Joe Phoenix – Charitable Giving as an Employee Benefit

Connect with Joe:

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Connect with Dwight:

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• dwight.brown@salary.com

Connect with David:

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• david.turetsky@salary.com

 

Podcast Manager, Karissa Harris:

• HRDataLabs@salary.com

 

Production by Affogato Media

Resources:

• Givinga
• Compensation Consulting Services
• HR Data Labs Season 5 Episode 4
• HR Data Labs Season 5 Episode 2

• “We've seen a pretty significant shift over the last five years of companies realizing that philanthropic giving is not really a check the box exercise anymore. . . . I think that the employees that companies are hiring, the customers that they're interacting with, are demanding more than a check the box.”
• “What companies are realizing is that they have this massive amount of potential impact in their employee base. And on the other side, the employees are realizing that the way that they can become more philanthropic is by efficiently working with their employer to drive these dollars in a more meaningful way out to causes that support them.”

Announcer: 0:02

Here's an experiment for you. Take passionate experts in human resource technology. Invite cross industry experts from inside and outside HR. Mix in what's happening in people analytics today. Give them the technology to connect, hit record, pour their discussions into a beaker, mix thoroughly. And voila, you get the HR Data Labs podcast, where we explore the impact of data and analytics to your business. We may get passionate and even irreverent, that count on each episode challenging and enhancing your understanding of the way people data can be used to solve real world problems. Now, here's your host, David Turetsky.

 

David Turetsky: 0:46

Hello, and welcome to the HR Data Labs podcast. I'm your host, David Turetsky, alongside my co host, Dwight Brown from Salary.com. Hey, Dwight, how are you?

 

Dwight Brown: 0:55

Hey, David, I'm good. How you doing?

 

David Turetsky: 0:57

Pretty good. Thank you. As always, we try and find interesting people to talk to inside and outside the world of human resources that give us the latest as to what's happening in HR data, analytics process and technology. Today, we're talking to Joe Phoenix from Givinga.com. And, Joe, you're going to tell us because you're the CEO, you're going to tell us exactly what Givinga does, correct?

 

Joe Phoenix: 1:20

I'd be happy to start that way if that's where you all want to go?

 

David Turetsky: 1:24

Well, first of all, welcome to the show. And

 

Joe Phoenix: 1:26

Yeah, thank you. Great to be here.

 

David Turetsky: 1:29

If you could tell us about who you are and what is Givinga and we can get some background.

 

Joe Phoenix: 1:34

Great. I'm Joe Phoenix, I'm CEO of give Givinga. We are a five year old what we refer to as a philantech company, we combined financial technology with philanthropic vehicles. And our platform is designed to really do four things. It's designed to make giving accessible, efficient, transparent and impactful. And we do that by blending the super cool vehicles together with technology, and then plugging it into anyone who's giving money away and making that whole process is here.

 

David Turetsky: 2:07

Because while we may think that giving and I'm being very serious, when I say this, the giving, it's easy. Sometimes it's not as easy as we think. And all the right things that we want to do sometimes get lost in translation when we: A can't find the companies or the people or the the philanthropic organizations we want to and we don't know if there's a match for our company. So your platform makes it easier, right?

 

Joe Phoenix: 2:31

It does. I think that there are a lot of misconceptions around giving. And one of the main ones is that it's simple, right? You just pull your wallet out, whip out a credit card, give to charity, and you're done. And, you know, if you're if you're donating money, and you don't care about things like you know how impactful those dollars are transparency, the dollars flowing, et cetera, then yeah, it is easy. But if you're trying to be philanthropic, thoughtful, and making sure that those dollars are impactful as they leave, it's really complicated.

 

David Turetsky: 3:02

And we're gonna get into that as part of what we're going to talk about today from the thought leadership perspective.

 

Joe Phoenix: 3:06

Yeah, absolutely.

 

David Turetsky: 3:07

So Joe, what's the one thing that no one knows about Joe Phoenix?

