Bridging the Gap: Matthew Ganz on Corporate Social Responsibility, Nonprofit Learning, and the Power of Community

Tasha: [00:00:00] good morning. Could you please introduce yourself and tell us a little bit about your nonprofit origin story?

Matthew: First of all, thank you for having me, Tasha. I’m a big fan of your work and the Hive, which has just been so instrumental for me.
And we can get kind of into that. Later, but I don’t have like unlike most of your guests or all of your guests, I don’t have that rich nonprofit, uh, background. Right. I did start, I mean, my niche is really corporate social responsibility and like an evolved model of corporate citizenship.
But I did begin my career with the Peace Corps, which is a government agency, but you know, functions much like a nonprofit. I was a volunteer, I was overseas. Working with women’s groups and at a health center. And my peers were working, teaching English and uh, working alongside, uh, uh, water and sanitation departments, installing wells, working with other [00:01:00] NGOs in the area.
So I, and some ’em actually did did, did write, apply for grants and get grants for some of the funding. So I did have that. But honestly, these days. My, I volunteer four hours a week, but this is not this is not upper echelon health and human services work. Right?
Like the apex of what you can do in the nonprofit world, what I consider, but you know, this is uh, I’m a soccer coach, and I do it because my girls. Play soccer and it’s four hours a week and I’ve been doing it for four years and it’s great. But that’s really, that, that’s kind of my history.
I kind of got into this and into this community by happenstance. Right. I just kind of glommed on pretty strongly to my companies, a previous employers CSR programs.

Tasha: I love this and I, I know when I even sent out this thing saying, Hey, I’d love to interview you because you wrote one of, one of the coolest articles we’ve put out through the [00:02:00] nonprofit hive.
In my opinion, I really valued that you brought to the table because this is an area, particularly in that CSR, that like my background being much more marketing and not into. The running of nonprofits as much or all of these different areas. This is like this area that I think a lot of us in the nonprofit world don’t totally understand.
We know that there’s huge potential here, but this is why I was so excited to have you on ’cause I think this is gonna be fascinating and I’ve appreciated you being a long time member. You’ve been very, very involved. And do you wanna guess how many Hive chats you’ve done? Do you know?

Matthew: I have no, I, whenever somebody tell, like whenever I meet someone, they’re like, I’m new.
I’m like, yeah, I’ve done five or six. I’d always say five or six.

Tasha: No, you’ve done it 54.

Matthew: Really? 54. Yeah. Great. No,

Tasha: absolutely. Which I love because I, everyone underestimates every single person in that. Whenever I do these interviews, they’re always like, yeah, it’s just a few. I’ve been [00:03:00] involved for a while or whatever, but I’m like, no, this is a lot and I, I value.
I value our long-term members and our very committed members because you’re bringing something consistent to the table. And I know you and I talked about this a little bit, there is such a cool opportunity with the Hive to learn from all these different people with very different backgrounds coming to nonprofit because it.
It is a very diverse sector. That, and nonprofit can mean so many different things and so many different ways that people are involved in the social impact space.

