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.