 

Joe Phoenix: 3:12

The one thing that no one knows about Joe Phoenix? Well, I would think that very few people know that next to running a financial technology company, my second passion in life is digging in the garden in the back of my yard. It's a it's a great balance. For me, I love getting out there. And I don't know whether it's the finality of gardening, right or the actual people say get your hands dirty. And you know, when you're when you're back in the backyard, you actually you do that, but I find just being outside and you know, working with things that I feel are beautiful, just gives me a balance that I found is just hugely important, as you're, you know, as you're working on all these other things.

 

David Turetsky: 3:52

That's cool. I just harvested the like seven pieces of corn are all only like three inches at most long because of the drought that we had in the Massachusetts area.

 

Joe Phoenix: 4:05

Right.

 

David Turetsky: 4:06

And my sunflowers which barely grew and if you looked at them, they look like mutant sunflowers because of how awful and unpredictable the rain was this year.

 

Joe Phoenix: 4:15

Right.

 

David Turetsky: 4:16

It was terrible.

 

Dwight Brown: 4:17

I think you weren't trying to grow baby corn.

 

David Turetsky: 4:20

No.

 

Joe Phoenix: 4:23

Yeah, it's why it's why I've kind of left the vegetables to the professionals. I tend to stick with my wife loves it because most of what I garden is of the perennial variety there's not a lot to do except prune and water and trim but it's it's it's a fun pastime for me.

 

David Turetsky: 4:41

I wish I stopped at that but I also corn potatoes, sweet potatoes, pumpkins, and the the only thing that grew were those tiny corn. The cucumbers didn't even grow and usually cucumbers can withstand some some variety of watering but no, they all died.

 

Joe Phoenix: 5:00

Well so you've caught the bug. That's that's the the problem with gardening. You start with one and the next thing you know you're down a path, and it's now starting to consume your life. So welcome to the club.

 

David Turetsky: 5:11

Thanks. Thanks as you as you say, like my nails have constantly gotten dirt underneath them. So yeah, I've gotten the bug.

 

Joe Phoenix: 5:19

Yep, yeah.

 

David Turetsky: 5:21

So today, our topic is one that's very important, especially for those of us who actually do like to be charitable and to have a portion of our income, go to good causes, and those good causes could be varied depending upon your background. So today, you know, given the the guest we have, today's topic is going to be charitable giving as an employee benefit, and how it's used to transform workplace culture. And so again, this is something very near and dear to my heart, because as I said, I like giving a lot to charities. I love talking about this.

 

Announcer: 5:56

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David Turetsky: 6:08

So our first question, then, Joe, is what is the state of corporate giving? I mean, there's a lot of things going on and a lot of distractions. How does it get to be a part of corporate culture? And how do you center the employee in it?

 

Joe Phoenix: 6:21

Well, I think the answer to that is that corporate giving, from where I sit is actually quite healthy. I think that a lot gets written on how efficient the process is, I think I would refer to it as healthy but frenetic. We've seen a pretty significant shift over the last five years of companies really realizing that philanthropic giving is not really a check the box exercise anymore. I think for a number of years, it really was I mean, if you walked into a company and said you give money to charity, they throw the United Way at you check the box and move on to the next question. I think that the environment right now, and by environment, I mean, the employees that they're hiring, the companies are hiring, the customers that they're interacting with, are demanding more than a check the box from companies. And I think that we started seeing this, we started seeing this six or seven years ago. And at one point, I felt like I was pushing the Sisyphus ball up the hill and having it rolled back down on me every month. But you know, just a confluence of events over the past two or three years have really I think increased the focus on the importance of this. Whether it's the George Floyd murder, and all the social unrest that happened after that. The COVID pandemic. And you know, what that did do employees and customers of these companies and the fact that the new generation of both consumer and employee are just looking at the world differently. And I don't think that this is a fad. I think this is trend. And I think that this trend is here to stay. And I think that when you start talking about this new generation, and you know, I think a lot has been thrown around about the millennial generation. And you know, that's that generation gets beaten up a lot. What people don't realize is that the millennial generation is now in positions of authority and responsibility across corporate America, right? They're not entry level employees anymore, their decision makers and companies are beginning to mirror and reflect some of the things that these new generations hold as important aspects of, you know, being a human being on the planet day to day. And so, to us, corporate philanthropy is moving very quickly from a check the box piece to a very important strategic part of what a company is doing day in and

 

David Turetsky: 8:47

So there's two aspects of it, though. One of day out. them is providing access to your employees to be able to donate. The second is, what's the corporate culture around who is donated to from the corporate perspective? And I think we're not talking about the latter. We're talking more about the former. So it's not about who is the company giving to? It's about what platform and what do the employees want to give and giving the freedom to employees to give based on their particular values and their culture? Correct?

