Employees
Workplace Giving is an effective way for employees to make regular donations to causes they are passionate about. As an employee, you can decide to donate a set amount each week, which comes out of your pre-tax pay. It’s a win-win: you pay less tax and your chosen charity gets much needed funds.
Employers
Workplace Giving is also great for employers. It can demonstrate your commitment to giving back – helping to build your culture, strengthen employee engagement, enhance your brand and have a meaningful impact in your local community. Workplace Giving isn’t just for large employers with complicated payroll systems. There are free resources, consulting advice and online platforms to help you easily set up a Workplace Giving Program.
Getting Started
If you’re new to Workplace Giving, there are things you can do to get started:
- Review the ATO Workplace Giving Guidelines
- Visit Get Involved – Employers – Workplace Giving Australia
- Visit the Benojo website here
Hunter Homeleless Connect Inc. is registered with Benojo. Click here to see our profile. This platform specialises in helping employers develop effective Workplace Giving programs. It manages the administration requirements, reducing the burden on your organisation and helping your staff connect with and support the causes that matter to them.
Tips on how to embed Workplace Giving in your workplace
Once you’ve chosen a Workplace Giving solution that is right for you, it’s then all about getting your staff excited and involved. The following are a few ideas to help get employees to use Workplace Giving – but it star
ts with ensuring they know why you’re starting a workplace giving program and how it fits in with your business. Then:
- Find shared causes to support: Ask staff about what’s important to them and see what matches your company’s priorities. Build engagement by involving staff in choosing the organisations to which they can donate, and deciding how best topromote the program.
- Get senior leaders on board: Encourage senior leaders to lead by example, and to share what they are doing with their teams.
- Give broadly: The more groups that you appeal to, the more likely you are to attract employee donors. Ideally choose ones which reflect your company’s interests and those of your staff – it could be homelessness, drought relief, disaster recovery, cancer research, or preserving cultural heritage.
- Communicate regularly about the workplace giving options: Many workplaces put the system in place and other than just one line in a letter of offer and a page on the intranet, it isn’t mentioned again. So make sure you remind people about it regularly.
- Get personal: While emails, posters and intranet posts are great, they don’t replace a personal request to get involved by a program committee member or a representative from the charity partners.
- Share the impact – employees want to know where and how funds are used: Encourage your staff to do more than just donate money. Encourage them to donate time and skills too. And get them to share and tell their stories.
- Invite employees to give: People won’t sign up if they don’t know it’s there. Ensure that employees actually get the form in their hands and know about the difference Workplace Giving can make. Have a designated contact in each department / team, or on each floor, who can talk about it.
- Say thanks: Everyone likes to be thanked for what they give, so make sure that there are company-wide and personalised communications to say thank you.
Click here to visit us at Benojo.
