Employee Volunteering Incentives

 

We are excited to see companies lean into volunteering as donations will likely drop in 2023 due to increased inflation, and other financial stress from the recession. However, organizations can still create a company culture of giving back and supporting their community with employee volunteering.

Last week we hosted WeHero on a webinar event to help companies design impactful volunteer experiences. We had a few questions about what we have seen companies offer as incentives other than volunteering for time off plans. This blog goes over some of FAQ for planning employee volunteer events + provides a list of ideas to offer as volunteer incentives.

Ideas for Employee Volunteer Incentives

Nomination Grant Programs

A company provides grant funding to nonprofits that employees nominate. These programs often require an application that the employee fills out to specify why a nonprofit should receive grant funding your company has set aside. Many companies require the employee to show they have volunteered with that nonprofit in order to nominate the organization for a grant.

Company Example: Southern Glazer’s Voluncheer of the Year Grant Award – Each month an employee wins the Voluncheer recognition award. At the end of the year, all employees vote from among the group of Voluncheer winners to select who will win a larger grant prize of $5,000 donated to the charity of the winner’s choice.

Individual Volunteer Matching Grants a.k.a ‘Dollars for Doers’

A company rewards employees who volunteer by providing monetary grants to that organization. There is usually a set dollar amount for a minimum number of hours served. Example: A company provides up to $750 grant ($15 per hour) to nonprofits after an employee volunteers for 50 hours in a year.

Team Volunteer Grants

A company provides a monetary donation to a cause when a group of employees volunteer together. Example: A company provides up to $500 for a nonprofit when five or more employees volunteer at least an accumulated 25 hours.

Company Example: Boeing Gift and Volunteer Match Program – in 2018 Boeing Company announced a revamp of their incentives, rewarding those employees’ who give their time and talent to their local communities. This new program included:

• A reduction to 10 hours in the number of volunteer hours needed to obtain the ‘dollars for doers’ company match

• A new team volunteer match program allows groups of employees to request a monetary gift to the organization where they donate their time

These grant programs are another way for companies to incorporate employee choice for where company dollars go to support causes they care about. Checkout our Grant Program Guide to learn more about the benefits of applying human capital and financial capital towards solving social problems. This type of investment is more than making donations to effective charities. We introduce the idea of social investment in this blog.

Special Matching Gift Programs

Special matching gift campaigns can help encourage participation in social impact and employee engagement initiatives. Here are a few ideas:

Offer a total match amount for a campaign. Example: Promote an up to $10,000 donation amount when employees reach a participation rate or total hours for the campaign. This could be in-kind donations or monetary.

Match their volunteer hours with Cause Cards. Cause Cards are like donation gift cards in the CSRconnect platform. Employees can select a charity to receive a small donation from your company. Ideas for Cause Cards:

• Give $10 Cause Card for every employee that volunteers and logs their hours for the first time

• Give $10 Cause Card for every employee that reaches some participation milestone ie. Logs board participation for the first time, first 100 people to complete a survey, joins an employee resource group and participates in an event. There are so many possibilities to connect Cause Cards to other employee engagement initiatives and get employees logging into the platform to make the donation.

Create smaller rewards by department or group. If you don’t have the budget to reward every employee that meets their volunteer hour’s goal or to make a large donation, pool employees that hit goals into a raffle and draw a name for someone to receive a Cause Card.

Create a Designated Day of Service

This is a little different from volunteer for time off in that the employees don’t have to spend time volunteering outside of work hours to earn additional PTO. Designated days of service can enable employees to give back during their work week.

Office-wide: Each location or office chooses a day of service. This day is communicated to employees of that location and can accommodate for employees’ schedules for that location.

Company-wide: A day of service that applies to everyone in the company regardless of location

Rolling: A day of service that employees can choose based on their schedule. Employees work with their manager to signup for a day off to volunteer. This provides the most flexibility for the employee to pick a time that works around their lives.

Company Example: HCA combines a traditional day of service model with skilled volunteerism – ‘IT Community Day’ is a designated volunteering event that HCA organized for their information technology employees to help nonprofits in their local community with special projects. In one business day, 180 volunteers completed 80 projects at 22 nonprofit sites, contributing a $66,960 benefit to the community.

Volunteer Time Off

This program provides employees with time during their typical work day to volunteer, usually up to a maximum numbers of hours of that employees can use. This can be an important program that shows employees their time is valuable and they don’t need to take time away from their families or personal life to attend corporate organized volunteer events.

This program could also include additional PTO that employees earn when they do volunteer outside of their work hours. Again showing employees that your company values their time spent giving back to the community by giving them time away from work for every hour volunteered.

It is important work with human resources department to create an employee benefit that supports volunteering. Volunteer time off is highly customizable and can be designed to fit within any corporate culture. Employee engagement software like CSRconnect helps companies setup criteria and eligibility requirements for managing volunteer time off programs where employees can log volunteer hours.

FAQ on Designing Employee Volunteer Programs

Q: Do you find that 8 hours of Volunteer Time Off is enough of an incentive to get employees to participate?

A: This depends on your total benefits package. If your company offers a generous amount of PTO, then earning an additional 8 hours of VTO may not be very motivating for your employees.  

Q: Currently our company offers 20% of hours as paid time to volunteer for nonprofits within their communities. Have you seen companies providing additional incentives to volunteer?

A: We have seen companies get creative with showing their support when employees donate their time or money. We encourage CSR leaders to work with human resources and even employee focus groups to find something that works for your company culture. A good place to start for any type of employee engagement initiative is to survey your employees. During the webinar event we shared some ways to capture employee feedback as soon as they login to the CSRconnect platform with a popup survey for them to complete. You’ll likely be capturing feedback from the employees highly engaged with your program since the ones that are logging into to make a donation, record their hours or interact with a group will see the survey.

Download the entire Q&A from the webinar event. If you missed the webinar you can now watch it on-demand.