Workplace Giving: Planning For Year-Round Success
Building a successful workplace giving program is a multifactored, multi-layered, multi-departmental task and requires some of that multi-skilling magic as well. The benefits of achieving a high level of engagement can be seen (and measured!) by the sense of community you foster and the collective impact you create. Bringing together the workforce by organising team activities reinforces the giving culture at the heart of a corporate giving program and provides the opportunity for employees to make a difference. Finding what resonates with your people, when and how often as well as what’s feasible for you and your team to deliver is a constant tension point for the workplace giving community. To help you plan for a successful year ahead, here are our top tips for creating a calendar of activity to boost engagement in your workplace giving program.
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Here's 6 Tips To Boost Engagement In Your Giving Program
Tip #1: Leverage your company wide meetings
These are great opportunities to include a spotlight on your workplace giving program – ask one of your charity partners to speak to the whole company on the impact of their donations to delivering the charity’s work. Or highlight the company wide achievements through communication of the goals reached as part of the program e.g. employee donations, matched giving, time (pro bono and/or unskilled) hours, etc.
Tip #2: Plot in your charity campaigns
Charities have regular fundraising campaigns which are activated in the public domain. Tap into these external messages and get your workforce on board to walk/run/shave/bake in support of the good cause. Here’s the list of the Best Workplace Fundraising Campaigns for the workplace, provided by our Charity Partners.
Tip #3: Put workplace giving success on the business agenda
Most businesses have an EOFY announcement; is your workplace giving program a part of this? Celebrating your program’s success through these communications can shine a light on both the engagement of your people and the impact on the charity or social issue being addressed as part of your business’s commitment to the S in ESG.
Tip #4: Lean into Workplace Giving Month
June is the time of year when we encourage workplace giving to come out from behind the curtain to showcase the successes of and the stars behind the program. It’s also a great time to use up any of that leftover budget and activate a matched giving incentive to sign up or increase giving for doubling, tripling, quadrupling funds raised and/or donated.
Tip #5: Engage your key stakeholders – internal and external – regularly!
Executive sponsorship demonstrates the all-of-business commitment to achieving the goals of the workplace giving program. A way to see this in action is to include the goals at departmental level, and for the KPIs to be discussed in the monthly/quarterly operational meetings. Ensuring the program is included in regular departmental meetings to drive awareness and engagement.
Beyond the induction training for new staff, to fully engage your employees we recommend scheduling activities that create the connection between donors (your people) and charities you are collectively supporting. For example: lunch and learn sessions throughout the year, hosting the annual community expo or marketplace, etc.
Embrace your Charity partners to be an active part of your workplace giving program. Where the passion of your people is aligned with the impact areas of the business, the coming together of three-party partnership is truly greater than the sum of the individual parts.
Communicating all of this in a variety of channels – internal messaging in person and on line, external social posts, updates in company news articles, etc. will ensure you are reaching the widest audience possible.
Tip #6: Weave in all types of engagement activities
At Workplace Giving Australia, we advocate for an holistic approach to programs. Not everyone wants to just give money; some people like to roll their sleeves up and give their time. Others will thrive on the competition element of a physical challenge with fundraising for a cause at the end of the finish line (see tip #2 for some great fundraising campaigns to consider). And if you don’t know what your workforce want, just ask! A survey to sense check ideas is a great way to seek confirmation and draw our champions who can support the activity.
