Starting a Corporate Giving Challenge: 4 Steps to Follow

by Chris Hammond, CEO, CGC

Today, consumers expect businesses of all sizes to engage in corporate social responsibility (CSR), whether that means instituting more sustainable business practices or reinvesting in the communities they operate in. For smaller companies and those with brand-new CSR programs, though, the responsibility can feel overwhelming.

If your CSR initiatives are struggling to gain traction, launching a corporate giving challenge can energize your program and incentivize more employees to get involved. Challenge your team to step up their generosity with a timed, unified giving campaign by following these steps.

1. Get insight from your employees and your data.

Uncommon Giving’s CSR strategy guide emphasizes the importance of collecting employee input early in your planning process. After all, if you want employees to participate in your giving challenge, you have to make it relevant to their interests and exciting enough to warrant their time.

Gather employee insight by sending out a teamwide survey. Ask about their current charitable priorities, what causes they’re aligned with, and how they might like to be involved in a company-wide challenge. Then, analyze any data from your existing giving programs. Use your CSR software to identify:

Popular cause areas
Organizations that multiple employees contribute to
Common giving methods
Giving and volunteering programs with the highest participation rates
Causes or organizations that saw recent spikes in employee donations
Your most active participants

Combine this data with the qualitative insights you get directly from employees to make informed decisions about your corporate giving challenge. If you need more firsthand information, interview the top participants in your existing workplace giving programs. They can share additional details about their interests, experiences, and suggestions for a giving challenge that employees will enjoy.

2. Choose a cause or organization that resonates.

Based on your data, list several specific causes and nonprofit organizations that employees are passionate about.

Make sure that any potential focus for your challenge aligns with your company values and overall CSR program guidelines. If you need to narrow down your options further, consider the current charitable landscape. Is there a cause that’s particularly important to support right now? What about an organization with urgent funding needs?

Your corporate giving challenge can support any cause or nonprofit that makes sense for you. For example, you might choose:

Disaster relief if there’s been a recent natural disaster and employees want to help those affected.
Community building if employees value local advocacy and have a variety of nearby organizations they support.
A local animal shelter if your company is a dog daycare business and you know employees are pet-lovers.
Habitat for Humanity if employees are passionate about affordable housing and enjoy team volunteering opportunities.

Or, if you want to keep employees’ options open, you could instead center your challenge around a theme or holiday, like Giving Tuesday. This way, employees could donate to any 501(c)(3) they like, and your goal would just be to inspire generosity and challenge employees to give back on their own terms.

If you do choose a specific organization, reach out to them directly to see what their immediate needs are. Ask if they’re interested in a specific type of partnership or would appreciate donations in any form.

3. Determine what the challenge will look like.

Your corporate giving challenge can take many forms. For example, 360MatchPro suggests partnering with a nonprofit for a matching donation challenge, and you could even increase your impact by matching employees’ gifts at a special 2:1 or 3:1 ratio. Or, you might encourage employees to become peer-to-peer fundraisers and reward those who raise the most money. You could also keep it simple and challenge your whole team to donate a certain amount for the cause.

However it works, set clear guidelines for participation. Specifically, you’ll need to determine:

Rules and timeline for the challenge: For instance, all full- and part-time employees can participate during the month of May. Donations and match requests must be submitted by midnight on May 31.
What type of contributions are eligible: Will employee contributions and company matches count toward the goal? What about volunteer grants? Can employees give stock or crypto donations?
How you’ll track progress: Your corporate giving software should make it easy to track donations, participation rates, and impact data in real time.
Prizes: Consider giving prizes for individual winners or for everyone if your whole company raises enough to meet its fundraising goal.

Outline all of these guidelines in an accessible document that you can share with the team. To make participation easier, consider adding an FAQ to the end of the document that clears up potential points of confusion.

4. Launch your challenge and energize employees.

Once you’ve made all the major decisions, created documentation, and set up your system to track giving challenge data, it’s time for launch!

Schedule a company-wide kickoff call to announce the challenge and explain the reasons you’re prioritizing corporate giving. Then, send out an email with your guidelines document and any other essential information about the challenge. Encourage team members to start participating now and reach out to their managers with any questions. You might also appoint a few program ambassadors to support the general employee base.

Plan several ways to engage employees post-launch. For instance, you might assign one person on your team to share weekly or daily challenge updates with everyone. Celebrate the team’s progress publicly, and recognize major milestones and teams with the most participation. Remind them about the prizes and the upcoming deadline, too!

With the right components, a corporate giving challenge can change the trajectory of your company’s CSR program. By adding a competitive element and getting the whole team involved, you’ll give employees a taste of the impact they can make through workplace giving all year long.