Embedded Giving - actually, we have NO idea about numbers

Lucy Bernholz

13 Nov 2007 • 1 min read

My sincere thanks to Lindsey Siegel of CECP who corrected my inaccurate assumptions about how and where embedded giving gets aggregated and counted. Turns out corporations are not factoring it in to their contributions - at least not those who participate in the CECP surveys.

Thanks Lindsey. The money is not in that pool, so its not part of the $191+ million.

I am glad to have been corrected on this. I still have two questions, however:

Where does this money get counted? (the dollars and nickels donated by customers who bring their own grocery bag, add $1 to their drug store bill for juvenile diabetes, or send $1 through their ATM to a disaster relief agency, etc. etc.)
How much money is given away this way and is it increasing (as everybody I've asked seems to think it is)

Please let me know, if you know. And send me your examples of embedded giving - I'll catalogue as many as I get and celebrate the most unusual ones in a later post.

Tags: philanthropy, embeddedgiving