Matthew: Yeah, I bet. So many interesting people. Like the whole reason I got into it is because I just, just very quickly I got into CSR, the company that I was working with had just got like sacks of money and they were doing so little and I just became disenchanted so quickly.
And so I started writing about it like on medium.com you can do the self-publishing thing. And then, so being such a vocal critic, I essentially became like such a staunch [00:04:00] advocate for nonprofits, but it was, I just knew nobody. Yeah. Like I was so ill prepared. Like I think in that article I wrote for the blog, I was like the unprepared advocate.
So I used to go to all of these webinars, anything that was put on by a nonprofit. Organization, uh, or someone in the sector. I kind of went, but you know, the hive has just been, the hive is critical, right? Because what I said in the article is it stitches together like a, like a webinar is, it’s not intimate, right?
Like I get just, what they prepared. But through the Hive it’s like I’ve got nonprofit professionals that are now creating technology for the sector. Those that are working fractionally. Those that I can bounce my ideas off of and it becomes like a compass. Like it informs my strategy for sure.
Right. And gives me an idea of the nonprofit sector, which is so vast, but it, it’s like my compass for am I, am I advocating for the right stuff for this sector and am I not? And what am I [00:05:00] missing? Because one of the things that I found out early on is that. Nonprofits don’t really have a great idea about the core, or most don’t have a great idea about what corporations do apart from sponsor sponsorships and like maybe how corporations are using.
I know like I’m a very skeptical person, but how, how corporations are kind of using nonprofits in their messaging to like consumers and investors and employees and how valuable that is. And what they get in return the very little, that they get in return sometimes. So, there was a bridge, there.
There there’s a chasm that I’m trying to bridge across and provide more support for nonprofits. That’s really the end goal.

Tasha: Favorite parts about having been in this sector, worked in this sector, building in this sector.

Matthew: Yeah, it, it’s, I haven’t, Hmm, that’s a loaded question because my gut reaction to be like is, [00:06:00] is to be like, I, I’ve found a lot of stuff that I think that can be improved upon.
Yeah. Capacity building via cohort development. And a lot of companies do cohort development. Not all of them do it very, very well, and some are kind of pushing their products and services and credits and speed consultancies, but some are doing it the right way. That’s the peak that that’s the best, basically of what I’ve seen.
And of course the people too, but in this environment, right. And it’s not just this administration, okay, which has brought just who, who just, just, brought the hammer down on this sector. But beforehand, there’s just so much that I think that can be improved upon. And I know that I get criticized a lot for being so, so critical, but.
I really feel like there’s a lot more that can be done. I feel like we can kind of steer this ship into more I don’t know, just into more substantial support for the sector,

Tasha: yeah, [00:07:00] absolutely. I think there’s, we’re in this weird spot where. Because there is so much criticism of nonprofit from external, external areas.
Yeah. The rest of the world has so many negative things to say about nonprofit. I think we’re really concerned internally about any criticism of how things are run as well, because the beat down is happening from externally so hard that it’s hard to then. Judgmentally, look at some of the things that exist, and then you add in resource scar, like the scarcity on top of it to go, how do we even bring in cool new ways of being?
That makes sense and are actually, you hate to use the word scalable, but in some ways, like how can we take some, bring something in and replicate it across many nonprofits without it being. Just a hu And no one wants another huge, enormous project in a nonprofit. Right? Everyone’s at like peak burnout right now.
So how do you, [00:08:00] how do you move towards meaningful change?

Matthew: Oh, I, I don’t mean, I don’t want you to get the wrong idea. I’m not criticizing nonprofits. I am solely criticizing corporate support of nonprofits.

Tasha: Okay. I love that. Yeah.

Matthew: I don’t, I don’t, no, I have no, I have nothing bad to say about nonprofits, I’m just saying that.
Corporate support because, since the murder of George Floyd here, you’re in Canada, right? Yeah. But here, in the US it’s just created a movement and everybody made large financial commitments, uh, whether they followed through on them fully or not, but now people are kind of backing away and I just feel and I don’t want to get too academic here because I am an analyst in the sector and I do do a lot of reading, but.
The neoliberal era. This is like mid, early 1970s America, where Milton Friedman prominent economics, basically said, the purpose of business is business. Right. And I think that was really bastardized, excuse my language. ’cause I don’t think he would, really approve of what’s ha of how his words were [00:09:00] twisted for, just dismiss every other stakeholder out there.
Right. But because businesses have. Gained the lion’s share of the great technological advancement and economic advancement. Yeah. There is, are they obligated, to give back? No, but you know, if, if there are going to, I mean, let’s be honest about it. You’ve done very well. You can do a lot more.

Tasha: Yeah.

Matthew: That’s.

