Determining nonprofit program eligibility for Benevity Donate and Volunteer

In corporate giving programs, maintaining trust, protecting your brand, and ensuring compliance are critical priorities. Benevity empowers you to align your giving and volunteering programs with your company's risk policies and social responsibility goals, helping you foster meaningful impact while safeguarding your reputation.

Whether your focus is on compliance, brand alignment, or reputational risk, Benevity's flexible eligibility controls let you align with nonprofits that better reflect your values and CSR strategy, while still promoting employee engagement. You can define rules in eligibility rulesets for different activities in your programs. This guide outlines the decisions you need to make to define an eligibility ruleset. You may have multiple eligibility rulesets for each activity.

Please note that Benevity provides eligibility filtering options solely at the request of clients, enabling them to tailor their programs based on their own preferences and requirements. Any decisions regarding program restrictions are made at the client's discretion. Benevity does not endorse or advise on the use of specific restrictions and assumes no liability for client-defined program parameters.

Which program activities does the eligibility ruleset apply to?

Start by deciding which activity the eligibility ruleset should apply to.

• Donations: Controls which nonprofits are available for users to support through donations.
• Matching: Controls which nonprofits are eligible for support through donation matching.
• Donations & Matching: Controls both user donation support and matching eligibility.
• Volunteering Only: Controls eligibility for users to track volunteer time. These should be less restrictive than donations and matching filters.
• CI Portal Only: Controls eligibility for donations and matching support through the Community Impact Portal.

Which user groups does the eligibility ruleset apply to?

You can tailor nonprofit eligibility for different user groups using user tags. For example, you could apply different eligibility standards for global teams, leadership groups, and other groups.

User tags are assigned in your user data file. For example, you might use the 'User Country' data and choose the 'United States' tag to define eligibility standards for U.S.-based users.

Eligibility rulesets can apply:

• Only to users with specific tags, or
• To all users except those with specific tags

Do you want to define eligible or ineligible nonprofits?

As you start defining your eligibility ruleset, there are two primary approaches to consider:

• Defining eligible nonprofits in your program:
  Specify attributes of eligible nonprofits. Nonprofits must adhere to all inclusion rules to be eligible. These rules offer the strongest control and are best for programs with high-risk sensitivity.
• Defining ineligible nonprofits in your program:
  Specify attributes of nonprofits that are not eligible. If a nonprofit has an attribute of at least one rule, they are not eligible. These rules are ideal for broader programs with limited high-risk concerns.

Be cautious with complexity — over-filtering may unintentionally restrict employee choice.

Defining eligible nonprofits

If you choose to define eligibility rules, nonprofits must meet all rules to be eligible.

Eligibility rules

You can use the following criteria to define which nonprofits are eligible:

• Location of the nonprofit
  • Choose which countries or regions the eligibility rules apply to, based on the registered location of the nonprofit.
• NTEE (National Taxonomy of Exempt Entities) code
  Use the NTEE classification system to determine eligibility based on the nonprofit's mission or primary activity. Example: Include only education or environmental nonprofits; exclude religious or political ones.
  • How are NTEE codes assigned to nonprofits?
    • Database syncs:
      • US: Older causes may have IRS-assigned activity codes. Currently, organizations self-select their activity on IRS applications or petition for changes on the Business Master File.
      • Canada, UK, Australia, NZ: Benevity automatically maps country-specific activity codes to NTEE codes with government registry syncs.
      • Other countries: Benevity's in-house validation services map activity codes to the NTEE system.
    • Causes Portal Applications:
      • New nonprofits applying via the Causes Portal self-select their activity code during registration.
• Nonprofit types
  Valid nonprofits can be further segmented for program eligibility based on tax considerations and operational characteristics. You can choose whether to include both types of organizations:
  • Tax-effective nonprofits are eligible to receive grants/disbursements from local foundation partners (which participate in their respective country's tax benefit system through official donation receipting, pre-tax donations, etc.) due to the nonprofit's charitable/tax structure. This means that clients and their employees may receive official donation receipts.
  • Non-tax-effective nonprofits are not eligible to receive grants/disbursements from local foundation partners (due to their charitable/tax structure) but only from The UK Online Giving Foundation (UKOGF), which does not provide official donation receipts nor participate in Gift Aid. These include community sports clubs, nonprofits which are not registered charities, and private non-operating foundations in the US or similar entity types in other countries.
• Self-certification categories
  Require nonprofits to certify compliance with the self-certification declaration. Program eligibility can be based on how they respond to questions in the declaration like:
  • Anti-discrimination policies
  • Secular use of funds
  • Political affiliations

Set eligibility exceptions with a Charity ID

You can exclude nonprofits from eligibility by providing an organization's Charity ID (for example, the CRA number in Canada, EIN in the US, etc). This gives you the flexibility to make case-by-case determinations if you do not want an organization to be eligible.

