One of the best ways to connect with your employees is to start a Giving Program. Not only does charitable giving have several benefits for businesses of all sizes, but letting your employees drive the program can also help you attract and retain talent.
The data proves the benefits of employee connection and retention, demonstrating that purposeful companies are profitable. Socially investing companies see a 14.1% greater revenue growth on average. Meanwhile, 75% of employees stay longer at companies with corporate Giving Programs they can engage in.
Kickstarting your Giving Program doesn’t need to be complex, you can positively impact your local and global communities with the following steps:
- Define your giving pillars
- Kick off your giving program
- Activate employee engagement
Define Your Giving Pillars
You’ll want to start a corporate giving program by examining your company’s mission. Your Giving Program should help your company realize its core values. Once you’ve clarified the mission and brand strategy around charitable giving, it’s time to set Giving Pillars.
These pillars should be the intersection of what you, your employees, your community, and your customers care about. To better understand your employees’ values you can distribute a survey to discover what causes and charities they care about the most. Knowing what your employees care about will then help you decide which strategic cause areas and charity partners to support.
For example, many companies use the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals as their Giving Pillars. They might establish a committee to prioritize certain development goals and then choose charities furthering those causes to donate to and promote among their employees and community. Givinga’s Philantech® technology can connect your company to millions of already-vetted charities and make charitable giving easy, impactful, and cost-effective.
Kick Off Your Giving Program
Businesses of all sizes can positively impact their communities with a giving campaign. In fact, small businesses donate 250% more than large businesses to local nonprofits and community causes.
One of the most effective ways to kick off your Giving Program, outside of placing direct donations, is to create a private or public campaign to harness your community and collectively raise more funds for the causes and charities important to your team.
With Givinga’s Corporate Giving Activation, we can help you create a Corporate Giving Fund that operates like a charitable foundation—giving you complete ownership and access via our all-in-one admin platform that is simple to implement and easy to manage. Through the platform, your business can easily set up tax-deductible campaigns within minutes, allowing you to;
- Give directly to US-based and internationally-based 501c3 charities
- Give to non-501c3 projects via fiscal sponsorship (such as carbon offsetting projects, scientific research, medical research, etc.)
- Give to an individual (US-based or non-US-based) via Employee Relief Grants and/or Scholarship/Educational Grants
Engaging all your stakeholders for your Giving Program, from employees to consumers to surrounding communities, is important. To do so, you can create public campaigns and share them to boost fundraising for causes and build purpose into your brand identity.
Once a campaign ends, share its impact to create a culture of everyday giving at your company and to inspire more people to give during the next campaign.
Activate Employee Engagement
An employee-driven Giving Program is an excellent way to increase engagement and inclusivity at your company. Employees who feel heard are more likely to participate in Giving Programs and stay at the company, maximizing your organization’s charitable return on impact and improving your ability to attract and retain employees.
Employee giving and matching programs are an excellent strategy that allows employees to decide how much, where, and when to donate. It gives your team the autonomy and control to give back to the causes and charities that matter most to them. Your company will also increase the diversity of the causes you support.
To go a step further, Givinga’s Modern Match philosophy reimagines the traditional 1:1 matching program with more comprehensive matching capabilities, including pre-funded employee accounts and seamless offline matching capabilities. An estimated $4-7 billion in matching gift funds goes unclaimed yearly, and we’re on a mission to unlock those funds. With Givinga, we provide a more holistic means of unlocking your brand’s full generosity. We also have philanthropic experts who will help you identify the engagement tools that best fit your brand and employees so that more money goes to charity.
Set Up an Employee-Driven Giving Program With Givinga
Schedule a demo with Givinga and see how our team and Philantech® technology can help your company set up an employee-driven giving program. Our Client Success Managers are experts are corporate giving and employee engagement.
If you’re a company who wants to give, but isn’t ready to engage employees, we can help with that too. Our technology is designed to meet you where you’re at and customize at scale: schedule a demo to learn more.
Or fill out our form below to download our Employee Cause Survey Guide to start setting Giving Pillars with your team.
