companies to engage their employees through social impact.

Hi Rachel! I’m so excited to chat today. First of all, why would a company create space for their employees to give back to the community? 

I always lead with the fact that employee giving is great for business. 

There’s unbelievable data behind the fact that having a giving program is good for employee retention. Especially in 2022, when everything is remote, being able to connect with your employees is really hard. On top of that, we’re going through the great resignation and a big reason why people leave is that they want purposeful work. Larry Fink’s annual letter, for example, was focused on purpose in the workplace. It’s not possible for every single job to be purpose-driven. Social impact is a great way to make workplaces meaningful and for companies and leaders to connect with their team.

Given that Millie works a lot with companies that are early in their social impact journey—what are some challenges you see companies grappling with in that stage in their development?

There is so much that happens in the moments before the social impact program is solidified. One big challenge is just convincing executives and other stakeholders that social impact is worth investing in. Even though the facts are in favor of social impact, it can feel counterintuitive for the CEO to give more money away. Secondly, the person leading social impact for their company is already wearing so many hats, and social impact usually isn’t even one of them! They’re not getting paid to do this, it’s just something they’re passionate about.

We created Millie to make it easier for people in that position to create impactful programs. We want to help social impact teams prove that social impact is good for employee engagement and the bottom line.

Something that many smaller companies are challenged by is who to listen to when crafting their social impact strategy. In your opinion, should a social impact strategy be more driven by grassroots support — what employees are passionate about — or is it more important for it to be more aligned with the company’s core mission and competencies?

It’s not either or, I think it’s important for companies to have both. A small company of 100 people might not be ready to have a true standalone social impact strategy. As companies grow, creating a strategic mission enables them to have a much bigger impact on the community. But in my opinion, they shouldn’t shut the door to employees’ voices.

How do you help companies increase engagement and create a sense of excitement around workplace giving and volunteering? 

That’s where our integrations with communications tools like Slack come in! Companies that integrate Millie with Slack see crazy high engagement. Everything that you do can be visible on Slack—you can search for events, see sign-ups, share events, there are tons of cool ways that companies can leverage our comms tools. 

Something I’m passionate about is democratizing the process of corporate philanthropy. We just launched Giving Madness in partnership with The Gates Foundation to help employees play a bigger role in where their company’s funding is going. It’s just like March Madness — there’s a bracket of 16 nonprofits and employees vote on which one gets the most funding. 

We started Giving Madness for two reasons. Firstly, it'll help companies engage their teams and create a sense of excitement around giving. Corporate giving is usually a black box, this will empower employees to play a deciding role in where funding is going. Second, it’s a solution for the nonprofit funding cycle—nonprofits typically get all their funding at the end of the year. That creates so much uncertainty, making it harder for them to plan ahead. Giving Madness will give nonprofits an influx of funding at a time that they really need it.

My vision is that Giving Madness will get adopted by more platforms and companies — like Giving Tuesday! By piggybacking off March Madness, already a huge part of American culture, will hopefully get a lot more money into the hands of nonprofits that need it.

I love your podcast and have learned so much from it! What have you learned from interviewing leaders in the corporate responsibility space?

I feel so connected to the CSR leaders I interview, because so many of the people who started CSR efforts at their companies are entrepreneurs. They have a vision for the future and they’re constantly pitching and securing buy-in. I learn a lot from them that I use in my daily life as a founder.