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Explore articles, toolkits, and information on corporate giving programs from the experts.

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10 Charitable Giving Ideas Based on Moments That Matter for Employees

If the business of HR is to manage — and enhance — the employee experience, an understanding of Moments That Matter (MTM) may be one of the most critical tools the HR professional can add to their repertoire. The HR world adopted the term from the customer relations department, which refers to the moments in a customer's life when they are likely to make the decision to buy a product or service. In HR, it refers to the moments in an employee's life, both professional and private, that can most influence their feelings about their job and their employer. There are many ways to employ a Moments That Matter approach to employee management, but there's one that's often overlooked — incorporating it into the company's corporate giving strategy. Here's why you should, and some ideas of how your company can do it.

Moments That Matter — What It Is and Why It Matters

The idea behind the MTM management philosophy is that certain moments in your employees' lives have an outsize impact on their work satisfaction and attitude toward the company. Some of them are fairly generic — the job interview, their first weeks on the job, and promotions, for example. Others are more personal: an expectant parent, for instance, is likely to be influenced by how well — or poorly — HR helps them navigate the changes surrounding that milestone. Each of these experiences contributes to the overall employee experience with your company, and managing them well can play a big role in improving employee morale, job satisfaction, productivity, and retention.

Which Moments Matter?

As suggested, the answer to that question can vary from employee to employee. There is, however, some agreement on the most common moments, and suggestions for determining which moments matter the most to your employees. Gartner, Inc., an internationally respected HR consulting firm, lays out five types of moments likely to have the highest impact on employees in a recently published paper. They include moments that are:

Emotion-generating: like personal anniversaries and life milestones.
Scalable: have the potential to influence many employees.
Frequent: happen many times over the course of a day, week or month.
Business-aligned: moments that align with corporate strategy or culture.
Critical talent-aligned: impact a specific population with critical talents in the organization.

Understanding which moments matter to your employees can help you create policies and procedures that acknowledge them and respond to them positively and positively. In order to do this, it's vital that you equip your HR department with the tools to identify important moments and respond to them with empathy and clear guidance.

Corporate Philanthropy and Moments That Matter

More and more research shows that employees care about working for a company that aligns with their values. They want to work for a company that makes them proud, one that takes corporate responsibility seriously (CSR) and that supports — or empowers them to support — the causes that matter to them. Many employees are motivated by a company's commitment to give back and are engaged by corporate giving strategies like donation matching, group volunteer efforts and community giveback days. When you incorporate MTM into your corporate giving strategy, you can exponentially increase the impact on both your employees and the causes they support.

10 Moments That Matter-Inspired Charitable Giving Ideas

If all of that explanation left you buzzing but still unsure how to combine it with your corporate giving strategy, here are 10 ways that you can use Moments That Matter to inspire, motivate and engage your employees.

1. Make Corporate Giving Part of Your Employee Benefits Package

The job interview is one of the first times your employee will have contact with the HR department. Use that moment to explain that corporate giving is part of your standard employee benefits package, and show them how you make it easier for them to support the causes that matter to them.

2. Celebrate Work Milestones With Charitable Donations

Instead of — or in addition to — recognizing work anniversaries or achievements with swag, offer a bonus donation to be made to the charity of their choice. If you're using the Groundswell platform, it's easy to simply add the appropriate amount to the employee's giving account. You can even set it up as part of the policies that administer the program.

3. Use Data From Your Employee Donation Programs To Help Identify Moments That Matter

Many employee benefits management companies provide data and feedback to your company that can give you insight into what matters to your employees. Use that data to help identify giving trends and refine your program to make it more appealing.

4. Reward Team Milestones with a Giving Stipend

Sure, go ahead and have that pizza party for the team when QA checks off on their work, but why not give them something even more meaningful — add a little something to their charitable giving stipend. You're being doubly rewarding by giving them the power to support the causes they care about.

5. Recognize the Employee of the Month with the Opportunity to Make a Difference

It's nice to get your picture in a place of honor when you're voted Employee of the Month, but you can do better by giving your EOTM a chance to do more good. It's easy to set up one-time additions to an employee's giving fund based on their designation as a valued employee.

6. Give the Gift of Giving for Birthdays

Birthdays are a classic personal moment that matters — and many people celebrate by making a donation to charity. Even Facebook recognizes that — their Birthday Fundraiser feature is one of the platform's most popular. Empower your employees to be more charitable on their birthdays by making a birthday donation part of their benefits package.

7. Mark Work Transitions with More Donating Power

Take the opportunity to recognize work transitions — the end of a probation period, a promotion to team leader, or moving to a new department — with a contribution to their giving fund. If the transition is a promotion or other permanent rise in the company structure, you can even make it a permanent increase in the company's charitable giving program.

8. Celebrate Personal Milestones With a Contribution

There's no better way to make employees feel valued than demonstrating that you notice — and care about — what's happening in their lives. In addition to standard milestones, such as weddings or a new addition to the family, you can also celebrate the achievement of a new degree or certification, closing on a new house, or being recognized by a community organization.

9. Share the Celebration of Company Milestones

It's common for businesses to mark milestones by making a donation to charity. Whether your company is celebrating Founder's Day, recognizing their 1 millionth sale, or marking the awarding of a big contract, let your employees share in the festivities by making a contribution to their donor funds to distribute as they see fit.

10. Extend Your Annual Holiday Bonus

Add a little something extra to your holiday bonus program — an extra contribution to their employee giving fund. Many employees celebrate holidays with a donation to their favorite charities anyway. Why not empower them to give a little more?

How Groundswell Helps You Meet Moments That Matter to All of Your Employees

The right software program can make it easy for you to match moments that matter to the unique interests and needs of all of your employees. Designing a corporate giving program can be challenging, with many factors to consider and incorporate. Groundswell is designed to be inclusive, private, and empowering. By putting the power to give into the hands of each employee, the platform eliminates many barriers to giving that are inherent in traditional corporate match programs.

Employees can donate on their own timeline, rather than during a specified giving period.
There are no complicated forms to fill out and have approved.
Charities get their donations all at once rather than having to wait for the matching part of the donation.
Employees can give to the causes they support without worrying that their donations will expose parts of their private lives they'd rather not reveal. You can read more about how the Groundswell platform helps make employee giving more accessible and welcoming to everyone in the blog Is Your Donation Matching Program Inclusive and Equitable? Probably Not.
The simple interface makes it easy for your company to respond quickly to current events that have a wide cultural impact and provides a way for your company to be supportive to diverse groups among your employees.

Of course, your company can — and should — support your employees' charitable efforts in other ways, as well. You can create moments that matter for your employees by, for example, sponsoring weekly, monthly, or annual team volunteer opportunities. The time spent building out playgrounds, repairing homes for seniors, and serving meals at a local food kitchen all have the potential to be part of the reason your employees feel that they matter, not only to your company, but to the community at large.

Final Thoughts

Moments That Matter is more than just a current HR trend. It reflects a long tradition in the HR field — one of philanthropy and benefit focused on employees and their needs. When your company recognizes the most impactful moments in the lives of its employees — and provides them with a way to recognize, celebrate and navigate them — you are strengthening the relationship between your employee, your company and the community. In short, everyone benefits. Learn how at Groundswell.

