Making Corporate Giving Core to Your Team

Everyone agrees that corporate philanthropy is a wonderful thing.  When companies donate to charity their employees feel good about it, management feels good and the company’s positive action enhances its brand. People associate good things with that company.

Yet, if corporate giving is such an obvious feel-good, why isn’t every company doing it on a regular basis?  One reason: too many companies see CSR as an ‘extra’ and not as part of their ‘core’ business.

The Problem with ‘Extra’

Even with incredibly helpful platforms such as Selflessly which make corporate CSR easy to manage and engage every employee, too many companies see donations to charity as an ‘extra’ — extra work, extra deliverables, extra money that needs to be found.  These days, people are so overwhelmed with tasks related to their ‘core’ jobs that they struggle to find time to for things like CSR. With the Selflessly software, it only takes 30 minutes of admin time per week to engage employees, yet some teams can’t even seem to find that block of time.  It’s not that these people and the companies they work for don’t want to help (of course they do!), but sometimes everything that isn’t ‘core’ has to take a back seat.  This leads to some companies only engaging with charities once a year (a.k.a. the ‘holiday donation’) or not at all.

The solution: make CSR part of your company’s ‘core’ business.

How to make CSR a ‘core’

By making corporate giving a ‘core’ companies can help two birds with one seed (I’m rephrasing the common expression to be more positive).  When CSR is entrenched in a company’s everyday tasks it is no longer an add-on, but instead can be a part of how a company drives sales and ROI, encourages customer and employee loyalty, supports recruiting and ensures engagement.  When CSR is a ‘core’ it takes all the things that a company does to be successful and makes them better while supporting charities at the same time.  But how can this work?  Start by looking at the things your company does every day and how you can infuse these with CSR.

One example:  customer and employee rewards.

Make corporate giving core to your rewards programs

Companies reward their customers and employees for things like referrals, completing a training, participating in a survey, making a purchase, etc.  These rewards are vital to customer loyalty, employer branding and, ultimately, driving growth.  Companies reward people in different ways- awarding points, offering discounts and giving free upgrades are a few.  But what if, instead of these rewards, a company would make a charity donation on someone’s behalf?

e.g.

‘Thanks for recommending us.  To show our appreciation we’ve donated $5 to a charity on your behalf.’

Doing this would make the recipient feel good that their action / their engagement triggered a charitable donation.  Will they be inclined to engage again?  Yes.  Will they feel extra good about the company making this donation on their behalf?  Yes. Will this type of reward stand-out from all the other same-same ‘me first’ rewards programs?  Absolutely.

Now let’s take this to the next level and imagine that a company sends a fun and entertaining personalized video to the customer or employee telling them about the charity donation on their behalf.

‘Thanks Peter* for completing our Compliance* training.  To show our appreciation we’ve donated $5* to charity X* on your behalf.’  (* all these things are personalized in the video)

This is standing out.  This is making a positive impact. This is kudoos Corporate Rewards.  kudoos is one of Selflessly’s featured partners. Together our teams are excited to increase ways for employees, customers and teams can create good works in the world and increase giving back.

Here’s a short overview: