There’s an old Irish joke about a hopelessly lost tourist. He asks a man by the side of the road, ‘Can you tell me how to get to Dublin?’. After a few minutes thinking, the old man replies, ‘well you don’t want to start from here’.
It feels like the same situation for anyone wanting to build a strong partnerships program from the start point of workplace giving. It’s a worthy ambition but not a great place to start. It’s like deciding to dominate global banking and getting started by buying Bendigo Bank.
There are undoubted benefits from workplace giving programs, but it’s best to weigh up the pros and cons before you embark on the journey.
The pros
Predictable partnership income that behaves like regular giving is the holy grail of fundraising. It’s generally untied and can be almost set and forget for years to come. Monthly payroll deductions from loyal supporters can also be augmented by matched giving from the employers, providing a much needed ‘two for one’ impact.
Workplace giving can be a valuable addition to an existing corporate partnership. It allows employers to mobilise the contributions of their staff and get them engaged more deeply in the relationship. It also augments the impact of their company giving with employee money. The non-profit gets more value from the relationship and makes it harder for the corporate to flip them for another partner the following year.
Workplace giving provides non-profits with an expanded donor base which can be leveraged for one-off campaigns or appeals. This is especially useful for emergency appeals or disaster relief when widespread media coverage can motivate people into action.
The cons
Like the old Irish joke, workplace giving is not the best place to get started. It’s most valuable as an additional way to extend a relationship, not the start point or a standalone strategy.
Australians have come to expect a large company to have a workplace giving program, but according to Workplace Giving Australia only 2.2% of companies offer one. The participation rate within companies can vary, but it’s often in single digits. We know of one major bank who launched a yearlong campaign to increase workplace giving participation and still only got rates up from 2% to 4%. Employees are giving, but often it’s not through the workplace.
A bumpy economic climate, frequent job changes and the Great Resignation post-COVID have led to more staff turnover everywhere. Employees can be reluctant to be tied into a workplace giving program because they expect to move on or are working on casual contracts. Look at the contact emails on LinkedIn and you’ll see everyone is using their personal addresses, not work ones. Frequent job changes are typically a break point for employee giving and it’s impossible for non-profits to control.
Yes, you can grow your donor database from workplace giving- but it’s not a straightforward relationship. Depending on the system they use, companies can aggregate the donations and give you one lump sum monthly or they can pass through the donations without employee details. Developing a meaningful relationship with those donors can be near impossible if you have to rely on HR or an individual champion to pass on your communications. If you don’t know who your donors are or the company doesn’t let you reach them, the only thing you can do is bank the donation and hope they keep giving.
The most frustrating situation is to have one or two givers in each corporate, spread across many different organisations. It adds to your reporting burden and gives you no platform for extending the relationship with the employer. The admin costs can outweigh the value of the annual contribution. Many corporates have transitioned to ‘open programs’ meaning that staff can give to whichever cause they like, not just the corporate’s preferred list of community partners. It may lead to slimmer pickings for your non-profit as employee giving is spread more widely.
It takes time, effort and resources to sustain workplace giving. You can access helpful systems like Good2Give, but you need solid administration in your operations team to keep it running smoothly. You’ll also need to provide reporting to your main corporate contact, so they can add it to their impact reports. We heard of one corporate asking a non-profit to provide bespoke corporate impact reports for the contributions of their staff- all 8 of them. Given that the average donation per person is between $100 and $850 p.a. I’m not sure what contribution to curing cancer that organisation achieved.
The most successful program we’ve encountered in Australia yielded over $2mln p.a. in income for the non-profit. The secret to their success? They’ve been doing it for 20 years and they have a team of 9 people working on it. More importantly, they have deep relationships with highly profitable mining and extractive companies at a time when other non-profits are shying away from fossil fuels. The workplace giving program is just another expression of the entrenched relationships with those partners, who are able to encourage the majority of their employees to contribute, rather than a token percentage. They started with building the partnership, not workplace giving.
Workplace giving is undoubtedly a useful tool in your armoury to extract more value from a corporate partnership and extend the relationship. If you can administer it with minimal effort through an established system, then go ahead and harvest the ‘set and forget’ nature of the additional giving. But if you expect it to be the catalyst for million dollar partnerships or an entire corporate partnership program, then it’s not the best place to start.