Featured Resources

68% of Nonprofits Say This About Donations vs Volunteers - “Show us the money!”

Recently, leaders have stopped organizing employee volunteer events and shifted towards gifting and matching programs for good reasons.That's because company leaders have discovered that they're not the only ones that think volunteering isn't the best place for highly-skilled employees to spend their limited time. In fact, two-thirds of nonprofit leaders agree that donations are often better than organizing and overseeing volunteer events.A recent poll conducted by Groundswell of 500 nonprofit leaders indicated 68% preferred receiving monetary contributions over facilitating a corporate volunteer event.If you've considered putting together a volunteer event for your employees or setting up a corporate gifting and matching program, you're in the right place.This article helps you decide what programs are best for you and your organization, what benefits and drawbacks come with organizing volunteer events, and why companies are moving away from sending their employees out and moving towards offering employees a gifting and donation match program that sends money directly to nonprofits.

Volunteers or Donations?

Volunteering is at the heart of many charity and nonprofit organizations. Without people willing to volunteer their time to support the causes they care about, some nonprofits would fall short of their goals.However, while the act of volunteering is noble and well intentioned, not all volunteers and volunteering activities are created equal. Most organizations that rely on volunteers to deliver services strive for volunteers who are willing to show up consistently, complete training, and execute tasks according to standards.For example, the Boys and Girls Club’s lifeblood is community members who sign up to mentor at-risk youth. Mentors who consistently meet with, coach, and encourage their mentees can have a profound impact on that child’s life. Conversely, a volunteer that quits after two meetings can devastate a child’s self-esteem.Similarly, Feeding America - the largest network of foodbanks in the U.S. - relies substantially on volunteers to help operate its food warehouses. But, just like any Amazon fulfillment center, maintaining an efficient operation requires effective human capital management, including volunteer scheduling and training on tasks like storing, packing and shipping different types of food items. Having dedicated volunteers that commit to consistent work shifts allows FA operations leaders to plan effectively.There are countless examples of how committed volunteers can make a difference, but anyone considering a day of volunteering should ask themselves important questions about what the nonprofit they’re aiming to support needs most: time or money?

The Truth About Why Companies Love Corporate Philanthropy

Corporations love sending employees to help nonprofits because they see it as a win-win-win: nonprofits get support, employees get engaged, and the company burnishes its reputation..It’s clear that an army of employees adorned in color-coordinated shirts emblazoned with the company’s logo, deployed out into the community with rakes or paintbrushes, makes for a great photo op. The activity sends a message to the community that the company cares, and that’s a good thing as corporate stakeholders increasingly demand that company’s focus on social impact.There’s also no doubt that the activity engages employees. It often gets them out of the office and mingling with one another in a low-stress, lighthearted way. Many will return to the office grateful that their employer prioritized making a difference.But what about the nonprofit? Have they received the resources they need most to execute their mission best?

The Pros and Cons of Hosting Volunteer Events

Corporate volunteer events are events organized by nonprofit organizations at the request of a company, often through a corporate social responsibility (CSR) team.These events generally last a few hours, typically around the same time as an employee all-hands conference or retreat. They can be hosted at the company’s headquarters or at the nonprofit’s location. Often, employee volunteers are untrained, and despite wanting to make a difference, likely have no direct tie to or passion for the nonprofit’s mission; meaning most will conclude the event with no intention of volunteering with the organization again.If coordinated with the nonprofit effectively and resourced appropriately, corporate volunteer events can create value.

Here are the pros and cons of corporate volunteers.

Benefits of volunteering:

Positive employee experience - employees that volunteer often walk away with a good experience and positive outlook on aiding others.
More hands on the project - some projects benefit from more people on a project, like with community clean-ups.
Positive company image - Employees that volunteer contribute to the philanthropic values of a company and improve its public image.

Drawbacks of volunteering:

Additional work for the nonprofits - Organizing an event, training new volunteers, and managing an unfamiliar person can take a lot of effort and resources away that could have otherwise been used on supporting the organization's cause.
Reduced efficiency - The best nonprofits build efficient systems to do their work. Oftentimes, corporate volunteer events operate outside these systems. This can happen geographically, by dictating the location be at the corporate office, or otherwise by having to accommodate volunteers unfamiliar with the established system or process.

Volunteering isn’t always equitable and inclusive - Not every employee can participate in a volunteer activity. For example, if you’re cleaning up a beach employees with mobility issues could be left out.
Smaller return on investment - Volunteer events take a lot of work to plan, coordinate and execute, and sometimes - especially absent an additional monetary contribution from the company - the effort doesn’t yield sufficient impact.
Unpredictable effort and labor - The skills of volunteers can range from amateur to expert, which can make it tough for organization leaders to get high-level contributions.
No time -- Businesses are busy. Not all employees, executives, investors, and board members have the time to commit to volunteering, making it easier to donate money instead of time.

While volunteering can have a handful of benefits, it can sometimes come with a great deal of unnecessary administrative duties that take valuable resources away from an organization's limited resources.

Four Valuable Insights From Nonprofit Employees

Along with uncovering the reality about corporate volunteer programs, our poll revealed important insights into the truth about how nonprofits leaders felt about shifting trends in corporate philanthropy.According to our research, 79.4% agreed that corporate volunteer events are often more focused on employee experience than generating desirable outcomes for the organization's causes.Notably, 56.2% experienced a corporate volunteer event that didn't lead to efficient outcomes for the organization's cause.Perhaps in light of that, 72.2% believe corporations should make monetary contributions to offset the effort required to facilitate corporate volunteer events.Finally, a remarkable 42.2% believe planning volunteer opportunities for companies is actually a distraction to their core mission.

Here's Why Donating Is Better Than Volunteers.

Just like any business, having working capital is crucial for charities to deliver consistent outcomes.For nonprofit organizations, donations help fuel campaign initiatives, purchase supplies, pay for employee salaries, cover the cost of insurance and support efforts made by the entity. Even volunteer events cost money! Who do you think covers the cost of those bottles of water, ham sandwiches, and cans of paint?In other words, donations support nearly every facet of an organization, from supporting their infrastructure to facilitating initiatives and backing campaigns.In nearly all cases, donations are much more flexible than volunteering. Donations can be used for anything related to the organization's operation while volunteering is limited to labor-specific tasks. Volunteering is also limited by the volunteer's level of expertise, whereas donations can be used to hire experts to accomplish the same task using less effort and resources.

Have You Launched Your Company Gifting and Matching Program?

Since donations generally contribute directly to the organization's central mission while providing them with ultimate discretion in how to deliver impact, corporate leaders and their employees are realizing their contributions can go a lot further when donating money instead of time.If you’re curious to learn more about how corporate gifting and matching programs work, you’ll find more resources on our blog.

Featured Resources

Is Your Donation Matching Program Inclusive and Equitable? Probably Not.

Corporate employee gift matching - where an employer matches an employee’s gift to a charity - has been a mainstay of major companies for decades. It has unlocked billions of dollars of community funding and helped donors double their impact. It’s also inequitable and lacks inclusion as matching programs currently operate. Fortunately, there’s a solution.

But first, a history lesson.