Tasha: Absolutely. I, I,

Matthew: I don’t wanna, I don’t want to, I see a lot of people saying, oh, CSR is going to, make it, with this administration, we have to prove the business case. I’m not sure you can prove the business case or even the moral case to a lot of businesses to stay involved.
Honestly, sometimes I think it might just be a waste of breath. Some companies are gonna do it and some companies won’t. And if you’re going to do it, I think you can be held accountable for how many resources you commit to it.

Tasha: Yeah,
Absolutely. So I, uh, we have a couple [00:10:00] members in India who are fantastic, really interesting, uh, doing interesting work with them with nonprofits.
And it sounds like at least the model in India is very much like with CSR, there’s a, an obligation for a percentage of your business to be invested into social enterprise, social services, things like that. What, where do you see, or where have you read of groups who are doing this really well?
Because I think that’s also something we need to talk about too, is what are the organizations or companies, whether they’re in the. Canada, anywhere else that you look at and go, Hey, here’s a really cool model that we should be trying to

Matthew: replicate. I definitely, I, I, uh, it’s funny, I’ll talk about the India model ’cause I’ve talked about it before, which also has problems.

Tasha: Yeah.

Matthew: So let’s, and then I’ll talk about, because I don’t really like to pick out exemplars because I don’t want people to be like, because everybody can do something uniquely different. Yeah. So the, the model in India is 2% of your net profit [00:11:00] has to go back into a well-structured commu like CSR, lots of organizations in India, in that same fiscal year.

Tasha: Yeah.

Matthew: That said, you have a lot of discretion if you know your, your brothers or my brothers, ru running like some vetted authorized community organization, he can get that money.

Tasha: Yeah.

Matthew: And that’s kind of, that’s the draw, that’s the drawback with the, with the CSR model, like the, the, where the money goes.
The community organizations are fully vetted, I mean, a, anybody can really get in there basically. And that, and that’s what I’ve heard. Love the idea. Because to me it’s like saying, Hey, forget about your volunteers. Forget about whatever. The most, the most value you can get from a company is their money.
That 2% net profit. I love that. I don’t know if we’ll ever get something like that here. Everything is opt in and, and involuntary.

Tasha: Yeah.

Matthew: And I, and I don’t think [00:12:00] that’s, I don’t think that’s great. I will say that like it or not, and much like DEI. Like it or not, the demographics of this country are changing, the workforces are gonna be more diverse and this mode of capitalism and the, there have been many modes of capitalism, ha, that have changed along the way.
As, as will this, this is untenable, it’s ex, it’s extractive of, uh, the environment. There’s environmental degradation. It’s, it optimizes your workforce. And yeah, it’s, it, it can’t go on this forever. There will be a breaking boy I don’t like, uh uh. Here’s a problem with exemplars. Everybody goes to Patagonia because, what’s his name?
Mr. Ard, I think I’m probably butchering his name. But he sold the company and put it in a perpetual purpose trust, which is laudable. Fantastic. But in the same token, he, uh, didn’t put it in an [00:13:00] employee trust. Right? Yeah. And I think that’s one of the areas that I like to focus on is internal social impact, because I think that’s where a company should begin.
Right? And I’m all about, employee equity models. Restricted stock units, phantom stock, even. Profit sharing. Uh, stock ownership plans, stock purchase plans, all of that stuff. They’re not all equal and they’re not all viable depending on the sector. But I think if you can start there, that’s, I don’t want to pick any example, but there are people that, that do it.
Even private equity is doing it. There is a company called CHI Garage, garage Doors that was profiled on 60 Minutes. But that was more of an equity like buyout, right? It wasn’t real employee equity. So people are co-opting language and just being all loosey goosey with it. But I would say that companies that invest in in [00:14:00] employee equity are really, really good, and there are contradictions elsewhere as well.
Like Starbucks is very part-time workers get benefits. But no laborer, no, no organization of labor. Nobody’s doing it. Great. That’s, and I should ask you, and I, I mean, and I should ask you, and this is what I ask people, like my counterparts and in the chats, it’s what am I missing?
What is a guy like me who’s constantly criticizing what companies do, like what am I missing that, I mean, give me the example where companies are doing great and I just don’t know.

