Companies Make a Big Push to Get Employees to Donate and Volunteer

The nation’s top companies are making a concerted effort to encourage workers to give time and money to charity, according to a survey conducted by the Consulting Network, a management-consulting company in Vienna, Va.

The survey, which was commissioned by Charities@Work, a coalition of federations that raise money for non-profit groups, examined volunteering, on-the-job campaigns, and matching-gift programs at 91 of the nation’s 250 biggest businesses as ranked by Fortune magazine.

Of the businesses surveyed, 96 per cent run charity drives to which employees can contribute, 80 per cent offer to match the gifts that workers make to non-profit groups, and 72 per cent have programs that help employees find opportunities to volunteer.

Among the survey’s findings:

Volunteer programs. Of the companies that have formal volunteer programs, 74 per cent offer cash grants to organizations where employees volunteer, and 52 per cent give in-kind donations to those groups.

More than half of the businesses allow workers to volunteer on company time. Ninety-five per cent of companies encourage employees to volunteer in groups, and 70 per cent allow employees to take a day off with pay to join in a group volunteer project, usually organized by the company or by a local United Way.

Group projects supported by the companies include mentor programs (69 per cent), Habitat for Humanity projects (62 per cent), environmental-cleanup campaigns (61 per cent), and Christmas in April neighborhood-renovation projects (39 per cent).

Matching-gift programs. In more than a third of the companies, all employees are eligible to have at least some of the donations they make to charity matched by their employers. Seventy-six per cent of the businesses match donations by the corporation’s board members, and 62 per cent include retired workers.

Education continues to dominate the causes that companies support through matching gifts. Sixty-seven per cent of the companies are willing to match donations to colleges or schools.

Gifts to other causes are matched by a smaller percentage of companies: Money to arts and other cultural organizations is matched by 40 per cent of businesses, health and human services by 20 per cent, and civic and community groups by 14 per cent.

The minimum gift that companies will match ranges from $10 to $1,500. The maximum gift ranges from $250 to $25,000.

On-the-job drives. Only 1 per cent of the companies that run on-the-job drives do not include United Ways. Thirty per cent include organizations other than United Ways, and of those, 28 per cent include environmental federations, 28 per cent health organizations, 24 per cent arts and cultural groups, 12 per cent international institutions, 12 per cent local social-action charities, and 8 per cent women’s federations.

At 37 per cent of the companies, organizations are chosen to participate in the campaign because of employee recommendations. Groups are also chosen because they fit in with the company’s corporate values (26 per cent) or because they approached the company and asked to be included in the campaign (16 per cent).

Technological changes have not yet made a big difference to most employee drives.

Sixty-six per cent of companies still tally employee pledge cards by hand. Twenty-six per cent use scanning technologies, and 3 per cent use interactive-voice response.

Employees learn about the campaign through a variety of means: written information (in 96 per cent of companies), face-to-face meetings (84 per cent), campaign videos (76 per cent), agency presentations (74 per cent), and on-line communications (62 per cent).

For a copy of “Valuing Employee Involvement,” contact the Consulting Network, 8608 McHenry Street, Suite 1000, Vienna, Va. 22180; phone (703) 641-0533; fax (703) 641-0534; e-mail tcncoy@msn.com. Each copy costs $100.