In many ways and for many reasons, GE is one of America’s most iconic companies - though notably its star has dimmed since its peak several decades ago. GE was born by Thomas Edison, became a founding member of the Dow Jones Industrial Average (where it stayed from 1907 to 2018), and was awarded countless patents for innovation across aviation, healthcare, and energy.

However, an innovation GE rarely gets credit for is its innovation in corporate philanthropy. In 1954, GE rolled out what is often credited as the first workplace-giving program. In the nearly seven decades since GE reports that it has matched over $1.5 billion in employee gifts. That’s an astounding number.

Yet GE’s program has not evolved much since its inception. Sure, it uses a software platform to help facilitate gifts (one that could use a good ol’ fashioned overhaul) and they’ve probably increased the amount they’ll match (it’s currently a generous $5,000 per employee). But the basic construction remains the same - and therein lies the problem.

Today’s standard matching gift program works like this:

An employee gives money to a charity; they then submit that donation receipt to someone on staff (often in HR, finance, or perhaps a dedicated corporate social responsibility or CSR function). That staff member then must vet the charity to ensure it’s a registered 501c3 with the IRS and that it meets the company’s stated program requirements (for example, many companies won’t match gifts to places of worship - like a church - despite them being tax-exempt organizations). Finally, if all goes according to plan, a form is submitted to the accounts payable department and a check is issued from the company to the nonprofit - often weeks or months later.

Many folks would rightfully point out that this process seems like an administrative nightmare - and it is, both for the employee and the employer. But what’s often not discussed is that it is also by nature exclusionary and therefore inequitable.

How so? Let me explain.

The existing process - even if supported and enabled by software platforms that ease (but don’t eliminate) some of the administrative burdens - requires the employee to disclose where they have given to charity. On the surface, this may not seem like a problem - how else would the employer know where to send the matching money? But spend a moment and imagine all the reasons that someone may not want their employer or work colleagues to know the specific charities you are supporting.

For many people, their philanthropy is deeply personal and inspired by lived experiences. An employee that grew up in an abusive household may support a local domestic abuse shelter. A member of the LGTBQ community that is not yet open about their sexuality certainly wouldn’t want their coworkers knowing they support the Trevor Project. A recovering alcoholic may not want to submit the receipt for their monthly donation to Alcoholics Anonymous.

So what happens?

They simply don’t participate. They feel excluded.

The inequity is further exacerbated when companies determine that some causes or issues are worth matching, but others are not. In GE’s example, the determination that the company will not match contributions to houses of worship - churches, synagogues, mosques, and others - is akin to telling GE’s employees that what matters to them is not worth matching.

Now, we should be fair to GE. Because of GE’s matching program design, any matches sent to charities are coming from GE. Iconic brands like GE must be very careful in creating a perception that they are affiliated with or endorse any specific organization, or in this case, faith. That’s certainly reasonable - but it’s demotivating to the practicing Catholic who dutifully tithes 10% of her paycheck each week to her church.

(As a disclaimer, we draw the line at any nonprofit, religious or not, that stands for hate, and you won't find any classified hate groups available to fund in the Groundswell app.)

Essentially, today’s standard matching program makes about as much sense as if an employer chose not to deposit employees’ paychecks into bank accounts, but instead forced those employees to submit receipts for all of their expenses so that their cost of living could be reimbursed. How comfortable would you be with inviting someone into your personal life in that fashion?

So is there a better way? Yes, there is.

Modern matching programs must evolve to reflect the capabilities of our modern tax and financial technology ecosystem. Groundswell (www.groundswell.io) is doing this by making donor-advised funds (DAFs) accessible to anyone, and by specifically creating a corporate benefits platform that provides one to employees. By providing employees with Personal Giving Accounts built on top of donor-advised funds, our platform can disaggregate someone’s decision to be charitable (the moment they contribute to their Groundswell account) from their decision on what charity to support (sending their Groundswell funds to a nonprofit).

With Groundswell, employees contribute to their Personal Giving Account and companies can match those contributions according to their matching program rules. At that point, the employee controls the funds - they can direct the full amount to whatever qualifying charity they choose when they choose.

Because funds sent to charities are distributed by the Groundswell Charitable Foundation, companies no longer have to restrict where their employees give - because the company is never directly associated with the gift.

Information provided back to the employer is anonymized. They will know all the charities that were supported but will not be able to associate them with individual employees. The result is that companies can better understand what their employees truly value, without violating their privacy.

With Groundswell, employers can take meaningful action that drives home their commitment to DE&I initiatives while providing a unique employee benefit that allows employees to freely be their authentic, charitable selves.

Let's have a conversation - what do you think?

Featured Resources

What Is Corporate Philanthropy and Why Should You Care?

If the words "corporate philanthropy" call up images of pink ribbon campaigns, big donations to very visible causes, and big brands improving their image through charitable donations, hang tight.There's a lot more to the picture than big-dollar donations to well-known charities and causes. In today's business world, businesses of all sizes and in all sectors are committed to giving back to their communities through some form of charitable giving — and "charitable giving" takes on many forms.In fact, as of 2021, 85% of U.S. companies have a formal corporate giving program in place, and they donated a combined $20.77 billion to charitable causes.But what is corporate philanthropy, exactly, and what are the best ways for your company to give back to the community? The answers to those questions are evolving as a society — and employees — become more knowledgeable, engaged, and interested in how the companies they deal with affect the world around them.

What Is Corporate Philanthropy?

Corporate philanthropy refers to activities and investments voluntarily made by businesses to make a positive impact on the community around them. That's a very broad umbrella. It covers everything from giving money to donating expertise and encouraging employees to volunteer for community organizations. If your company hosts a food drive for Thanksgiving, buys uniforms for a local soccer team, or offers a matching donations program for charitable giving, it is engaging in corporate philanthropy. Learn more about corporate giving and why it's important in our resource section.

Who Benefits From Corporate Philanthropy?

The benefits of giving back are many, and not just for the organizations on the receiving end of donations. The business also reaps benefits, as do the employees and the general community. In a world where consumers increasingly expect companies to be socially responsible partners in our world, having a formal corporate giving program in place is a vital part of doing business. Charitable donations aren't just a sunk cost of doing business, though. There are clear benefits for the company when they make the choice to give back. Those include:

7 Types of Corporate Philanthropy

The face of corporate philanthropy has been evolving rapidly, especially in light of the last few years of upheaval and technological advances. These are the seven most common forms of corporate giving. Many companies engage in more than one, and many more are rethinking their strategic corporate philanthropy plans as corporate social responsibility takes on more importance to customers and employees. More on that later.

Employee and Board Stipends

Some corporations provide cash stipends to employees or board members, which they can donate to the charities or causes of their choice.

Volunteer Support

Companies may organize, support or give paid time off to employees who volunteer for organizations in their community. The support may be technical — an accounting firm may provide training and expertise to a startup nonprofit, for example — or more general, such as gathering a team to help paint houses or build playgrounds in the neighborhood.

Corporate Sponsorships

The Little League team, a fundraising event by the local food bank, a fashion show put on by a local charity — these are all examples of businesses using corporate sponsorships as part of their overall corporate philanthropy strategy. The corporation makes a donation to charity in return for being prominently mentioned during the event.