Tasha: Yeah, I think it’s really hard because even with what I would consider, and, and there’s lots of discussion about this, but companies and nonprofits that externally appear to be very healthy.
You get, one-on-one, and this is partly why I love this model of one-to-one conversation. There’s a lot more honesty to go, oh, here, behind the doors, not, not everyone’s [00:15:00] as comfortable. I’ve always been with the nonprofit hive, like I’m gonna build it in public and it’s gonna be awkward.
And some of you’re gonna hate that. I’m gonna be this open about how hard this is because it’s not the narrative we want to have, right? We don’t it. It’s uncomfortable for people to know, oh, actually this has been this much work because everyone’s looking for it to be infinitely easier in my world.
Community building should be easy. Oh, no. Community building is one of the hardest things I’ve ever done in my life. It’s very rewarding. It’s very satisfying, but I think we’ve all kind of come back to that model to go. Most things that are worth having, including social impact, including groups that believe in social impact.
It is going to be work, and we need to be much more clear, whether it’s with our employee groups or within nonprofit or with our donors or any, that this is going to be work. It’s going to be meaningful work, but it’s still work, right? It’s not this. We’re, we’re giving too much passiveness to something that’s actually an action.
[00:16:00] Not, yeah, not something passive.

Matthew: Yeah. Yeah. That’s really interesting. I mean, how long have you been doing the Hive now? How, how long has it been?

Tasha: It will be two years on October. Uh. 17th, 19th, the ones like mid-October, it’ll be two years. Yeah.

Matthew: Yeah, yeah.

Tasha: Crazy.

Matthew: I mean, but you’re supporting a whole group of people out there who were probably really clamoring for something like this.
I don’t know, something like this. As well. I have looked around and it’s been, it’s, it’s incredibly valuable.

Tasha: Thank you. It’s been great. It’s been a cool journey, and I think that’s what, uh. So many people, very much like yourself going, well, I don’t know that I have something to offer to this conversation when I asked you to come and do that.
I actually think that that’s, that’s a thing I see in this sector all the time too. There are so many amazing people who do have a zone of genius. I don’t have time to go and [00:17:00] read like you do about something that’s so critical and important and potentially a life like a, like a. Sector fulfilling opportunity for funding right now.
Right? Like CSR, like as funding disappears in all of these different angles, but we’re hearing from the general population that they still believe that nonprofits are fulfilling a very basic need, but now they’re taxes won’t actually go there.

Matthew: Mm-hmm.

Tasha: How do we get people to believe in something like nonprofit, but we need all brains on it because if you ask me, Hey, how do I market?
Some of this, I’d be like, yeah, I’m in and let me help. Mm-hmm. But I can’t do the research on going, Hey, how so? How do you understand how CSR groups? I still, I read your article when it came in and I was going, oh my goodness. I feel like I just learned so much more without having to go through and do all of that research myself, because.
That is getting more and more challenging to find the time for busy non-profit [00:18:00] professionals in particular who are really small shops. It just becomes a bit of a pipe dream where they’re like, man, I hope that somehow. I find it, a CSR group that’s really would love to get involved with us, but they don’t even know how to start

