Entrepreneur Jamie Welsh answers the phone like she’s anticipating you’ll tell her she’s won the lottery. And that she can give the winnings to the charity of her choice. The founder of 10% Solution, a company whose mission is “positive global change through certified giving programs,” comes across as equal parts excitability and energy. A survivor of the dot-com boom who joined corporate America with a goal of giving back, Welsh started a company last spring that requires clients to donate a substantial amount of their net profits, encourage employee volunteering, and work toward sustainability certifications. Her goal: to create giving models for more corporate social responsibility.
Welsh, who most recently worked as a marketing VP for Hilton Hotels, is currently the Orange County-based start-up’s first employee. The bulk of her network is based on the West Coast with three European companies recently expressing interest in getting involved.
Welsh reached out to the first two companies to become 10% Solution clients because they were committed to creating a culture of giving, including Gamblin Motors and Enumclaw Travel in Washington. “It’s so exciting to talk to brands with philanthropic roots,” said Welsh, who is also working with two Southern California companies, Decision Toolbox and Focus 360, to track their giving.
While most companies she’s researched give less than 1% of their profits, she requires that her affiliate companies give 5 percent of their pre-tax profits. Only a fourth of the financial component of their giving can be in the form of goods and services. Affiliation with 10% Solution involves a 2.5 percent overall employee volunteer rate, which averages to an hour a week or one day a month per employee for many companies. Clients must also work toward sustainability certifications, including LEED, USDA Organic, and Green-e energy reductions, which serve as a 2.5 percent credit. The combination is a 10% donation that Welsh describes as “giving at a gold standard.”
These requirements are rigid but Welsh said the result is that her clients’ efforts become trackable and reportable. “Much like an [International Organization for Standardization] rating, I wanted to create an international standard by which giving can be monitored in a way that would provide a seal of approval.”
Welsh said that most organizations she’s encountered while working in the corporate social responsibility space are regionally and non-profit focused. While she cited One Percent for the Planet and Chef’s Best as groups people trust for their donating and rating processes, Welsh wanted to focus on companies who were exemplary in their giving to create a certification process that would resonate with individuals and other businesses.
In addition to being a tool for employee retention and recruitment, 10% Solution was designed as a way for partner companies to create new business to business relationships and create a knowledge base for sharing ideas and problems. Clients are invited to put the 10% Solution certification on their products with the idea that people vote with their conscience and other companies will take note.
The child of a design engineer and a nurse who both served in WWII, Welsh said she was raised in a household that made tithing to their church a priority. While 10% Solution isn’t tied to a specific faith, its name follows the concept of universal principles about giving. Welsh is the youngest of six daughters who lost their mother to ovarian cancer when she was in her 20s, and she said her mother’s example was central to the creation of her company. “Growing up, we were taught that service to others was just the way you live your life,” Welsh said. “This idea resonates strongly with women for that spiritual aspect and the good business sense.”
Welsh, who has a Masters degree in organizational management, worries that some companies are more concerned with promoting themselves in the name of cause marketing than they are with giving. She said that when companies’ net profits are compared with what they could actually afford to give, there is a discrepancy between the philanthropy being done and the lip service companies pay to their good deeds.
Shona Davidson, the president of i2i Interactive, worked with Welsh to execute the idea for 10% Solution online. In addition to quizzes for businesses and individuals to find out how close they are to “living a 10% life,” the site has links to resources including VolunteerMatch and DonorsChoose.org, in addition to Welsh’s recent blog post about recycling and disposing of electronics in a sustainable way.
“Currently there is no real accreditation process that uses sound business practices to distinguish how different companies are giving,” Davidson said. “As a consumer you have no idea what businesses are doing—while they say they’re sponsoring or donating, there’s no auditing for all aspects of giving. What 10% Solution tries to do is provide quantifiable measurement for companies making this a priority.”
The company has a $500 base cost and charges for its services, including annual check-ins, based on client revenue. Client Jeff Lunker said that accreditation was affordable even for a small company. Lunker, owner of Enumclaw Travel, said his travel agency was already donating money and its employees were enthusiastic about volunteering when he found out about 10% Solution. “Our company was set up with a sense of the importance of giving, but not because I wanted to be congratulated. I tend to want to do business with companies that are responsible,” Lunker said.
He wanted to be more environmentally responsible but didn’t know which direction to take with a company that was only half-heartedly recycling. Welsh, who added the sustainability requirement to the 10% plan as a way to of recognizing the connection between philanthropy and concern for the environment, suggested Lunker work toward Green-e reductions or a LEED certification while creating a way to better monitor his company’s volunteer efforts.
Welsh said that the volunteer requirements have been the most challenging addition for several clients. She recommends that employers track employees’ volunteer time through software or simple forms. When volunteers select organizations, Welsh advocates local action and tells them to think about organizations in their area that would benefit from an hour of their time or $100 in a way that’s different from the way a large international organization might.
The first 10 companies to work with Welsh’s organization will make up the 10% Club, which will serve as an advisory board whose members are required to personally talk to two other people from different companies about their giving. If one of their contacts pairs up with her company, the 10% Club member organization will receive 2% of their contact’s accreditation fee to give to charity. The concept of gifting as a cyclical process is at the core of 10% Solution, and Welsh would ultimately like to add an educational component that would provide service learning curriculum to primary school educators.
Welsh spent 15 years working for technology and engineering start-ups, where she loved the sense of pride and ownership that came with the development of a company. “Call it inspiration—or maybe too many glasses of wine,” she said, “but I wanted to change the world through a business model focused on giving. Since then I haven’t looked back.”
Written by Emily Goligoski