We Read the State of Corporate Purpose Report So You Don’t Have To

GrowZA
Sep 17
3 min read

Every year, a handful of reports quietly shape the way the corporate world thinks about impact. This year, Benevity’s State of Corporate Purpose 2025 surveyed over 500 leaders across the globe. The findings? A mirror of our times: risk-aversion meets rising expectations, new metrics meet old burdens, and a nonprofit sector that is both indispensable and stretched to breaking point.

For South Africa, and for Africa more broadly, the relevance is acute. Below, we’ve distilled the signal from the noise:

1. Silence Is the New Risk

Globally, companies are pulling back from making bold public statements on social issues. Fear of backlash, political polarization, and legal uncertainty drive this quietism. But silence carries its own reputational risks — especially when employees and consumers expect principled stances.

In our market: funders and corporates can’t afford to sit out debates on inequality, disability inclusion, and youth opportunity. Not choosing is, in itself, a choice.

2. Metrics Are Multiplying — But Who Pays?

Impact measurement is maturing, with new dashboards and reporting standards emerging. But nonprofits are being asked to do more with less: reporting is a second (unfunded) job.

In South Africa: we should co-design reporting frameworks with funders, build shared data infrastructure, and stop drowning small ECD centres and grassroots NGOs in compliance paperwork.

3. Nonprofits as an Ecosystem, Not Just Vendors

The report signals a shift from seeing nonprofits as delivery arms to recognising them as civic infrastructure — the connective tissue holding communities together.

This aligns directly with GrowZA’s “residency” model. We don’t parachute projects into places. We build invest in embedded civic infrastructure: EV hubs in Mfuleni, cultural pipelines in Woodstock, skills residencies in Winterveldt. The global trend validates what we’ve known locally.

4. Volunteering Gets Strategic

Skills-based volunteering is replacing box-packing. Corporates want impact that ties back to their core business — and employees want meaning, not photo-ops.

Imagine accountants coaching township entrepreneurs on compliance, or engineers co-designing water resilience systems. That’s volunteering as strategy.

5. Social Responsibiity Commitees: From Coffee Clubs to Trust Anchors

These sub-committees are often dismissed as internal clubs yet are becoming stabilisers amid DEI backlash. They are should be resourced, trusted, resilient, and are increasingly business-critical.

For Africa, this means resourcing these committees to activate programming tied to disability, youth, and women leaders as real engines of innovation, not just HR tick-boxes.

Where Do We Go From Here?

The report gives us the trends. The question is: what do we do with them in South Africa? Here are four starting points:

Move from Cautious silence to Clarity: Don’t stay silent. Decide which issues are core to your mandate (youth skills, disability inclusion, water resilience) and create a communications policy that outlines when you will speak publicly and when you’ll act quietly but decisively.
Co-Fund Measurement, Don’t Outsource It: If you’re asking nonprofits for data, fund the systems that make it possible. That might mean subsidising tablets, shared dashboards, or pooled M&E support. Impact without resourcing is exploitation.
Build for Resilience, Not Optics: Shift CSR budgets from once-off activations to embedded civic infrastructure. Invest in hubs, pipelines, and ecosystems that stay standing when the photo-ops are gone.
Activate Your People: Reimagine employee volunteering as applied expertise. Position ERGs not as side-hustles, but as innovation labs that link directly to market strategy and inclusion outcomes.

The Takeaway for Funders

Purpose is a strategic lever. And in Africa, civil society is more mature and inventive than many funders assume: churches running ECD centres, stokvels acting as financiers, disability groups pioneering new technologies. This isn’t a sector waiting to be “built.” It’s a sector ready to be backed.

The funders who adapt fastest in moving from procurement to partnership, will not only manage reputational risk, but also unlock new markets, strengthen talent pipelines, and build trust where it matters most: in communities.