The Evolving Face of Workplace Giving

Workplace giving is an important part of philanthropy in North America, as it has been for a long time. It has been, and continues to be, driven by deductions automatically taken from an employee’s payroll. This makes it possible for people to give a greater amount via monthly deductions, and it also makes the giving process simpler for those employers with such a program.

There is a certain amount of administrative overhead required for a company to set up and provide a workplace giving program. As a result, these programs typically have been found in the realm of midsized and larger companies.

The Internet in general has brought more capability to more people at incredibly low costs and barriers to entry. This dynamic is finding its way into workplace giving and opening this area up to new employers and employees.

Small- and midsized-business owners who haven’t traditionally been involved with workplace giving campaigns via groups like the United Way and others are now able to easily create customized online donation pages for the local causes of their choice and enable their employees to make online donations using credit cards rather than payroll deductions. Donations also can be one-time gifts or recurring monthly donations.

Even within larger organizations where there already may be payroll deduction programs, credit card donation programs like this help open up new donation opportunities by involving Gen Y employees or others who may not embrace payroll deductions.

A powerful aspect of online giving programs like these is that the CEO (or other passionate employee) can set these types of programs up in a matter of minutes and circulate the giving pages to fellow employees or vendors. This is a scalable approach to getting more local companies involved with employee giving programs than would have been possible under the payroll-deduction scenario.

Larry Sullivan, VP of product and marketing at Truist, a company that enables nonprofit workplace giving programs, recognizes the opportunity to extend workplace giving to new organizations and employees. Sullivan says, “Truist’s NPO partners are looking for ways to engage more businesses as workforce philanthropy partners. Online fundraising pages offer an efficient method to conduct these programs with added speed and ease of implementation. The end result is increased involvement by employees and employers alike.”

Web-based credit card giving programs not only help smaller businesses get involved with workplace giving, but they also make engaging other groups within the community quick and easy. For example, a local United Way could use online fundraising pages to engage student leaders at local universities to raise funds on campus from friends and classmates or teammates.

Online fundraising pages also enable any local nonprofit to engage local businesses by creating special pages for each local business partner that are used to collect online donations from their employees or vendors.

This doesn’t mean that payroll deduction is going away — it certainly isn’t (at least in the near future) — but it does use the Internet to provide a low-cost and highly scalable approach for United Way and other organizations to include more employers and their employees in giving. Local organizations and employers alike should actively investigate and experiment with the expanded workplace giving options enabled by online fundraising pages.

Mark Sutton is president of Artez Interactive US. Reach him via Twitter at @marksutton.