Ever wonder how you quantify the economic impact of employing people with disabilities, who have historically been out of the workforce?
We certainly have, and we are pleased to announce that The Philanthropic Collaborative has calculated just that. Assessing the impacts of foundation grantmaking on the U.S. economy, the report outlines the short-term, medium-term, and long-term economic impacts of those contributions on a variety of different organizations.
For DePaul Industries, the report took a portion of generous equity contributions made to the organization by the M.J. Murdock Charitable Trust. It measured the impact those contributions had on DePaul Industries’ economic output to society. The analysis was conducted using an economic IMPLAN model and representing results from contributions that totaled $527,000. It found that DePaul’s work contributes $295.97 million in economic transactions, adds $194.80 million to the Gross Domestic Product (GDP), and is responsible for almost 4,000 jobs and $165 million in annual payroll.
As the report puts it: “These returns on investment come from the lifetime streams of income that disabled workers may not otherwise have if not for DePaul Industries’ training programs and employment programs. If DePaul Industries secures a job for one worker, and that worker remains employed for a lifetime, the lifetime net present value of an average job can be over half a million dollars.” It is clear that beyond the economic benefit to the worker employed and the employer benefiting from his/her skills, there is real, tangible economic benefit to society as a whole that exponentially multiplies over time. At DePaul, we’re focused on efficiency and ensuring that we considerably leverage contributions for the greatest impact on society.
Impressively, the study finds that, in the long-term, total U.S. Foundation grantmaking contributes to 8,888,624 jobs and $570.56 billion to the GDP. Grantmaking also can be linked to $117.96 billion in total federal, state, and local taxes. Contributions, even as minor as a half a million dollars into a multi-million-dollar organization, create ripple effects throughout the economy, which manifest themselves over the course of the first year or two after being enacted.
Below is the table of the various economic impacts that this Murdock contribution to DePaul Industries is responsible for creating:
We’re extremely grateful to the M.J. Murdock Charitable Trust for recommending us as a subject for this study, definitively establishing that core equity investments to support the employment of people with disabilities generate strong contributions to the economy many, many times over.
Read the full economic impact report.
