Gifting is here to stay. Corporations and not-for-profits should strive to get it right.
Anyone who has attended a corporate conference is likely familiar with the experience of bringing home a swag bag full of branded material. You pick through the tote, pop a mint or an individually wrapped chocolate into your mouth, then throw away the Styrofoam koozie and other tchotchkes that are already threatening to clutter your storage space. Unique and desirable corporate gifts can be hard to come by, yet, from a customer and donor relations standpoint, doing without gifts altogether is, arguably, even less desirable.
“A societal norm of corporate America is that corporations give gifts,” remarks Lauri Pastrone, founder and CEO of Peace by Piece International, a not-for-profit social impact company that connects companies with gifting needs to artisans of handmade products in otherwise disenfranchised communities both at home and abroad. Pastrone’s observation has the numbers to back it up: Forbes estimates corporate gifting to be an industry worth approximately 300 billion dollars.
Individual consumers are increasingly conscious of the social and environmental impact of their spending power, with environmental sustainability and social values-alignment being motivating factors for where and how much to spend. But how does this play out on a corporate scale?
The bottom line competes with social impact
When Pastrone first settled in Silicon Valley almost a decade ago, she took note of the inspirational rhetoric espoused by the companies around her. She heard abundant talk of using organizational ethos to demonstrate leadership as local and global citizens. With the idea that these multi-billion-dollar corporations could be agents of positive social change, there appeared to be an opportunity for synergy between the tech sphere and the mission of Peace by Piece: to make corporate gifting an ethical and sustainable practice that delivers quality gifts to clients and donors while helping otherwise disenfranchised artisanal communities learn skills and bring financial stability to their families. Logically, if corporate gifting is necessarily part of a company’s budget and that company espouses social impact values, that entity should elect to purchase corporate gifts that are environmentally sustainable, that help provide jobs for local communities, and that reflect quality craftsmanship in the final product.
Yet, in many instances, there is dissonance between companies’ words and their actions. Pastrone was disillusioned when she realized that many large companies, despite professing in their mission statements the desire to be agents of social change, are still focused on the bottom line above all else. If a corporate gift costs more to make, it’s less likely to be a corporation’s first choice, regardless of whether this price tag is associated with transparency of the production process and source of materials.
Even the philanthropic arms that sometimes develop from corporations tend to remain beholden to the ethos of their parent companies, rather than having the independence to make values-driven choices with their allocated funds. Trickle-down-theory aside, there is something paradoxical in seeking social change from the same large companies that are often responsible for perpetuating large scale income inequalities. While companies are composed of individuals who may be willing to do good, organizational constraints often limit the ability of these people to act in the interest of the broader community. By contrast, most independent philanthropies and private foundations are mission-driven by design.
Alignment of philanthropic values
Pastrone has found success in pivoting toward building and strengthening relationships with independent philanthropies and private foundations, who are generally motivated to align their actions with their professed values. Increasingly, Peace by Piece partners with NGOs, both as makers of products and as clients. All makers are either members of social enterprises or NGOs, and some social enterprises are offshoots of NGOs. For example, Hon’s Honey, which employs women who are survivors of addiction, sexual trafficking, and abuse, stems from Maryland-based NGO The Well, which offers programs to help survivors build workplace skills while supporting their mental and physical well-being. NGOs, often philanthropies, can also function as clients who purchase gifts through Peace by Piece to offer to donors, conference attendees, and volunteers.
A major client of Peace by Piece is Sobrato Philanthropies, which for years has consistently been ranked one of the top-giving corporate philanthropies. To Pastrone, it’s no coincidence that a philanthropy like Sobrato, which actively reinvests in its local community, is also willing to engage in ethical and sustainable practices, including purposeful corporate giving.
Pastrone has also partnered with clients such as the Gates Foundation and, recently, the San Francisco 49ers Foundation, which hosts the largest charitable event by a team in the National Football League. The 49ers ordered over 400 custom football-shaped serving trays from the maker community of Itza Wood, based in the Petén Jungle of Guatemala. Itza Wood employs approximately 400 individuals, many of whom live in homes with thatched roofs without running water. Most of these individuals are single women and many are victims of sexual violence. Most of these makers are their families’ breadwinners and, on average, have five dependents. (In maker communities in Haiti, Peace by Piece has tracked that up to 12 people can be reliant on the income of the one person in that family working in a partner workshop and participating in the formal economy.)
