If you follow this blog, or if you've attended the Independent Charities of America "Workplace 101" seminar, you know that more and more major companies are adopting the "non-federation/donor-choice/pay-direct/3rd party administrator" model for their employee workplace fund drives. With this approach individual employees are empowered to select virtually any charity, church, or school to receive their payroll contributions. Employee choice is not limited to the member charities of charitable federations (e.g. United Way or Independent Charities of America), and federations do not control access to the fund drive. The "charities list," if there even is one, is generally a compilation of all the organizations employees have donated to in the past. (Another method often used is to augment the employees' list with membership lists uploaded by federations. For example, these lists are provided by Independent Charities of America and Local Independent Charities of America to Union Bank of California and other companies). The employee gifts are sent directly to the designated organizations; that is, they are not distributed via the charitable federation the organization may belong to. The company contracts with an independent 3rd party to confirm the recipient organizations' charitable status and to transmit the gift funds.
The Kaiser Permanente (Northern California) has used this model for two years now. Yesterday Kaiser's campaign manager shared this bit of information with us: Only eight days into this year's campaign and already 812 different nonprofit organizations have been selected by Kaiser employee-givers. The majority of those are local schools and churches. This selection spread is typical -- when you give employees freedom of choice in giving they will use it -- and it illustrates why it is so important for charities to remind their constituents and previous givers in the fall that the charities are available to receive gifts from employee at-work charitable fund drives. Proactive PR is far more productive in raising money from this pool of funds than any other technique. Letters, post cards, newsletters, etc. should include this message.
That proactive PR should also include asking contributors from all fund raising venues to reveal where they work and how to reach them by (personal) email. Early contact to achieve "top of mind" status is essential when employee givers have virtually unlimited choices. It can also increase employer matching gifts. Kaiser, for example, matches its employees' gifts up to $100 for the first 2,000 employee-givers. Other companies, like Hewlitt-Packard, have similar policies.