Community Grants

A company may offer grants to community organizations that apply for them and meet specific criteria to qualify. Walmart, for example, offers grants ranging from $250 to $5,000 to local community organizations. Often, the grants are given through a foundation established by the company for the purpose of making corporate donations.

In-Kind Donations

In-kind donations are donations of goods or services instead of cash. This type of donation is more common among smaller businesses, such as restaurants donating pizza to a local homeless shelter, or providing coffee and donuts free of charge to a weekly parents' group meeting. Similarly, many companies donate a "portion of x sold" gifts to charity. Stop and Shop, for example, donates a dollar to a local organization for each reusable shopping bag purchased by customers.

Donor-Advised Funds

Donor-advised funds — DAFs — are a variation on making grants to charities and causes through a foundation. In a nutshell, a DAF is like a personal charitable giving account, similar to a health savings account. The donor can make donations at any time and receive an immediate tax advantage. The funds sit in the DAF until the donor decides to disburse them to the charity or cause of their choice. DAFs offer several benefits that make them the fastest-growing charitable giving vehicle in the U.S.

Matching Donations

We saved this one for last because matching donation programs are among the most common corporate giving programs — 9 out of 10 companies have employee matching programs. Traditionally, an employee makes a donation to a charity or cause, and then either they or the nonprofit submits a form to the company, which then makes a second donation to the charity, effectively doubling — or sometimes tripling — the original amount. Despite their popularity, matching gift programs account for only about 12% of cash donations received by nonprofits, and an estimated $4 to $7 billion in matching gift money is never distributed. That's because the entire process can be cumbersome, both for your HR department and for the nonprofit receiving the donation.

A New Kind of Corporate Philanthropy — Philanthropy as a Service

Groundswell believes that it's time to rethink how matching donations programs work. Groundswell makes it easy for companies to launch a charitable giving program that takes advantage of all the benefits of a DAF for them and their employees. The Groundswell platform unlocks the potential of DAFs reimagining corporate philanthropy using the x-as-a-service model. Philanthropy as a service — PHaaS — lets you skip the complicated process of setting up a foundation, hiring accountants and handling all the day-to-day nuts and bolts of managing a charity. Instead, you get a simple, transparent platform that allows your company and your employees to support the causes they believe in without all the friction that accompanies traditional matching donation programs. Your company reaps the benefits of having a defined charitable giving program. Your employees are more engaged, with their privacy protected and their autonomy honored, and the causes they support get their donations without the hassle of chasing down the matching funds. It's a win-win-win solution that empowers everyone in the equation.

Final Thoughts

Corporate philanthropy has evolved over the years, and it's evolving faster than ever thanks to technological advances and changing social attitudes. If you're ready to take the next step in corporate philanthropy, reach out to us to learn more about what PHaaS can bring to your company.

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6 mins read

Blog Post

12 Employee Benefits Survey Questions Modern Companies Should Ask

In today's business environment, having the right and highest performing talent is more critical than ever. With benefits packages playing a vital role in these decisions, how can companies truly gauge their effectiveness? By initiating regular employee benefits surveys.

Scroll down for a free survey template below.

Let's dive in to the importance of asking the following questions.

Is our workforce satisfied with the current employee benefits package?

Gaining insights from "how satisfied are you with our company’s benefits package?" can offer companies a quick pulse on the effectiveness of their benefits. A dip in satisfaction might signal a need for re-evaluation, especially if you're looking to maximize your budget.

How comprehensive are the employee benefits we offer?

Do employees feel that the organization covers a wide range of their needs? Asking, "do you feel our benefits package is comprehensive in its offering?" can shed light on any potential gaps in coverage.

Are we showing true commitment to Diversity, Equity, & Inclusion through our benefits?

Are the company's efforts in promoting DE&I resonating? This can be gauged by asking if the benefits genuinely support diversity and inclusion. If they aren't, here's an opportunity to collect ideas directly from your employees.

Do our benefits reflect our company culture and values?

The question, "do you feel our benefits package supports our cultural values?" will highlight any potential discrepancies in practicing what you're preaching.

Did you know? Two-thirds of employees say it’s important for a company to align to their values.

Are we catering to the needs of a remote or multi-location workforce?

With remote work on the rise, is the company adapting its benefits accordingly? It's essential to find out if employees feel supported, regardless of their work setting.

Would employees recommend the company based on our benefits?

This is an easy one to skip, but it's a great question to ask. See how influential your benefits package is for employee referrals. Determining if employees would advocate for the company based on its benefits can be a key metric for recruitment.

How do specific benefit categories fare?

By querying satisfaction levels across various benefits – physical health, social impact, mental health, financial health, and fringe benefits – can companies discern which areas are thriving and which need enhancement?

What additional benefits do employees desire?

Is there a particular benefit that could make a difference in employee satisfaction and retention? Discovering this can be as straightforward as asking, "if you could choose one benefit not currently offered, what would it be?"

If your workforce desires a more meaningful benefit, see why decentralizing your corporate philanthropy strategy can achieve greater impact at scale.

How often should I send an employee survey about our benefits?

While every business has their own set of unique needs, conducing a quarterly employee survey at minimum can help you get a pulse check.

There will be some natural and unplanned peaks in valleys throughout the year that can drastically affect employee morale and company culture. By proactively seeking feedback through surveys, companies can foster a culture of continuous improvement, ensuring they remain at the forefront of employee satisfaction.

What are some affordable benefit options we can provide employees?

Corporate matching or giving programs can be a low-cost addition to your benefit offering that supports your employees’ unique passions and perspectives through charitable giving and boosts your company’s commitment to social impact. Groundswell offers a comprehensive solution with a simple implementation and nearly zero administration burden.

Request a demo

[Free Template] Employee Benefits Survey Questions

How satisfied are you with our company’s benefits package?
Do you feel our benefits package is comprehensive in its offering?
Do you feel our benefits package supports our cultural values?
Do you feel our benefits package supports our commitment to Diversity & Inclusion?
Do you feel our benefits package supports our remote or multi-location workforce?
How likely are you to recommend applying based on our benefits package?
How satisfied are you with our physical health benefits (i.e. health care, sick leave, etc)?
How satisfied are you with our social impact benefits (i.e. corporate matching, volunteering, etc)?
How satisfied are you with our mental health benefits (i.e. vacation time, EAP, etc)?
How satisfied are you with our financial health benefits? (i.e. retirement, student loan assistance, etc)
How satisfied are you with our fringe benefits and perks? (i.e. fitness subsidies, stipends, etc)
If you could choose one benefit not currently offered, what would it be?

6 mins read

Blog Post

6 Tips For An Effective Corporate Volunteerism Program with Groundswell

For companies seeking to streamline their giving and volunteering in one place, Groundswell has a number of volunteer features designed to easily track, reward, and engage employees. We have been extremely thoughtful about the volunteerism features we’ve built - with an eye towards being value-add for companies that may need some support with their volunteerism initiatives, and want to streamline their giving and volunteering programs in one place - from design to execution to reporting.

6 Tips For An Effective Corporate Volunteerism Program

1. Set your goals:

When designing a volunteer program, it’s important to start by defining your goals, whether you’re focused on participation numbers, team-building, or the ability to provide additional support to a nonprofit that is already a recipient of corporate funding. None of these are mutually exclusive, but how you approach volunteerism, and the ways in which you execute it, may help advance certain goals more than others.