Matthew: there.
Yeah. Uh, absolutely. L right, like there’s like a standard formula for corporations getting involved with nonprofits and nonprofits who want to find corporates. Partnerships that like all of the creativeness, and the strategic, thinking like visioning is kind of gone out the window, right?
Yeah. Everybody does what’s already available and I think there’s a lot of missed opportunities. Yeah, and like when I talk to people, I try to tell them about all the interesting things going on in the sector. So before like the, the year, the two years that I’ve been active on LinkedIn, I was all about like quantifiable data.
‘Cause half the people, half the sector’s about storytelling, and you really can’t, you, you, you really can’t break the two apart because you kind of need both. But there [00:19:00] are platforms and technologies like impacted genome, like ion that are quantifying social impact as a way to create a marketplace, uh, to get more funding.
So instead of saying, right, because it’s all, it’s this whole charitable navigator, 6% of all nonprofits get 94% of. Revenue. So that’s contributions. It’s donations, it’s investment income. So there’s a lot of groups out there that just aren’t getting the money. So creating this marketplace where you can buy impact I think has been an interesting idea.
Benevity has integrated it and now sells it, I believe is a very expensive module, yeah. For $50,000 or something. That’s just what I’ve heard. I’m probably wrong. But there’s all sorts of interesting things happening in this sector that, that I would like to see brought to nonprofits, so they don’t really have to do it themselves.
There’s all sorts of, and, and companies who don’t have to just, [00:20:00] spend a couple of hundred thousand, a hundred, a hundred thousand dollars or more, and then annual licenses just to get in the game. Yeah. There’s community foundations and CDFIs and, and. And local chapters of the EPA and, and your, and your local government council on, urban development and, uh, economic justice and, and climate like we have here in Massachusetts.
There are so many ways and so many organizations like, the, the United Nations, guiding principles for business and human rights and Business for Social responsibility, which is like a nonprofit group out in. San Francisco who just have these very explicit frameworks for how companies can really do good in their community.

Tasha: Yeah, I love this. This is fantastic. So I know we’ve totally gone off script and this has been totally not what I sent you for questions, but if you had a couple of suggestions for the many nonprofits that are part of the nonprofit hive, where would you [00:21:00] send them to do some, I’m gonna link in your article obviously after this, but what are some basic things that you would suggest to them if they were wanting to learn more about.
Csr, how to understand about CSRs, those kinds of things. What are some, some resources or some first steps that you would suggest?

Matthew: Yeah, that’s, that’s harder, right? Yeah, because e everybody, there’s more organizations catering towards the corporation than there are for the nonprofit, but I would probably say.
Oh, the business for Social Responsibility. They are a membership organization. They can probably help with connections. I would say get in touch with local nonprofit intermediaries, right? Because intermediaries are a way for, and, and a lot of intermediaries, and I’m just talking about Boston can actually disperse grants as well.
But this is the way that big funders find small. Organization. So hook yourself up with a nonprofit [00:22:00] intermediary.

Tasha: Yeah. Uh,

Matthew: get involved that way also, and I’m sure they probably already have connections within their local community foundation. But pursuing corporate partnerships, I’m gonna be honest and say I haven’t.
Really thought a ton about that. I’m more about bringing the corporations over because, and it’s also hard there if you can find a corporation that does cohort development, I would probably say start there. Even if you say, Hey, I missed your, I missed your, uh, application lifecycle. But I’m looking for whatever, such and such and these types of funders.
Do you know anybody in your network? And I would probably also go to your local government agency there. I mean, here in in Massachusetts we have an environmental justice council and all sorts of places. So the more that you can network with those people, you will find you will find corporations in the end, I believe.
But I, I, I also think it’s [00:23:00] very difficult to find. A lot of companies that are willing to do, uh, the real work to get involved.

Tasha: That’s awesome. Unfortunately. Well, hey, this is a great, great place to start. We’ll throw, we’ll throw it in ’cause I, I think that’s, so many businesses or so many nonprofits and which is the end, we very much more deal with are still like.
What does it all mean and how do we even get involved? So I love this ’cause you’re bringing in, that more corporate angle, which I think is really helpful.

Matthew: What I do say sometimes just I’ll add very quickly. Yeah. It used to be. Now I see, like now with, with the US administration coming down and companies backing away, I see a more of a move towards employee wellbeing.

