The benefits of corporate philanthropy are well documented, helping businesses improve employee engagement, attract top talent, and increase sales – but workplace giving also time-consuming. Researching and vetting charities, administering matching gift programs, tracking activity, and calculating impact can take up a significant portion of your staff’s time.
Even businesses with a dedicated philanthropy team often find themselves struggling to find time for innovative new projects while completing the administrative tasks necessary for their giving program.
The good news is that many time-consuming processes are now easy to simplify or automate with the right software. This article will explore three major ways in which workplace giving software saves time for medium and large businesses that may be bogged down by manual administrative tasks.
How Workplace Giving Saves Time for Businesses
Workplace Giving Software Eliminates Charity Research and Vetting Time
Some organizations that accept donations don’t have tax-exempt status. Contributions made to those entities may not fit the legal requirements for corporate philanthropy at medium and large corporations.
Usually, this means your giving program administrator needs to manually review charities on a case-by-case basis. As employees make donations and request matching gifts, the amount of research and vetting work increases. The entire process can quickly eat up time and resources at large organizations, potentially taking weeks or months to confirm the legal status of just one charity.
A corporate giving platform alleviates the burden on administrators by vetting charities in advance. All approved 501c3 charities are included in a database that both employees and administrators can access. The charity database can then decrease the time and money you spend on research, vetting, and on tax and legal issues, since there’s no question whether donations are going to tax-exempt charities or not.
Workplace Giving Software Automates Manual and Repetitive Tasks
CSR operations become complex quickly, especially at large businesses with robust programs including volunteering, student loan repayment, employee matching gift programs, and more. This can mean more giving campaigns, more effort made to engage and involve employees, and more PR and reporting work that helps turn CR into positive publicity.
The more time your team spends on manual, repetitive administrative tasks, the less time they have to work directly with your employees, product team, and customers to improve the ROI of workplace giving initiatives.
However, when companies automate processes, 73% of employees report saving time on repetitive tasks.¹ Workplace giving software includes automation tools to help. For example, top corporate philanthropy platforms provide automated matching gift tools, activity tracking, and reporting. For medium and large businesses with complex giving programs, that can free up a significant amount of time for initiatives that move the needle.
Workplace Giving Software Reduces Time Spent Managing Grants
Managing multiple grants as a large- or mid-sized business is challenging. You need to consider mandate and compliance for each submission while mapping grant requests and donations back to your business goals.
Without the right corporate responsibility software, employees typically rely on a mix of spreadsheets, online calendars, and workflow management tools to manage the grant submission and approval processes. The result is an inefficient process that slows and complicates donations, taking up valuable staff time and company resources.
Workplace giving software can simplify the entire process and save time by grouping multiple grants to a single organization into one easily manageable grant. Many platforms also have automatic grant activity tracking and reporting so staff can easily see the organizations your business is supporting and how much emphasis you’re placing on each.
Workplace Giving Software Should Streamline Administration While Increasing Program Participation
Workplace giving software is designed to serve your administrative staff, but it’s also meant to provide employee- and market-centric tools that improve your results. While streamlining your processes, workplace giving software will also:
- Make it easy to offer employees multi-tiered giving options to personalize giving options and increase participation.
- Help calculate your business’s total philanthropic impact so you can project your corporate responsibility activities into the market to improve brand awareness and sales.
- Generate automatic reports for key stakeholders, including upper management, board members, and investors.
Look for a platform that’s custom-designed to fit your corporate responsibility activities and places equal emphasis on backend functionality and engagement with employees and customers. Platforms that benefit companies in both areas are the most likely to positively impact ROI and business performance.
¹ http://www.csrwire.com/blog/posts/1843-manual-vs-automation-what-s-right-for-your-corporate-philanthropy-initiatives