2. Identify internal champions:

A volunteer program is rarely successful unless there are internal champions that can provide peer-to-peer encouragement, or geographic-specific coordination. While Groundswell's volunteer platform provides important tools to facilitate and help execute volunteer programs, some of the most successful companies have internal champions or volunteer “ambassadors” who can engage and motivate their fellow employees to participate, as well as build critical relationships with nonprofits. For companies with different geographic hubs, having champions to spearhead volunteering events can help drive meaningful employee engagement at a more local level.

3. Create community across groups and locations:

Leverage regional champions and/or Employee Resource Group leads to help spearhead events that bring employees together across geographies and other affinity groups. Groundswell’s Volunteer Event Management tool enables companies to schedule and manage registration for larger events, as well as empower teams based in different regional hubs to schedule and track participation in their own volunteer events..A best practice is to designate a specific time of year for volunteer activation - whether a day of service, week or full month - so that employees can feel motivated and inspired to participate when the entire company is focused on volunteerism and service.

4. Align your Giving and Volunteering Program Through Dollars for Doers:

Groundswell’s Volunteer Matching feature - also known as Dollars for Doers - provides another way for employees to show their support for the causes that matter most to them. Through Volunteer Matching, an employee logs volunteer hours and then receives funds into their Groundswell account, to then be donated. And it also recognizes that some employees may have time to give, but not money to donate – and rewards them for that. You can set up a Volunteer Match program as a stand-alone, or combine with an existing donation matching program.

5. Design a program that includes remote or hybrid workers:

Many companies are eager to revive larger, in-person events. But not everyone may be based at the headquarters, and the “new normal” of hybrid work schedules may make it difficult for larger groups to come together. Groundswell’s volunteer platform can be customized to allow employees to volunteer their time even if they aren’t able to be at an event in-person. The Volunteer Hours Tracking Tool enables employees to log those individual volunteer hours, so that the company can capture their participation even if it is not with a larger group volunteer event.

6. Leverage Data for Internal Feedback and External Storytelling:

Groundswell’s streamlined reporting dashboard allows companies to easily access key metrics around volunteer hours, participation levels, and number of events. By integrating across giving and volunteering programs, companies can have a holistic view of their impact for ongoing or annual reporting requirements. The data is also an important tool for internal reporting and engagement - highlighting regions that may be particularly active in their giving and volunteering, and inspire more engagement for future events.

6 mins read

Blog Post

The Big Donation Distribution Problem You Don’t Know About

At Groundswell, we are passionate about challenging the status quo, and one industry standard that we’ve set our sights on is the unconscionable donation distribution delays normalized by legacy platforms like Benevity, Cybergrants, and YourCause. These companies, which currently service the majority of Fortune 500 companies, routinely take 30-60 days to send a donor’s donation to charity, and 90-180 days to send a company’s matching gift.

‍We believe that this is wrong. So we’ve fixed it.

‍Groundswell is the fastest employee giving platform, sending both the employee's donation and the company's match together within 5 days.

Why do distribution timelines matter?

In this blog post I’m going to share with you why this is so powerful. But first, let me tell you why this is personal.

From 2010 through 2020 I served as the founder and CEO of the global humanitarian relief organization Team Rubicon (TR). TR responds to hundreds of disasters and crises each year, each mission carefully planned. One critical planning factor is fundraising - how much will the organization be able to successfully raise in the immediate onset of this event? The first 96 hours of an event are the most telling, as individual donations begin pouring in and corporations begin calling to make pledges. Using these early signals, a budget is prepared and a mission is launched.

Now fast-forward four months. A literal mountain of paper checks begin arriving, representing the matching donations that have finally been invoiced, collected, aggregated, and distributed to us by Benevity, Cybergrants, and YourCause. However, more often than not the mission was already over - and the money now unable to be spent effectively.

Don’t get me wrong - a nonprofit is never going to complain about donations coming in. But having not known that these checks were coming, they were not included in the original budgeting. This created massive headaches for our staff, but more importantly, represented a missed opportunity to have delivered more impact during the response phase.

When I started Groundswell, this was one very real problem that I set out to solve.

Why does it take so long for legacy platforms to distribute donations?

There are several things that lead to these distribution delays, the primary of which is these platform’s process of distributing donations in aggregated batches. That process looks like this:

Employee 1 makes a $10 donation to a Charity X on September 1st, Employee 2 makes a $15 donation to Charity X on September 10th, and Employee 3 makes a $25 donation to Charity X on September 30th.
In October, the legacy platform combines all donations designated for Charity X in September into a single amount - in this instance $50 ($10 + $15 + $25)
On or around October 15th, $50 is sent to Charity X - often via a paper check

In this process, Employee 1’s donation does not reach the charity for at least 45 days. Worse yet, many platforms have a minimum donation threshold, which means that the platform will not process the distribution until a minimum amount has been designated for the charity. This often means that a donor’s money can sit as a pending payment for months or even years, until additional donors make enough donations to reach the threshold.

The process gets even more convoluted when there’s a corporate donation match involved. That process looks like this:

Let’s assume Employees 1 and 2 in the above scenario work for Acme Corporate, while Employee 3 works for XYZ Corp. Acme Corp and XYZ Corp both offer employee donation matches.
Following their respective September donations, the legacy platform will send both Acme Corp and XYZ Corp an invoice for the match amount owed by each company, $25 and $25 respectively in this example. This invoice is sent in late October for September’s donations.
Both companies receive and review the invoice. Reconciling the invoice takes 1-2 weeks.
Upon approval, administrators at both companies forward the invoice to accounts payable for payment. Acme Corp has net-30 payment terms and sends the legacy platform $25 in late November. XYZ Corp has net-60 payment terms, so does not send its $25 until late December.
The platform receives all funds in late December and processes payment of the matching donations to Charity X in January.

This example clearly lays out how an employee that made a donation on September 1st may not have her matching donation reach the charity for five months! This process erodes the employee experience, creates unnecessary administrative tasks for company administrators, and delays critical cash flow for nonprofits.

How has Groundswell upended this process to make distributions in 5 days?

Groundswell’s commitment to social impact drives everything we do. Thus, we set out to set a new standard in donation distribution timelines. The result is that we:

Instantly match an employee’s donation
Send both the employee’s donation and the company match together within 5 days
No longer aggregate these payments together, but instead send them individually

Now we have improved the employee experience, eliminated the administrative burden on companies, and improved the nonprofit’s cash flow.

But we’re not done. The only reason we’re waiting five days to distribute instead of sending the funds within 24 hours is because donors occasionally initiate credit card or ACH reversals, and it’s challenging to resolve these if we’ve already sent the funds to charity. However, we’re committed to examining the data over the coming months to determine what our reversal rate is, and whether we’re able to further reduce this timeline accordingly.

6 mins read

Blog Post

Increase Impact With Corporate Grants

Corporate philanthropy is table stakes - as businesses are judged not just by profits and market shares, but also on the impact they make on society and the world at large. With more and more companies embracing corporate philanthropy strategies, the need for efficient, hassle-free, and impactful approaches has never been greater. With CSR budgets strained, and teams facing competing pressures, it’s important to streamline elements of a company’s corporate philanthropy strategy by combining employee giving, volunteerism, as well as corporate-level grantmaking. At Groundswell, we're spearheading the movement to make corporate grants more efficient, impactful, and accessible.