For example, if an organization is included due to its NTEE code but it does not align with your company's mission, you can override the rule so that it is not eligible.

Defining ineligible nonprofits

Alternatively, you can choose to define rules for ineligibility.

Nonprofit location

First, decide whether the rules for ineligible nonprofits should apply globally or to specific countries/regions based on the nonprofit's location.

Ineligibility rules

When defining rules for ineligible nonprofits, consider that nonprofits are not eligible if they have an attribute that matches at least one rule.

You can use the following criteria to define rules for which nonprofits are not eligible for your program:

• NTEE codes
  Block NTEE categories such as political advocacy, religious missions, or other classifications you wish to exclude.
• Nonprofit types
  Block nonprofits based on charitable/tax status.
• Keyword match
  Exclude nonprofits with specific words in their names.
  Use caution — keyword filters can match substrings unintentionally. For example, "rabbi" could match "rabbit."

Set ineligibility exceptions with a Charity ID

You can exclude nonprofits from ineligibility by providing an organization's Charity ID (for example, the CRA number in Canada, EIN in the US, etc). This gives you the flexibility to make case-by-case determinations if the organization should be eligible.

For example, if an organization is excluded due to its NTEE code but it does align with your company's mission, you can specify it is an exception to the rule so that it is eligible.

Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) Hate Map

The SPLC Hate Map is a self-described resource created and maintained by the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC), an American nonprofit. SPLC tracks and documents groups operating across the United States which they consider to be hate groups. SPLC contends that the Hate Map is not an exhaustive list of all hate activity in the U.S., but rather a tool to raise awareness of the presence and scope of organized hate. It is intended for use by researchers, policymakers, journalists, and the general public to better understand and counteract extremism.

The SPLC focuses on reviewing organizations that are flagged as not aligned with their nonprofit mission: "to ensure the promise of the civil rights movement by working in partnership with communities to dismantle white supremacy, strengthen intersectional movements, and advance the human rights of all people." Their efforts are particularly concentrated on organizations based in the Southern United States or those that pose a significant threat to the groups they aim to protect.

We offer you the ability to make nonprofit organizations on the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) Hate Map eligible or ineligible. If you decide that SPLC Hate Map nonprofit organizations should be ineligible in your program, consider informing employees.

*The responsibility of whether or not to make SPLC Hate Map nonprofit organizations eligible or ineligible for your program is a decision to be made by you, the client, and Benevity does not make any recommendations around including or excluding these nonprofits for eligibility in your program. Each client will need to review the list and sign off on the final decisions for eligibility/ineligibility. Benevity does not take any responsibility for and disclaims all liability around client decisions to include or exclude any given nonprofit.

Additional program vetting services

Benevity offers additional paid vetting services to help you stay ahead of potential emerging risks and make informed choices for your program:

• Adverse Media Reports - monitoring of negative media coverage referencing specific nonprofits, sharing matching articles with clients.
• Key Personnel Screening - screening of a nonprofit's board members for risk factors related to adverse media, politically exposed persons and watchlists or sanctions.
• Premium Nonprofit Screening - this service expands on key personnel screening, including a broader assessment of potential issues with a nonprofit's reputation or operations, summarizing the overall risk in each area.

Benevity's eligibility controls empower companies to strike the right balance between mitigating risks and supporting meaningful employee giving. By leveraging eligibility rules and vetting services, you can create a corporate philanthropy program that aligns with your company's risk framework while still fostering employee participation.

Regularly review your eligibility rules and keyword lists to stay up-to-date with risk concerns and ensure that nonprofits appear as expected. For guidance on implementing these eligibility decisions, contact support.