 

Joe Phoenix: 9:23

Well, I I think that now you have to talk about both of those in conjunction with with this whole discussion that you're having I think you were able to you know bifurcate those and talk about them individually in the past but right now companies are thinking about not only providing employees with avenues to to give but I think that they're also now really beginning to consider, you know, what does the corporation you know, want to project out into the marketplace? What does the corporation want to support? How can the corporation support employees around you know, have this kind of shared approach to giving. And it's not mandating that employees give to one area. But it's it's providing some direction from the corporate side, that, hey, this is what our company feels is important. But also then giving the employee the ability to support things outside of that main corporate functionality. These are all aspects of philanthropic giving that make what we're talking about much more complicated than it used to be.

 

David Turetsky: 10:26

But but let's give a distinction between political giving, and charitable giving. Because there are lots of companies who have made lots of headlines because they donate to one political party or another. We're not talking about that. We're talking about which charities they support, and how they go about doing it and to what extent they do it correct.

 

Joe Phoenix: 10:45

That's correct. That's correct.

 

David Turetsky: 10:47

Because I mean, it's reflective of their culture then. And not to get political again. But but it does, then, to use that term that you use bifurcate, it definitely will set up the an avenue where your employees will then make a decision but their feet as to whether they want to support that kind of culture or not.

 

Joe Phoenix: 11:06

Yeah, I mean, I'll give you I'll give you a great example. And before I give you the example, I'll ask a question, because this is always an interesting question. And the question is, can you name five companies on the planet, and the causes that they support and how those causes link into the company's brand? And so you know, I, we can stop and think about this for a little while. But it's, in general, I think it's very hard for you to come up with five companies, you say, that's what this company stands for. This is how their mission is aligned, their employees are all behind this, and they've got this really super cool structure to try and drive that out into the world. And, you know, I think that everyone would throw Patagonia as kind of the one company that walks the walk,

 

David Turetsky: 11:52

There's the sock company donates socks for every, you know?

 

Joe Phoenix: 11:57

Right, Bombas. Bombas is a super cool company that, you know, really built their entire corporate structure around this philanthropic piece of buy a pair of socks, and we donate a pair of socks, that is integral to their thing there.

 

David Turetsky: 12:13

There's another company that from a shoe perspective, maybe it was not them, maybe it was Tom's that you buy a pair.

 

Joe Phoenix: 12:19

Yeah. Tom's.

 

David Turetsky: 12:20

And I'm sorry, to your point, though, it's difficult to name five all in one sitting.

 

Joe Phoenix: 12:24

It is! But what's what's cool about it is, if the company gets behind that, and the company really thinks about, okay, what does it mean to be an employee of this company? What does it mean for this company to exist, those things can start to go hand in hand and become very powerful. I was I was sitting in a conference and there was a presentation by Kroger. Man, I don't know if Kroger rings here, but sort of kind of a Midwestern based grocery chain, big. And Kroger has a full on giving campaign giving platform that they've had for a while. And it's simply no hunger, no waste. And that's basically what Kroger is focused on. And no hunger because Kroger has perishable goods that they're throwing out constantly. So they're, you know, they've made it a mission of the company to really figure out how do you dispose of that and get that food into the hands of people who need it? So it's this kind of solve the hunger piece, and then make sure that we're not wasting things as we're doing that. And then lo and behold, Kroger is now starting to stand up around that all of these interesting campaigns and charitable activities around ending hunger, right, and, you know, getting in front of that, and leading. And it's an excellent example of, you know, how strategic philanthropy can drive your brand, and also entice people that are sharing kind of your sense of what is important in the world to join your company become active in that.