With our platform, companies can administer corporate grants akin to having a corporate foundation, but without the associated administrative burden or cost. Running a corporate foundation is no small feat. It involves significant administrative work, legal compliance, and financial investment. Groundswell eliminates these hurdles, providing you with the grant-making functionality of a corporate foundation without the associated overhead. Our platform is designed to seamlessly handle all the back-end work while you focus on selecting deserving nonprofits, allowing you to put your energy into the more important aspects of a strategic nonprofit partnership.

We also cut down on the hassle of getting money to nonprofits - which is a win-win on both sides. In traditional corporate grant-making, the process of disbursing funds can be laborious. With Groundswell, you don't have to worry about cutting checks and ensuring they reach the right organizations. All you need to do is choose your recipients, decide the grant amount, and provide any additional notes. We take care of the disbursement to nonprofits for you, with a commitment to getting the funds to the nonprofits within a few days of initiating a grant, making sure that the funds are put to good use promptly.

Another pain point in the grant-making process is the distribution fee often charged, which reduces the amount of funds that reach the designated nonprofits. At Groundswell, we are committed to ensuring that 100% of your funds reach the nonprofits you want to support. That's right, we never charge a distribution fee on grants.

All of these efficiencies are designed to create the time and space for you and your company to focus on what matters most - selecting the best nonprofit partners, and deepening the strategic relationship in ways that align with your broader philanthropic strategy - perhaps through volunteerism or other engagement. You can also turn your energy to ways in which corporate grants can be used to complement your employee giving program; for example, some companies send larger grants to the top 5 nonprofits receive the most support from employees - aligning your corporate philanthropic dollars with what matters most to your employees.

Corporate grants, as a part of a comprehensive corporate philanthropy strategy, can help companies increase their impact on the world. And when coupled with employee matching and gifting, the potential impact is even more substantial. At Groundswell, we’re committed to help eliminate the barriers that often hamper efficient and effective grant-making, letting companies focus on what truly matters.

6 mins read

Blog Post

How Decentralizing Your Corporate Philanthropy Strategy Can Achieve Greater Impact at Scale

Unlocking the power of grassroots giving

In the world of corporate philanthropy, a common scenario is that large corporations write substantial checks to a select few well-known charities. The recipients often implement programs that align with signature initiatives or thematic cause “pillars” that align with a company’s philanthropic strategy. And while this model of giving has undoubtedly created significant impact, it is also important to acknowledge that it limits the opportunity for smaller, lesser-known, but equally deserving charities to receive much-needed support. So, what does it look like to turn the model on its head? Or, put differently, what does it look like to both support a few strategic partners AND decentralize your company’s philanthropy by empowering employees to show support for causes and charities that matter most to them?

Decentralizing the traditional model of corporate philanthropy creates a unique opportunity for grassroots nonprofits often in need of financial support. This shift can translate into meaningful impact at the local level, often in communities where employees live, work, and care about deeply. Donation data analyzed by Groundswell speaks to this: we estimate that over 60% of donations are made to local charities. And it also helps companies gain powerful insights into the causes and nonprofits that matter to their employees. Think of it as a philanthropic pulse-check: what do your people truly care about?

Employees empowered to participate in their company’s giving program transforms them from passive participants to active changemakers. It also fosters greater inclusion. As a diverse group of individuals with a wide array of interests and passions, employees can bring to light myriad causes that might otherwise be overlooked in a traditional philanthropy model. From local environmental initiatives and small nonprofits working on minority rights, to community health projects and education for underprivileged children - the possibilities for impact are vast and varied.

During the pandemic, I witnessed first-hand the critical role that grassroots nonprofits play when I worked to address critical delivery gaps for emergency food assistance in cities across the country - from Atlanta, Louisville and Houston to San Francisco, Los Angeles and Stockton. I partnered with organizations working in the midst of lockdowns to step up and support the most vulnerable populations. In San Francisco’s Bayview-Hunters Point neighborhood, Bayview Senior Services supported low-income seniors who were unable to leave their homes by delivering warm meals. In Atlanta, Community Outreach in Action provided much-needed food assistance to those impacted by the pandemic. And in Houston, Bethel’s Heavenly Hands played a critical role for the community not just providing food during the pandemic but also when historic freezing temperatures crippled residents across the city. These are all examples of small (by revenue) but high-impact organizations working on the frontlines to support residents in local communities.

As we look towards the future, it's clear that the traditional model of corporate philanthropy needs to evolve to keep pace with the changing expectations of employees and society at large. Decentralizing corporate philanthropy is not merely a trend; it's a powerful movement that can redefine corporate social responsibility. By harnessing the power of grassroots giving, companies can truly transform lives and communities, one employee-chosen donation at a time.

6 mins read

Blog Post

The Guide to Being a Modern Philanthropist: Elevate Your Impact With Groundswell

This guide is intended to provide resources and inspiration for Groundswell users on how to donate to causes they care about. It provides tips to best identify and donate to charities that have a proven track record of impact. It also discusses how to think about geography and size when deciding where to donate, and explains the ways in which even small, recurring donations can have be powerful for charities working on the frontlines every day.

Groundswell can be your partner in your journey as a modern philanthropist. Your donations are a critical part of addressing society's myriad issues, such as poverty, education, healthcare, and environmental concerns. And giving to others is also good for you. It has been shown that people who donate to charity experience increased happiness and well-being compared to those who do not give. This sense of satisfaction comes from the knowledge that your actions are making a positive impact on the world and helping those in need.

Through Groundswell, you can easily add funds to your account, browse or search for charities, and donate in a matter of minutes. In this guide, we help demystify some of the questions you might have as you consider where, when and how to donate.

Six Tips to Becoming a Modern Philanthropist

Summary

Pick causes and charities that align with your values: When deciding what you want to support, start by taking into consideration the people, places, or problems that you care about most.
Understand impact through the lens of size & geography: The geographic reach of different charities' programs, and how large or small they are, can help as you determine what to support.
Evaluate best in class charities: Learn how to assess not only the financial health of an organization, but also what questions to ask when looking at other impact metrics.
Set a giving goal: Decide how much you want to give annually through Groundswell, and follow the simple steps to set up contributions to achieve that goal.
Maximize impact through recurring donations: Simplify your giving and provide nonprofits with a steady stream of revenue through monthly, recurring donations.
Optimize your giving through tax-efficient strategies: Leverage the versatility of Groundswell to reduce your tax burden through payroll giving, stocks contributions, and bunching.

1. Pick Causes & Charities that Align with Your Values

Your giving journey often is deeply personal, rooted in your own values and lived experiences. When deciding what causes you want to support, it’s important to start by taking into consideration the people, places, or problems that you care about most. Who or what do you want to impact? What cause is most aligned with that? Use that as a starting point to then find the charities best positioned to have an impact on what you care most about. Focusing on specific cause areas allows you to be more intentional about how you donate.

There are thousands of causes and more than a million nonprofits on the Groundswell platform that tackle challenges from all angles, from improving K-12 education or finding a cure for Alzheimer’s to reducing plastics in the ocean or protecting women’s rights.

After determining what causes matter most to you, it’s also helpful to identify the type of impact you are seeking to make. Are you interested in supporting organizations that are “on the ground” providing direct services or those doing longer-term, important policy and research work? That can help guide you in picking the charities that you want to donate to.

2. Understand Impact: Size & Geography

Where to donate

When deciding where to donate, it’s also important to determine where you want that impact to happen. For many people, where they give is closely linked to where they live – their local food pantry, homeless shelter, house of worship, or neighborhood school.

Others may want to focus their giving beyond where they live and donate to organizations that operate in certain regions or even other countries. There’s no ‘right’ answer - and many people choose to donate both locally and globally to a cause they care about. For example, you may want to support an organization that is both on the frontlines supporting refugees fleeing the conflict in Ukraine, as well as helping resettle refugee families near your town in the U.S.

Does size matter?

Similarly, there is no right answer for what size organization is best to donate to. Whether they are large or small, if they have a strong track record of impact and do not have a pattern of mismanagement of funds, they are worthy recipients of donations.

Many people want to donate to organizations that have a proven track record of implementing large-scale programs, or are on a strong growth trajectory, year over year. Larger organizations generally have shown their ability to receive larger amounts of funding, and in turn design and implement programs at a scale that have a greater impact towards the causes you care about most. But small organizations can also be extremely impactful - even if the radius or scope of impact is smaller. Although many of today’s social and environmental problems are massive in scale, the vast majority of nonprofits are tiny; indeed, most nonprofits in the United States are small, grassroots organizations - and 20% have annual budgets of less than $50,000. For smaller nonprofits, even the smallest donation on an annual or monthly, recurring basis can have a huge impact on their ability to sustain programs or even expand.

3. Evaluate "Best in Class" Charities

There are multiple ways to assess the quality of a charity; many ratings sites focus primarily on financial metrics, but it is equally important to assess not only how an organization is managing its funds, but also the quality of its work. And while a rating system like Charity Navigator can be helpful, it is important to know that no rating system is comprehensive. Groundswell offers an important starting point - we only feature organizations that are in good standing with the IRS and eligible to receive tax-deductible donations.

Programmatic Impact: Understanding a nonprofit’s impact - through its programs and the populations that it serves - is an important way to evaluate its effectiveness in tackling the causes you care about. Many nonprofits provide details about programming approaches on their websites, including testimonials, photos, and reports detailing specific results. Keep in mind that understanding and assessing impact is highly qualitative - there is no clear ‘score’ - especially because what or who is being impacted varies across the thousands of nonprofits.

Financial Management: Nonprofits, especially larger ones, are required to disclose details related to their financial performance annually – to include assets, revenue and breakdown of expenses in forms submitted to the IRS. Many nonprofits are proactively transparent about their finances and post audited financial statements and other reports on their websites. But financial data does not always tell a complete story. There may be important investments in fundraising staff, which two years later yield a windfall in donations that can be put towards programs.

Advisories: Sometimes there are advisories based on pending or ongoing legal action. Groundswell works to monitor these advisories and remove any charities that it believes are acting improperly or mismanaging donor funds. We also remove any charities that have had their nonprofit status revoked by the IRS.

Groundswell-curated Featured Causes: While many donors might want to do their own research, sometimes it’s far easier (and efficient) to put your trust in others. Groundswell’s impact team provides donors with additional inspiration, and has done the vetting work to determine cause-specific organizations that are well run and most importantly having a strong impact.

4. Aim High with a Giving Goal

You can use Groundswell’s calculator found under your Profile to set or edit your annual giving goal. This can be a flat amount, or a percentage of your annual salary. While estimates vary, a common range for giving as a percentage of annual salary is between 2-6%.

The good news is that with your Groundswell Personal Giving Account, you can easily set up recurring contributions to stay on track to meet your goals. It’s also important to maximize the matching offered by your company’s giving program, where applicable.

Your giving goal can help fund recurring donations, as well as account for unexpected events that you may want to donate to.

5. Level Up with Recurring Donations

Recurring donations can be a great component of your philanthropic strategy. As a bonus, there are benefits for both donors as well as nonprofits.

For donors, setting recurring donations to autopilot every month or quarter means you don’t have to think about it or go through the steps to do it on a regular basis.

Put simply, it’s a smart use of your time. It is also a symbol of a donor’s commitment to a cause, and a belief in the nonprofit’s ability to have a positive impact - not just in a moment of crisis, but on a continuous basis. Groundswell’s recurring contributions and donations features help facilitate recurring giving.

For charities, recurring donations provide a steady, predictable stream of revenue that helps with budget planning. For many organizations, large or small, recurring donations can have a huge impact. Similar to the trends in grassroots political fundraising, having many small-dollar donors is good for nonprofits.

It helps them build awareness and shows to the larger-dollar donors that there is a community that believes in the nonprofit’s mission. It also helps de-risk; nonprofits with one or two large donors and very few small-dollar donors can run into major problems if any of those large donors stop supporting their work.

6. Optimize Your Tax-Efficient Giving

You can leverage the versatility of your Groundswell Personal Giving Account, which is underpinned by a Donor-Advised Fund, to be strategic and reduce your tax burden.

Donate appreciated stock

If you have appreciated stocks that you've held for more than a year and you donate them through your Groundswell account, you won't have to pay capital gains tax on the appreciation when those shares are exchanged for their market value.

Plus, you'll be eligible for a tax deduction for the full fair market value of the stock at the time of contribution into your Groundswell account.

Give with payroll

You can leverage Groundswell’s Payroll feature to make giving more tax efficient. Contributions to Groundswell through payroll deductions are eligible for an immediate tax deduction for the amount contributed. This means that your taxable income for the year is reduced by the amount of your contribution. Contributing on a recurring basis via payroll also makes it easier to “set and forget” and achieve your giving goals more efficiently.

Bundle contributions

You can also take advantage of the Donor-Advised Fund structure of Groundswell to make a larger contribution in a single tax year and maximize tax benefits by itemizing deductions in the year that the larger contribution is being made - commonly known as “bunching.”

For example, if you typically give $5,000 to charity each year but decide to give $25,000 to your Groundswell account in one year, you can itemize your deductions that year and take the standard deduction in the following years. By doing so, you may be able to minimize your tax burden over time while still supporting the charities you care about.

Want access to other toolkits like this?

Corporate giving programs aim to empower employees and help companies facilitate and support philanthropic efforts. As global access grows and corporations become more diverse, employee representation becomes an increasingly important subject.

Groundswell enables companies to lay the foundation for their employees to adopt a generous giving attitude towards charities and world-shaping efforts.

6 mins read

Blog Post

Unleash the Power of Your Employee Giving Program: Best Practices Guide

Your Best Practices Guide for Maximizing Your Employee Giving Participation

This guide provides you with tools and tips to maximize employee participation in your giving program, not just when the program launches but throughout the entire year.

Leveraging our expertise in the social impact and nonprofit sectors, Groundswell is here to support you and your employees on your impact journey.

Overview

Employee giving programs can be a great way for companies to demonstrate their commitment to social responsibility, engage employees, and make a positive impact on the community. But too often, employees don’t take full advantage of the opportunities provided through their giving programs, leaving billions of funds unmatched every year. For some, this is due to either a lack of awareness about their company's giving program, or for others because an unwieldy donation portal and match process that leaves employees frustrated. Groundswell's technology brings corporate giving into the 21st century and unleashes the modern philanthropist in all of your employees.

