Including charitable giving options in benefit packages is an important feature workers look for in today’s tight labor market. Increasingly, employees prefer employers with a positive company culture and a proven track record of impacting their local community. In fact, 71% of employees say it is “imperative or very important” to work at a company where the culture actively supports giving and volunteering.
A robust workplace giving program is an essential component of creating a company culture that attracts high performers, builds camaraderie, and strengthens your organization’s community ties. But building a lasting workplace giving program doesn’t just happen overnight. It requires the right tools and effectively educating employees about their workplace-giving opportunities in ways that move the needle on employee engagement.
What is Workplace Giving?
Workplace giving is a philanthropic initiative that encourages employees to donate to charitable organizations, often with options for payroll deductions or credit card payments.
Think of workplace giving as a core employee benefit, like a 401k or health insurance. Employees benefit from the ease of automated donations to nonprofits, including donations to organizations they already support. It’s a sustainable and manageable way for employees to contribute to causes they care about.
Company matching campaigns also incentivize employees to increase their donations or support a broader range of causes. It’s a win-win: Employees appreciate the fact that their contributions go further, and your company culture benefits from a stronger sense of community and shared purpose.
What Is the Importance of Workplace Giving for Companies?
Workplace giving programs provide an opportunity to build camaraderie around a cause or charity, especially those tied to your organization’s industry. For example, a large healthcare provider may choose to support nonprofits that fund research for serious health conditions. A comprehensive and well-publicized campaign can create a feel-good moment that brings people together.
However, open campaigns—which allow employees to support any nonprofit or cause they choose—are also important for building community in organizations with diverse workforces. Open matching programs can boost participation and promote an inclusive culture that values every employee's charitable contributions.
Giving programs primarily serve to bolster company culture and employee engagement, but these aren’t the only benefits. They also telegraph the organization’s commitment to social responsibility to customers, job seekers, and community stakeholders. And as your internal culture grows, so does your external reputation.
Essential Elements of a Successful Workplace Giving Program
A successful workplace giving program hinges on several key elements that ensure its effectiveness and sustainability. These components can help you create programs that foster a culture of giving and community involvement at your organization:
Adopt a User-Friendly Platform
A platform that’s accessible and easy to navigate will help boost employee engagement in your giving initiatives. One of the big perks of a giving program is the ease of payroll deductions, so you want to make sure your software doesn't add unnecessary complications. Additionally, choose a platform that ensures the security of payment transactions to protect employees and maintain their trust in the giving process.
Your solution should also make life easier for your corporate social responsibility (CSR) team. FrontStream’s workplace giving platform supports flexible campaign tools and maintains a secure environment for donations. This reduces the time needed to launch campaigns and report results so you can stay focused on engagement and celebration.
💡 Don’t forget to provide clear instructions on how to access and use your giving platform—and recirculate them often—so employees feel motivated to participate.
Prioritize Marketing Efforts
At FrontStream, we’ve noticed a direct correlation between marketing efforts—like emails, intranet blasts, and other organizational notifications—and increased employee participation in giving campaigns. Regular communication that highlights your program's goals, benefits, and successes can significantly boost engagement levels.
If you’re not sure where to start, your technology partner should be able to point you in the right direction. For example, FrontStream provides marketing assistance and guidance so you can effectively communicate the impact and benefits of your workplace giving program, ensuring high engagement rates and maximizing philanthropic efforts.
Identify Program Champions
Identify local coordinators or “champions” of your giving initiatives to boost employee participation and donations. These advocates are instrumental in driving the program, especially at large organizations with siloed departments or disparate office locations. Champions can help personalize the giving experience by sharing their passions and encouraging peers to contribute.
But remember, there’s a fine line between pressuring employees to participate and celebrating the program. Finding the right balance in promoting the program is key. Champions play a vital role in aligning the program with your company's culture and values.
What Are the Types of Workplace Giving Programs to Consider?
Workplace giving offers a unique opportunity for your organization to make a lasting impact on the causes you and your employees care about. From payroll deduction programs to workplace giving events, there are several avenues you can leverage to meet your giving objectives:
Payroll Deduction Programs
Payroll deduction programs offer employees a seamless way to contribute to their chosen causes directly from their paychecks. These programs come in two primary formats: traditional and evergreen.
In a traditional campaign, employees elect a payroll deduction during the benefits enrollment period, with allocations occurring in the subsequent calendar year. This convenient and structured approach encourages consistent giving.
