Global Impact

As a fiscal sponsor of nonprofits and an administrator of donor-advised funds, Global Impact can obscure the flow of money from donors to ultimate recipients, as well as allow organizations that would not otherwise pass the Internal Revenue Service’s “public support” test to do so. ⁴

It is not related to Global Impact, Inc., which operates the Child Hope International organization connecting children in orphanages to living family members, or the Global Impact Investing Network membership organization that promotes environmental, social, and governance (ESG) investing. ⁵

History and Overview

The predecessor organization to Global Impact was founded in 1956 by major international charities that needed an American-based nonprofit to allow them to receive donations from the U.S. federal government’s workplace giving program, the Combined Federal Campaign. ¹

Global Impact continues to be involved with the Combined Federal Campaign both as a recipient of donations through the campaign and as a contractor providing strategic, marketing, and fundraising services. ²

The board chair of Global Impact Ventures is Anita Whitehead, a principal at KPMG who leads the KPMG Foundation and the firm’s “Corporate Citizenship” corporate social responsibility practice. ⁶

Operations

Global Impact offers strategic consulting, staffing, bookkeeping, and infrastructure services to nonprofits, foundations, individual and family philanthropies, and donor collaboratives. ⁷

This includes serving as a Professional Employer Organization (PEO), a practice sometimes known as an “employee leasing.” ⁸ A PEO like Global Impact serves as a “co-employer” for an organization’s employees, handling human relations, tax and regulatory compliance, and other employment-related functions on its behalf. ⁹ PEOs have been criticized by labor unions and other left-of-center activists for complicating efforts to unionize workforces and insulating companies from employment-related liability. ^{10 11}

Global Impact also operates outsourced Employee Assistance Funds for corporate clients, including major corporations such as PepsiCo, Intel, HP, Four Seasons Hotels and Resorts, Hilton, and Avery Dennison. ¹²

In 2019, Global Impact acquired philanthropic consultancy Geneva Global, which is a for-profit company incorporated in Delaware and headquartered in Pennsylvania. ^{13 14} It claims to have “raised or influenced” more than $3.5 billion in charitable giving across more than 100 countries, and is now a separate subsidiary under the Global Impact Ventures umbrella. ¹⁵

In 2022, Global Impact sponsored the annual conference of the Association of Corporate Citizenship Professionals (ACCP), a membership organization for professionals working to advance corporate social responsibility (CSR) and environmental, social, and corporate governance (ESG) initiatives across America. ¹⁶ Global Impact Ventures board chair Anita Whitehead is also an ACCP board member. ⁶

Grantmaking

Global Impact makes grants in support of its own initiatives, as an operator of donor-advised funds, and through its operation of corporate employee giving campaigns. ¹⁷

In 2023, it reported making $56,784,737 in grants. ¹⁷ Its largest reported donation that year to an outside organization was a $3,000,000 donor-directed grant to the GLO Development Foundation, a fiscally sponsored nonprofit attempting to use cryptocurrency to provide a global universal basic income in support of the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). ¹⁸

Global Impact received the largest single grant from Arabella Advisors’ Hopewell Fund in 2023, a $18,446,580 grant for “civil rights, social action, advocacy.” ¹⁹

In its 2023 annual report, Global Impact publicized its work on behalf of a donor collaborative that made more than $4.5 million in grants to organizations involved in “gun violence prevention efforts.” ²

Charity Alliance

Global Impact encourages companies to outsource their corporate employee giving campaigns through its Charity Alliance program. ³ Its network of 75 international charities for which it solicits donations includes major left-of-center organizations including the Bill, Hillary, and Chelsea Clinton Foundation, the Gates Foundation’s Gates Philanthropy Partners, Arabella Advisors’ Climate Resilience Fund, Human Rights Watch, Outright International, Unitarian Universalist Service Committee, and Refugees International. ²⁰

The Charity Alliance also enables donations to United Nations initiatives such as the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestinian Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) and the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF). ²⁰

Some of the other nonprofits participating in the Charity Alliance include Oxfam America, Islamic Relief USA, Accion, American Near East Refugee Aid (ANERA), Save the Children, American Jewish World Service, Ashoka, Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society (HIAS), Women for Women International, and  Partners in Health. ²⁰

Fiscal Sponsorship

One of Global Impact’s roles is to serve as the fiscal sponsor for nonprofit organizations so that they can receive charitable donations under Global Impact’s 501(c)(3) tax status. ⁴

Several of Global Impact’s fiscal sponsorship clients are international nonprofits that cannot accept charitable donations in the United States on their own. ²¹

At the end of 2024, Global Impact disclosed that it was serving as the fiscal sponsor for more than 120 organizations. ⁴ Global Impact advertises that its fiscal sponsorship allows organizations that would not otherwise pass the Internal Revenue Service’s ‘public support’ test to do so legally. ⁴

In 2024, eBay founder and Democratic Party megadonor Pierre Omidyar’s Democracy Fund made a $500,000 grant to the Governors Action Alliance (GovAct), a fiscally sponsored project of Global Impact. GovAct operates Governors Safeguarding Democracy, a coalition of Democratic governors co-chaired by Illinois Governor J.B. Pritzker (D) and Colorado Governor Jared Polis (D). ²² Its stated purpose as of November 2024 was to “serve as a mechanism for Democratic states to coordinate efforts to oppose the right-wing policies of President-elect Donald J. Trump.” ²²