Justin Prettyman, executive director of the 49ers Foundation, notes of his gifts purchased through Peace by Piece:
“We want our gifting to be extra special. Over 600 hours of dedicated work went into customizing these pieces by the community of Itza Wood. Imagine that your gift that you’re giving anyways to your event goers or people who are supporting your organization [has a] trickle down [effect] that you are providing months of sustainability, of economic impact.”
In his praise of the products, Prettyman appeals to both the quantitative number of hours of work associated with making a sustainable product and to the qualitative impact that dignified work can have on the lives of artisans in local communities.
The challenge of measuring change
Measuring the true effects of a philanthropic gesture like investing in purposeful giving can prove intangible and challenging to convey. Data appeals especially to corporate calculations, but are numbers of hours worked necessarily the best way to represent change in the life of an individual or community? Conversely, how can one be sure that a story of improvement in the life of an individual is directly traceable to dollars spent on a product by a company that is hundreds or thousands of miles away?
This challenge brings to mind the “showdown between philanthrolocalism and effective altruism” that William A. Schambra described in his prescient 2014 article for Philanthropy Daily. Is it better to seek to achieve a global net-good that is quantifiable and that satisfies the utilitarian craving to do the most good for the most people, or to focus on investing in those communities nearest to us in the hopes that this good will eventually expand to broader locales?
This question has taken on renewed significance in light of contemporary policy debates around enforcing tariffs on imported goods with the goal of reshoring commercial production to promote American job security. This version of America First often conjures up images of encouraging American factories to thrive and to make higher quality products than those which might otherwise be made in factories abroad at lower prices but with unpredictable working conditions. Companies that adhere to this policy outlook might reasonably have an aversion to purchasing products crafted abroad, either as a matter of price or a matter of principle.
Global welfare meets philanthrolocalism
While the goal of stimulating the American economy, protecting American workers, and maintaining the integrity of Made-in-America products is a noble one, what does this mean for production communities abroad that aren’t nameless, faceless factories but rather artisanal communities seeking economic stability through their own version of philanthrolocalism? While one third of Peace by Piece’s sales derive from U.S. based-production, other products and partnerships stem from communities abroad.
No matter the geographic location of the maker community, Pastrone spends time among the people before developing the partnership. She uses three primary metrics to examine the business practices: “First, a safe community in which to work. Second, the training to create products or develop skills. Third, that the community creates a market for whatever they are doing, or an offramp to other work opportunities.”
Pastrone’s emphasis on bringing local communities across the world into the global market and into contact with American corporate buyers appears to blend strains within philanthrolocalism and the more global utilitarian aim of promoting positive social impact across an interconnected society and supply chain. For example, Pastrone observes that investing in practices which sustain local communities abroad and provide opportunities for families to develop long term financial stability in their home countries gives these families incentives to stay and build up their own communities rather than feeling compelled to emigrate to the U.S. seeking work otherwise unavailable to them.
“People only leave their homes when home is the mouth of a shark,” observes Pastrone, quoting British-Somali poet Warsan Shire. Economic stability is among the goals of investing in the artisanal communities through intentional corporate gifts, with the hopes that the workers businesses will be enough for them to support their family’s next generation, either by remaining in the community or by having developed transferrable life and business skills that allow them to branch out. Pastrone also notes that local U.S. enterprises can take inspiration from the practices of international NGOs that address needs abroad, in particular, by realizing that many of these same needs and challenges must be addressed in communities within our own borders.
Peace through work and kindness
At the broadest level, underlying the outlook of social impact consumerism is a belief that economic factors can be forces for positive or negative social change. Americans are in a unique position to consider the impact of our consumerism, and the people who make up corporations and philanthropies are in a unique position to help others.
Pastrone notes, “We cannot live in a peaceful world if folks cannot look after their families. Peace in communities and families comes from work. Piece symbolizes the work and creation of the artisans who are the makers of the gifts.”
Yet, Pastrone’s appetite for positive social change extends beyond best practices for people and businesses as consumers, into our everyday interactions and behaviors. While Pastrone has built up a robust enterprise that facilitates partnerships and connections spanning the globe, she notes that her mother was her first inspiration for reaching out to those in need within local communities. Through kind actions such as offering other women a hug, a smile, or a cup of soup, Pastrone’s mother underlined the wide reverberation of local gestures. “My mother taught me that we all benefit from finding ways every day to bring hope and joy and opportunity to people.”