Evergreen campaigns enable employees to adjust their contributions at any time throughout the year—whether they want to initiate, modify, or cancel their payroll deductions. This model provides versatility for employees to support their favorite charities depending on their unique financial situation and philanthropic preferences. For example, if an employee has a friend doing a run or walkathon fundraiser for the American Cancer Society, they can set up a payroll deduction during the month the event takes place and take advantage of matching dollars if your company has an open matching campaign.
Matching Gift Programs
Matching gift programs amplify the impact of individual donations by matching contributions made by employees, often up to a predetermined amount. These programs can be tied to a payroll deduction program in which matching is available for all causes and charities. Or they can be completely separate and tied to specific charities that align with your organizational values. For example, your company might only elect to match gifts made to educational organizations.
The flexibility of matching gift programs helps you cater to the diverse interests of your workforce and encourages broader participation by ensuring employees that their donations will be effectively doubled.
Volunteer Grant Programs
Volunteer grant programs recognize and reward your employees’ volunteer efforts with financial contributions to the charities they serve. For example, you could run a “dollars for doers” program in which employees log the time they spend volunteering outside of work in their giving portal. For each hour of volunteer work, your company makes a small donation to the nonprofit the employee has chosen to support. This incentivizes employees to engage more deeply with their chosen causes.
However, you may discover that you can make a bigger impact by organizing group volunteer efforts. Typically, companies announce their intention to provide a high-value grant to a community organization, but only if a certain number of employees participate in a volunteer day. You can tap into your corporate social responsibility champions to help promote the volunteer event and create buy-in from other employees.
Though grant and matching programs often help incentivize volunteerism, they’re not essential. Even if financial contributions aren’t an option, you can still track and celebrate the time your employees spend volunteering through your workplace giving platform.
Many companies choose to highlight employees’ community impact in their sustainability reports. Regardless, celebrating employees’ volunteer efforts in company-wide newsletters or meetings signals a strong appreciation for their contributions, reinforcing a culture of giving back at the local level.
Workplace Giving Events
Workplace giving events are one-off campaigns that typically occur in response to immediate needs like natural disasters, health crises, or urgent social issues that require support and resources. For example, you may decide to launch a donation campaign for organizations helping people displaced by a hurricane.
On the other hand, maybe you have an employee who is experiencing a health crisis. In this scenario, you can invite people to contribute to your company’s employee relief fund to support their coworker in need. However, it's essential to approach these programs with sensitivity to avoid donor fatigue, which can occur if you solicit employee contributions too frequently.
Additionally, your organization might choose to support specific causes that align with your corporate values or the interests of your employees. For instance, a company deeply engaged in the fight against Alzheimer's may launch targeted campaigns at strategic times of year to support Alzheimer’s research, rallying the workforce around a shared mission.
What Are the Best Practices for Successful Workplace Giving?
Regularly celebrating employee participation and your program’s impact is key to ensuring your organization achieves its workplace giving goals. To maximize program engagement and success, consider the following best practices:
Engage and Involve Leadership
A successful program starts from the top down. To secure employee buy-in, leadership should get involved. When executives support and participate in giving initiatives, it sends a strong message to employees and reinforces a culture of philanthropy. However, it's important to emphasize that participation in these giving programs is voluntary so employees understand that their involvement is valued, but not mandatory.
Provide Training and Resources for Employees
Programs sometimes struggle with participation because employees either forget about the program or don’t know if they’re eligible to participate. So, it’s important to equip employees with the necessary training and resources to engage effectively. Communicate early and often about available programs as well as employees’ options for maximizing contributions and instructions for accessing your online giving portal.
Recognize Employee Engagement and Celebrate Your Program's Impact
Acknowledge employees’ efforts and program impact through awards, events, or public recognition to increase awareness and encourage ongoing participation. Highlight the amount of money raised, the number of causes supported, and the hours volunteered in a company-wide email or meeting. When you publicly share success stories and results, it can inspire others to get involved.
Additionally, little things like posters in a break room or celebratory social events like an ice cream party can go a long way toward improving engagement and participation. For remote or hybrid workplaces where in-person events aren’t an option, raffles provide an opportunity to celebrate the program and boost future engagement.
Celebrating program impact serves as another marketing tool for your program. If you don’t regularly remind employees (either quarterly or monthly), then they’ll forget to take advantage of this benefit.
Explore Workplace Giving Strategies with FrontStream
Ready to enhance your company's philanthropic impact? FrontStream's comprehensive workplace giving solution helps streamline and optimize your charitable initiatives so your organization can make a lasting difference in your community and beyond.
When you work with FrontStream, we become part of your team, providing ongoing assistance to grow your program over time.
To learn more about how FrontStream can help your organization achieve its workplace giving goals, talk to one of our experts today.
