Calgary based company Benevity to lay off 137 of its staff

Calgary-based software start-up Benevity has announced it will be laying off 14 per cent of its staff on Wednesday.

CEO Kelly Schmitt says this is due to being “overbuilt” for the current market conditions, despite experiencing year-over-year growth.

She adds that Benevity has seen an increase in its team, but in the last nine months, “macroeconomic conditions” have changed, leading to the slowing down of demand.

“I am truly sorry that we’ve come to this point, and I take full responsibility for the decisions that led us here,” Schmitt said in a statement.

“We believe in the long-term opportunity for Benevity, as the appetite for companies of all sizes to engage their teams and customers around social impact is still strong. Taking the steps now to become a more profitable business will make us a stronger company over the long term, and better position us to fulfill our mission and support our clients and nonprofits to have a positive impact on the world.”

On Dec. 1, 2022, Benivity, which has charitable donation-management and grant-management software, said $122.2 million was donated through its platform, which was the 10th anniversary of Giving Tuesday.

In the same year, in August, it saw a total of $10 billion in global donations, along with adding 124 new clients, saying it added nearly 21 million new users.

Read More: Calgary’s Benevity reaches $10B milestone in donations to non-profits

The company is ranked number five in Fortune’s Impact 20 list, a list of start-up companies that are “venture-backed and private-equity-backed,” and “focus on tackling key social and environmental issues as part of their business models.”

To support those that got axed, Schmitt says the company is going to have one on one meetings with all those affected to “support the transition.”

While Benevity is headquartered in Calgary, it also has offices in Victoria and Toronto in Canada, and offices elsewhere around the globe, including Spain, Switzerland, and Singapore.

Those laid off are not only in Calgary but throughout the organization.

The Alberta NDP economic development and innovation critic Deron Bilous says the UCP government is part and parcel to the layoffs and says this comes at a time when Albertans are “struggling to pay their bills”

“Our economy is facing headwinds as we head into 2023, and despite growth in the last couple of years, the tech sector is not immune. The layoffs at Benevity follow reports of layoffs at other Calgary-based tech companies in recent weeks,” Bilous said.

“Rather than supporting the tech sector, the UCP declared economic diversification a luxury and cancelled tax credits that created instability in the sector and drove out investment. As a result, tech investment continues to lag much of the rest of the country and fails to keep pace on a per capita basis.”