 

David Turetsky: 13:53

Hey, are you listening to this and thinking to yourself, Man, I wish I could talk to David about this? Well, you're in luck, we have a special offer for listeners of the HR Data Labs podcast, a free half hour call with me about any of the topics we cover on the podcast, or whatever is on your mind. Go to Salary.com/HRDLconsulting, to schedule your FREE 30 minute call today. And I think this gets to the second question where you're talking about how does giving change the culture because the employee benefit is being driven off of those platforms. So I think we've already gotten there, or we're there. So let's let's explore that a little further. So to that end, then the company has this mission. And they probably put it into their goals, especially from a leadership perspective. So now it's not just about who they're giving money to. It's about setting up their products and services and maybe even their supply chain to be able to support that kind of a thought process of if we did this differently, we could take the fruit that's about to spoil. And before it spoils, we can put it in packages, and then get it out to the agencies that either deal with homelessness or deal with hunger and get it in their hands before it spoils. So that it's usable within, you know, a couple of days, and not have to take the write down on it and not have to, you know, so they've changed the mindset of the leadership. And hopefully now that goes throughout. But how does that then translate to the employee giving and the the ability to support those causes? How do they how do you translate transition that?

 

Joe Phoenix: 15:34

Well, I think that what you're seeing, what you're seeing in corporate America is that the employee employer relationship, in our opinion, is changing. And I think that it was, you know, there's still some elements where there, there is a friction that always exists between the company and its employees. I mean, we're seeing that in, you know, big companies, and very forward thinking companies like Starbucks that are, you know, right now, you know, debating this whole unionization of the of the workforce. So I think that that will that will continue to exist. But I think what you're you're starting to see is, you're starting to see companies recognize, and employees recognize that in order to be philanthropic, right, so if I, if I throw the word philanthropist out to you, and we played word association, right, you probably come back with wealthy rich exclusive, never going to be me, right? Tech, billionaire, whatever. And our belief is that anybody can be a philanthropist, if you have the right tools, and you have the right resources. And so I think what companies are realizing is that they have this massive amount of potential impact in their employee base. And on the other side, the employees are realizing that the way that I can become more philanthropic is by efficiently working with the employer that I'm currently working for, to drive these dollars in a more meaningful way out to causes that support me. So I really think what philanthropy does, if it's done well and strategically, is it gets parties that have been that have had friction in the past aligned around common cause, that then everyone can focus on driving forward. And that's what's really interesting about this evolution that's taking place right now in corporate America.

 

Dwight Brown: 17:17

It is interesting seeing that evolution, because there, you know, the in the past, employees just haven't viewed their employers as vehicles for being able to give, whereas just overall the relationship between employees and employers and I think this is the point that you're making, really is changing that mindset to my employer is somebody who I can use as a vehicle. And, you know, I think it's also reflective of the relationship that I'm that people are starting to view their employers as an extension of themselves, as opposed to in the past where it was just go, you know, click my timecard, get my hours and leave and then live my life outside of my employer.

 

David Turetsky: 18:06

Well, we can see the divergence happening. Now. I mean, quiet quitting is the new rage, right? We're talking about something that has always been called something like disengagement or whatever it was. But what you're talking about Joe, is the ability for people and I think this is what you're talking about, as well, Dwight, is that people want to rally around something to connect further with their employer, given the fact that we spent so much of our life at work, that instead of hating it, and calling it the nine to five and, and being frustrated by it and whatever. Being able to embrace pieces of it, whether it's through an ESG, whether it's through BRGs, whether it's through giving gives us that ability to bring it back or take it back. And to make it something that you feel very connected to giving is one of those things that makes you feel connected, because you're investing either your hours or your money. And those are two very valuable things. We don't have a lot of these days.

 

Joe Phoenix: 19:05

That's right. That's right.

 

David Turetsky: 19:07

So so I guess going back to the going back to your other point of the culture piece of this, us being able to us as employers and employees, being able to find the common ground to be able to rally around whether your company like the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society, which it's obvious what your mission is, or Kroger which is trying to end hunger which is wonderful, or Patagonia, which is trying to save the Earth, which is laudable. All of those things matter. And so you bring that mission to the employee, and then they brand it on themselves, then it's much harder to leave, right? I mean, it's much harder to to disengage when you feel that connection. And it's talking your talk and walking your walk.

