Today, more and more employers are re-examining their workplace charitable giving drives. With a goal of strengthening their support of local and national charity initiatives, enhancing employee relations, building campaign satisfaction, and delivering the highest percentage of employee gifts to charities, companies are examining how corporate philanthropy, including the workplace campaign, fits into their overall business and community strategy.

More than ever before, companies understand that it’s important to eliminate even the perception of negative pressure to give. Also, the company wants to give its employees more ownership of a major workplace activity. And, companies know, t he campaign needs to represent the diverse interests of employees and their families.

America’s Charities helps employers address these needs. We help employers position their campaigns as part of their community outreach by integrating workplace giving as a complement to other programs, such as volunteer outreach, clothing and food drives, community activism, and others. We help employers brand their workplace giving campaigns, extending existing internal or external community relations brands, or creating new brands specifically for the campaign, onto which other outreach could be added.

This is nothing new. It’s the business America’s Charities has been about for the past 25 years: Building better, more efficient workplace giving campaigns.

Bring America's Charities to Your Workplace

The counterpart for these trends among employers are the trends we have identified among employees:

• Employees are asking to expand their involvement in workplace issues
• Many times, employees don’t think the campaign supports issues that are important to them and are asking for a broader range of charitable choices in the workplace campaign
• People who volunteer or benefit from the services of an organization want to be able to support it through their campaign
• The campaign may be viewed as a management activity with little input from employees
• Employees feel there is too much negative pressure to contribute at the workplace
• The campaign offers an opportunity to inform and educate employees about important services provided by the charitable organizations that participate

Bring America's Charities to Your Workplace

The new truth of corporate philanthropy and workplace giving is that while total dollars raised is an important indicator of campaign performance, other gauges are also important. Percentage of employee participation, for example, is a good determining factor of employee satisfaction with the campaign.

America’s Charities has noted some markers of vibrant, healthy workplace giving campaigns:

• The campaign is integrated with the company’s employee involvement program;
• The campaign is branded to fit the company’s unique culture and includes organizations that are relevant to employees and their charitable and volunteer interests;
• The campaign provides opportunities for employee involvement and team building;
• The campaign promotes loyalty and goodwill between the company and its employees.

These are the “best practices” that serve as the starting point when America’s Charities helps an employer set up workplace giving campaign. To America’s Charities the campaign is not merely a hit and run effort to raise money.

The campaign should be fused with the corporate culture at the most basic level, and should be aimed at creating a deepening level of involvement between the donor and the charity. With this level of buy-in, by management and by employees, the campaign is virtually guaranteed to be successful. And by helping employers create and operate successful campaigns, America’s Charities members can be virtually guaranteed of the resources they need to carry out their very important missions.

Bring America's Charities to Your Workplace