Tasha: Yeah, which

Matthew: is gonna, which is gonna go away, which is gonna take nonprofits out of the picture. And I’ll just be critical because who would I be if I wasn’t critical? You have to, I think nonprofits used to be the linchpin of CSR programs. Corporations couldn’t endeavor to do CSR on their own. So I thought that nonprofits had the power.
But now that I see companies [00:24:00] moving towards wellbeing and an expanded definition of volunteering, especially. This is taking that powerful psychological experience uh, of volunteering and divorcing it from a nonprofit, which I think lessens impact. So yeah, I, I, I would say maybe there was more leverage before and maybe less so now,

Tasha: Interesting. I always like to ask this question of any of our people that we’re interviewing, but what have you gotten out of being a member of the nonprofit?

Matthew: Everything. Eyes, ears, my, and my, my moral compass and an intimate patchwork of the nonprofit sector. I wasn’t trying to be, I’m just a normal, I’m nobody, I would say I have no professional, credentials in this career, and I’m not the, a great person looking to do great in the world, but, but I, I fell into this and I have a real sense of. [00:25:00] Justice, and if you say that you are going to help and you’ve got a ton of resources and you don’t help, well that the, those are tho, that’s something I just can’t abide. The nonprofit hive has given me a place to bounce my ideas off of and say, am I wrong?
Is this what you really need? Is there something that I’m missing? Without it, I would be flying blind. That’s how important the Hive is to me. And the community has been. The icing on the cake, you

Tasha: know? That’s great. So I really appreciate that.

Matthew: Thank you very much.

Tasha: I appreciate that so much because I very much similarly.

Look to the community to go, what do you need? What, what are you guys looking for? Right. Because, and, and that is the best case scenario because it’s really easy to just get head down and I hear some beautiful, cool tech ideas, come out of people who I know in the sector as well, and I’m always.
How many nonprofit professionals across how many places have you talked [00:26:00] to about this? Because it is so easy, even for me to go, oh, the community needs this, but I workshop and think it through and go, what about this? What about this? Because it is very easy to get a few people saying yes and go, oh yeah, no, it’s, it’s definitely what we need.
Like you noted, things are changing so fast in this sector that we really need to continue very openly having conversations with each other to keep up with where we’re at now. Because what I would’ve thought two years ago when I started, so much has changed in two years. So wild right across. Impact from what’s happening in the us Very much seeing it in my hive members in Uganda and Kenya and Tanzania, right?
Who lost funding, critical funding. And so I think it’s been, uh, it’s definitely given me a bigger viewpoint to be able to go, okay, there’s all these different humans. How do I find some sort of path for community?

Matthew: [00:27:00] Yeah, whatever you’ve done, you’ve done a fantastic job, and there’s a whole group of people that have you to thank for that.
I’m being serious.

Tasha: Well, thank you. I really appreciate it. It’s hard. It’s hard, right? When you feel like you’re never doing enough. You’re like, oh, it’s hard to accept it, but. I really appreciate that, Matthew. And how can people get in touch with you? How can people follow along with what you’re doing? I have a feeling there may be people with questions for you after this and, and hopefully some people who are listening that are more on the business side of this considering.
Yeah. Yeah.

Matthew: I’m always happy. Listen, I’m open to learning. I’m open to being wrong, of course. You just have to be.

Tasha: Yeah.

Matthew: But the best place to find me is on LinkedIn. That’s where I do, I am on substack and I put my articles, my, my LinkedIn articles there as well. But you know, Matthew gans, analyst at, uh, for Social Impact at Evo Advisors Evo O.
You can also find me@evoccs.com, but that’s that, that’s the place. [00:28:00]

Tasha: That’s awesome. Thank you so much for doing this with me and thank you for your continued investment of, your time and energy into this community.

Matthew: For sure. Thank you very much for the opportunity and the hive. Thank you.