 

Joe Phoenix: 19:51

No question, and I think that a real key word in what you're talking about right now is accountability, and it's accountability really on the on the corporate side, and to some extent it's countability on the on the employee side. But when I say check the box, what I mean is that if you look at corporate giving has been around for 70 years, I mean, the first employee matching program was created by GE in the 1950s, I think it was 1954. And employee matching hasn't changed ever since that first employee matching program came out. And I think that employers sit around and kind of scratch their heads as to well geeze, why aren't our employees using these programs? And then a lot gets written about dollars that are left on the table, and employees aren't engaging and all of that. And I think that what it comes back to is, if, if the employer is not accountable to this is the direction that we're going and I can transparently show you how the company is standing side by side with you. And we can show you the impact that your dollars combined with our dollars makes to this kind of social footprint that we're building, then I think that you're onto something. If you're just standing up there saying yeah, we give to charity. And, you know, I worked for I was in the financial services business for 30 years before I before I jumped over to run this company. And I remember one of the one of the key giving pieces that we had my old company was, we had a United Way Campaign every year that the company ran and the company ran the United Way Campaign, because the company wanted to be recognized as one of the top United Way companies in the city of Boston. And it was very much of a put on the employees type of campaign, the announcement that the campaign was running coincided very, very closely with bonuses that were going to that were going to be paid, you know, the message came from the C suite that this was important. Recommendations were given as to what your title equated to the amount of you know, giving it was appropriate. And there was not a lot of engagement and accountability, you didn't feel like you're really part of anything. And I think that there's just companies are realizing that there's a much better way of doing it, and a much more impactful way of doing it that really brings this employee metric into it. And that's where, you know, that's where this whole, you know, corporate philanthropy, employee philanthropy and just kind of philanthropic in general is really getting interesting, because, you know, technology just allows you to do a variety of different things, whether it's tracking, managing, you know, visibility, transparency that you just couldn't do in the past. So that's, that's why this transformation is occurring the way that it is.

 

David Turetsky: 22:51

Before we get to technology, because that's our next step and our next question, the one thing I want to ask is, you know, there are things beyond money, like, for example, when I worked at ADP we did, we had hours set aside for doing volunteer work. And we were very encouraged to use that. And I really appreciate ADP for doing this. But we're also set up with opportunities to do things like Habitat for Humanity, where it wasn't, it wasn't just the money, we were giving money, but it was also we're giving our time, which is in fact more valuable to the Habitat for Humanity because they needed bodies, they needed hands, to be able to do these construction projects. So is there a thought process that it's because we're talking about culture here, it's about getting out and doing things, whether it's cleaning up, you know, a particular piece of road or helping Habitat for Humanity? Or actually, you know, painting that rec center or doing something good with your time or with employees time?

 

Joe Phoenix: 23:50

Yeah, I mean, I think that that the definition of the verb to give is being redefined as we speak. I think that in the old days, if I said, What is it? What is the verb to give me and it meant, pull your credit card out, pay 14% to somebody be very reactive in the way that you're thinking about it money leaves, and you don't think about it again, until the next kind of disaster catastrophe arises. I think that

 

David Turetsky: 24:14

Or tax time.

 

Joe Phoenix: 24:15

or tax time, right? I think that each of these giving programs are kind of like fingerprints, right? You look at them, they all look the same, but then you get involved and you realize that almost every one has got its own kind of unique angle to what either the company or the employees are trying to accomplish. And, you know, as we move into the discussion on technology, what technology allows for is it allows for this creativity and innovation of what do you want to what do you call giving what is important to you as a as an organization, it doesn't just have to be funneling money from your employees to a charity. It can be around volunteering, it can be around disaster relief, it can be around grant management, it'd be all of these things can be all of those things right? And I think that companies are realizing that there is this really interesting opportunity that allows them to really define what giving means to the company, what the company is going to pursue as it relates to that. And then, you know, with these technology companies and these technologies that exist, they can go out and actually create these programs that are tailor made to what they're trying to do.

 

David Turetsky: 25:22

Do the charities that gets supported inside of these have to be 403CB or I think that's Sorry, sorry, yes. For I'm sorry, 501c3. So so that number. So does it have to be that? Or are there other avenues for doing philanthropy, beyond those charities to maybe things like investing in majority owned female and people of color organization, so being able to not only put the money towards charity, but also put them towards companies that do good, and as well, companies that are aligned around what your culture is and what you want to support?

