Hi All,
I've just been asked by our MD what the best approach is to making a charitable donation to an employee.
An employee of ours is going to be sleeping rough for the night in our city centre to raise awareness for YMCA. She is currently just above halfway to her target of £500 and it seems as though she might be struggling to reach it. Our MD wants to help her and support/encourage our employees to go out and be passionate. However his main concern is whether this will set a precedent for the rest of our workforce. With that, it will naturally mean an increase in cost if all employees then want to start raising money for charity.
Where do we then draw the line- 'We will give, but only XX amount' 'We will match what other employees give but only if it's under XX amount'
Does anyone else do anything similar to this? How have you communicated it to employees, has the take up been high?
Any advice would be greatly appreciated- Thanks!!
Lauren
Replies
Great post aside from all the advice below it may well be worth speaking with your Accountant too as there can be some tax efficient ways for companies to make charitable donations.
Kind regards
Sarah
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My company likes to do what they can to help raise money for a local home away from home in Bristol for families with sick children. What they have done for the last couple of years is do a golden hour where every employee is encouraged to donate 1 hour of their hourly pay rate. They understand people don't have a lot free cash so by doing this people can do their little bit. This includes everyone from the senior manager down to the part time employees. No one is forced to do this but everyone so far has always got involved.
Kind Regards,
Jill
Hi Lauren, I think it's great that your organisation is so keen to encourage its employees' charitable endeavours! I do not have much experience here (we have always supported employee fundraising on an ad-hoc basis, and there aren't many requests anyway) so I can only offer a basic opinion.
If you're looking to actively encourage members of staff to fundraise then I would suggest a blanket approach would be best, so everyone knows what they can expect/ask for and no one will feel put out that another's efforts were more richly rewarded by the company.
For sponsored activities how about saying that the company will give you 10% of whatever you raise? If you're worried this might get out of hand then you could set a cap at whatever amount you felt reasonable (£100?). For non-sponsored events, like a quiz night for example, when employees might be looking for a contribution to cover costs, buy raffle prizes etc. you could offer a set amount- £20 or £50 perhaps.
Or, perhaps set aside an amount of money the company can afford per year/quarter to support employee fundraising and do it on a first come first served basis, giving out a set amount to each request in that period.
I hope this might have been of some help. Good luck!
Chrissy