 

Joe Phoenix: 26:08

Yeah, it's, I think that probably the most eye opening thing that's occurred, as I've been, as we've been building out the company and learning and what, you know, we're entrepreneurs where we learn every day, we've got this idea, and then you put it out there, and the market tells you one thing or another, and you're like, I haven't thought about that. But one thing that I have learned these charitable vehicles that nobody uses, but that have been in existence for 80 90 years, is how flexible they are. We went in saying, Okay, we've got this super cool vehicle, it's called a donor advised fund, they have rules and regulations around them, the IRS is very specific, you can only give to 501c3 organizations, right. And then you get the unless, unless it's a disaster, and in that case, there is a piece that allows a charitable organization give directly to individuals, but there are 50 steps that you have to go through before that happens. And if you're tracking it on a spreadsheet, it's absolutely impossible. If you have technology that does that for you. It's a click a button and you get a click of a button and you have a you have a dashboard. Right. And, and and it's done. You know, these charitable vehicles are incredibly powerful, because they do and the IRS has given them the flexibility to support, you know that there are these organizations that are doing charitable work, but don't have a 501c3 designation, because it's expensive to get and their resource. The IRS has figured out a way that a 501c3 public charity can sponsor a non -501c3 entity it's called it's called fiscal sponsorship, we just learned about this over the last year. So if you have all of that, all of a sudden your business starts to align around, oh, you can do all these interesting things, you can do employee relief, you can do disaster relief, the company can get involved, it can be trackable, it can be managed, so that, you know, you don't have a bunch of your employees passing dollars underneath the table to somebody in need, right and running into the tax consequences associated with that. You can't do any of that, without financial technologies that wraps around and tracks that for you.

 

David Turetsky: 28:20

The reason why I came up is I was thinking about there are funds that are trying to support minority owned businesses and businesses that are focused on things like the environment. And so they're not necessarily nonprofits, but they're doing good work trying to accomplish good things. And so if a 501c3, I'll get it before the end of the podcast. If that charity, then to your point supports that. And then technology can can basically make that assignment so it's legal, then then we can vote with our feet and put our money towards funds or toward companies that are doing good things, even if to your point, even if they haven't gotten that designation yet.

 

Joe Phoenix: 29:05

That's right. And the cool thing about this is that the work that needs to be done to ensure that this is all IRS approved and legal, does not rest on the company's responsibility, it rests on the charitable organizations responsibility. So so there's a buffer that allows the company to partner with you know, 501c3 organization that can do this. And then and then the IRS reviews the responsibilities for making those decisions. And having all those boxes checked as the responsibility of that 501c3, and it just provides a layer of protection for companies that are looking to do some of these kinds of innovative, unique things.

 

David Turetsky: 29:47

That's cool. So so the technology becomes the enabler and provides the context for how and who and what you can do. And so getting back to the point I was making before so it's not just about money. It could be about donating time, it could be about donating property. I mean, everybody has heard the Cars for Kids jingle, and it's rattling around their brain. I've donated a car to it, and then find out afterwards what they were donating to. And it's all good. It's all it's all positive. But I think the the question is, is that, you know, that's one of the avenues that I think people forget, you're bringing this up before, it's not just about money, it's about other things as well. And I guess the technologies that are out there can support things like that beyond just money.

 

Joe Phoenix: 30:31

Yeah, I mean, the the industry that we're in right now is super cool. The vertical, you know, we call it the vertical, it's, you know, all of these companies doing all these various things. And, you know, there are companies that are just focusing on the volunteer aspect of this, right, they're just focusing on making that whole process of volunteering your time and tracking that and linking to the company, you know, easier. And so you've just got all of this really innovative stuff that's going on around this changing definition of giving. And I agree that you know, being philanthropic is not just about having a lot of money, right, and going into a black tie, and giving it away and getting your name on page six somewhere.

 

David Turetsky: 31:21

So Joe, we talked a lot about having corporate culture that drives giving. We've talked about how that impacts employees, and how it impacts their relationship with the company. And then we talked a little bit about what that technology enables us to be able to do. Is there anything else that we didn't cover that you wanted to cover? Before we close?

 

Joe Phoenix: 31:39

No, I think I think we've done a we've done a pretty good job of covering all the bases. What I would say is that for the first time since companies have been giving money away, the access to these technological tools now exist for them. And we coined this phrase, Philantech, which I love. Because when you add tech to an industry, it does magical thing. So if you think about biotech, health tech, Ed Tech FinTech, right, adding technology does a couple of really critical things, it opens the market. So it makes things that weren't accessible to people that didn't have access to them. So you get a market that now has a bunch more people that are in there doing things, technology doesn't care about how large you are, right? So it actually is beneficial to have more people doing little things than one person doing doing a large thing. And then it democratizes, right. So it, it levels, the playing field. And it puts tools in people's hands that haven't had access to them. And then the tech side of it steps back and says innovate and tell us what you want to do with this. Tell us what your definition is of this. And let's see whether we can make this even easier for you. So it starts to feed on itself. And I think that when you when you look at where corporate giving is and I think it gets maligned a little bit like you'll hear these kind of throwaway lines of You know, corporations gave $20 billion last year and 7 billion in matching went unused. These are kind of these throwaway, almost urban legend lines, right, I've never been able to verify either one of those numbers. But what I can tell you is that if corporations were counting properly, that number 20 billion be a lot higher, because just about everyone who gives money away to charity works for a company, right, and they've been paid by that company, and part of those dollars are going to charity. So corporations involvement in both US and global philanthropy is significantly higher. And I think that, you know, we just need to do a better job of counting that and I think as soon as companies and employees understand that you can count it, and you can make an impact. You don't have to have a lot of money time or, or you know, you don't have to have these resources that you think that you need to have to really be philanthropic. That's when the magic starts. And that's, that's probably what you know, as I'm sitting here today, that's what I'm most excited about.

 

David Turetsky: 34:11

I'm glad it's not called HR Tech because FinTech gets a lot more investment, to be honest. For those of my friends

 

Joe Phoenix: 34:20

Well we're not dumb!

 

David Turetsky: 34:22

ya I know. For those of my friends in the HR tech world, I'm not trying to malign you, and neither is Joe. We all know that FinTech gets much more investment than HR tech does. But this is as human as you can get right? This is the human in human resources, being able to make those decisions to do those philanthropic activities and to give that money. So

 

Joe Phoenix: 34:44

Yeah, and you know, I would end my my deal with the challenge to the HR tech people that tune in and listen to this. And the challenge is to think outside the box as it relates to where a technology and a platform product like this fits. Because I think that, you know, we spend a lot of time talking to HR tech people, we spend a lot of time talking to the benefits groups. And when you're in the industries like that, that spend so much time slotting things, right? Yeah, it's like, Are you a, well, you're not a primary benefit. So you must be a secondary benefit. And this is an employee benefit. And I sit there, as I keep reinforcing, this is a universal benefit, right? This is a corporate benefit and an employee benefit. And it's not a secondary benefit, right. But it's a much more flexible type of benefit, that's going to be really important to your company that really, in my opinion, needs to sit basically right next your 401k. So I mean, you're offering 401k, on the financial side, you should be offering vehicles that allow for people to plan and manage their giving alongside of that. And that's, you know, that's been a challenge as HR and benefits tech is sat down and kind of looked at these things and said, where do they slot? So we're, we're really challenging that industry to kind of think outside of the box on this.

 

David Turetsky: 36:03

Joe, we could have a completely other podcast about silos of HR and HR technology. Yeah, and why things don't have the right economic owner. But we'll save that for another episode of the podcast.

 

Joe Phoenix: 36:18

I'd be happy to come back!

 

David Turetsky: 36:20

We'd love that. Joe, thank you so much. You're awesome.

 

Joe Phoenix: 36:23

Yeah. Thanks for having me. You guys are great. Really appreciate the time.

 

David Turetsky: 36:26

We do too.

 

Dwight Brown: 36:27

Thanks for being with us.

 

David Turetsky: 36:27

Dwight. Thank you.

 

Dwight Brown: 36:28

Yeah.

 

David Turetsky: 36:29

And thank you all for listening. Take care and stay safe.

 

Announcer: 36:33

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