Whether your goal is to grow the percentage of employees participating in your giving program, increase the amount of funds going to nonprofits, or to better understand the causes that matter most to your employees, these best practices can help you achieve those goals.

By reducing the administrative burden required to launch and implement a Giving Program, Groundswell frees you up to focus on what matters most: inspiring your employees and having a positive impact on the world through your company’s support for charitable causes.

6 Tips for Maximizing Participation in Your Employee Giving Program

1. Communicate Early and with Intention

Communication is a critical component of any successful giving program. We want you to have the tools to effectively share program details and encourage participation - whether launching a new employee giving program or transitioning from an existing one.

The key is to help employees understand why and how Groundswell fits into your company’s broader vision around corporate citizenship and employee engagement - and build enthusiasm around the potential to collectively have a positive impact on the world through donations to charities.

Program Launch Communications:

Here are some ways to think about the program launch. Depending on whether this is a new program or transitioning from an existing one, your adoption plan may change. You don’t want to inundate employees with too much information, while also providing them with the resources they need to successfully enroll in the program and easily engage on the platform.

Keep it short, and emphasize that the intent is to center employees in corporate philanthropy and make it as easy as possible for employees to give.
If the Giving Program is new: Why now? How does it align with your company’s values? Why is Groundswell a good fit for the company?
If the program is replacing an existing program: Why now? What’s different (and better) from the previous program? New matching or gifting features? It may also be helpful to highlight the tax effectiveness of the donor-advised fund model.

Monthly Program Communications

In order to encourage ongoing participation in your program, and for employees to take advantage of the gifts and matches offered by your company, we encourage monthly nudges to remind employees about the program.

Monthly Cause Spotlights

Start off the month by highlighting some timely causes - make sure to link to Groundswell-curated “Featured Cause” Portfolios that Groundswell uploads to the dashboard every month for a hand-off approach to spotlighting.
Share “Cause of the Month” information with employees, leveraging the toolkits found in Groundswell’s Resource Center.

Engagement & Impact Reporting

Utilize the data that you can find on your company Dashboard or download via CSV to highlight some of your company’s collective impact - including a percentage of employees enrolled, the total dollar amount that has been donated, as well as top nonprofit donation recipients and/or cause areas.
This helps employees see how their individual donations are having a larger impact as part of your company’s collective giving program.

2. Drive Early Adoption through Gifts

Gifts can be a terrific way to get employees to sign up and start using the Groundswell platform immediately. Here are a few tips on how to drive early adoption using the Gifting feature:

Launch with a one-time gift into employees’ Giving Accounts that will show up as soon as employees enroll. This can be a great way to create buzz about the program and empower employees to donate and make an impact immediately - even before they contribute their own funds to their Groundswell account.
Throughout the year, provide unexpected, ad hoc gifts into employees’ accounts - for work anniversaries, milestones, great performance, etc.
A way to make it fun is to do a lottery at All Hands meetings by randomly selecting an employee to receive $25 in their Groundswell account. Follow this link or reach out to the Groundswell Customer Success team to learn more.

3. Inspire Engagement through Matching

Set up a matching program that immediately doubles the impact when an employee puts funds into their Groundswell Giving Account. This creates a feeling of “we’re in this together” - and drives home the message about an equitable approach to corporate philanthropy.
A match program can run for an entire year, or be tailored to specific months.
With the Groundswell match happening at the point of contributing funds to the Groundswell account, employees can tangibly see and feel what it means to double the impact for the charities and causes that matter most to them.

4. Leverage Cause Campaigns & Respond to the Emergent Events

Planned Campaigns:

Utilize a Social Impact Cause Calendar to plan monthly or bi-monthly communications to employees highlighting specific causes - with resources to educate employees about the cause, and a curated list of nonprofits most relevant to the cause. You can refer to Groundswell’s monthly cause portfolios that are updated to reflect timely causes and issues.
Tip: Plan your annual budget to launch match campaigns focused on specific charities or cause areas throughout the year.

Unforeseen Events:

Utilize Groundswell’s curated list of best-in-class nonprofits responding to disasters in the United States or globally. Being able to quickly and confidently point your employees to vetted nonprofits to donate to shows that you are responsive as a company and empowering employees to take action in moments of crisis.
Tip: Keep a portion of your annual budget in reserve so that you can match employee donations and/or provide gifts to employees to expand the impact in response to the unforeseen emergency.

5. Engage Employee Resource Groups

Another mechanism to center employees in corporate philanthropy and recognize their own lived experiences: provide Employee Resource Groups (ERG) a platform to speak to key cause areas (e.g. AAPI Awareness, Black History Month, etc).

ERGs can take the opportunity to recommend nonprofits that they think are most effective and related to the cause, and share their commitment to specific causes with the tag-line “My cause is ____ “
Tip: Solicit recommendations from the Employee Resource Group for books to read, films, and documentaries to watch, and podcasts to listen to. This can generate a deeper understanding of causes and lead to engagement via donations to support the causes.

6. Lean Into End-of-Year Giving Spirit

30% of annual giving happens in December, with about 10% of all annual donations coming in the last three days of the year. For nonprofits, this can be a critical time to raise funds and prepare programming budgets for the next year.

You can leverage Groundswell's Giving Tuesday resources to launch an end-of-year donation campaign, featuring specific cause areas and nonprofits.

Tip: Set a budget aside for a surprise end-of-year gift - leveraging the fact that a large percentage of people prefer to donate at the end of the year.

Read related articles

Groundswell is your ally in corporate philanthropy.

Groundswell enables companies to lay the foundation for their employees to adopt a generous giving attitude towards charities and world-shaping efforts.

6 mins read

Blog Post

5 Successful American Corporate Giving Programs To Model From

Corporate giving programs are a way for companies to give back to the communities where they operate. These programs can take many different forms, but they all share the same goal of making a positive impact on the world.

Here are some of the benefits of corporate giving programs:

Improved corporate image: Companies that give back to their communities are seen as more responsible and caring organizations. This can lead to increased customer loyalty and attract top talent to work there.
Stronger community relationships: When companies invest in their communities, they show that they are committed to making a difference. This can lead to increased support from local governments and businesses.
Improved lives of people in the community: Corporate giving programs can help to improve the lives of people in need. This can lead to improved quality of life for everyone in the community.

Here’s a list of 5 American corporate giving programs that have found success to inspire your corporate philanthropy.

Groundswell for Corporate Giving

If you are a company that is looking for ways to give back to your community, Groundswell can help.

Groundswell is a corporate giving program provider for employee gifting and matching program opportunities as an employee benefit to corporations of all sizes.

Want to elevate your corporate philanthropy and offer employees a benefit that leaves a lasting positive impact on local and global communities? Learn how Groundswell is leading the charge in democratizing corporate philanthropy and supercharging employee benefits.

5 Successful American Corporate Giving Programs

Microsoft’s Corporate Giving Program

Microsoft has a long history of corporate giving, and the company is committed to making a positive impact on the world. In 2022, Microsoft donated over $1.1 billion to charitable organizations around the world. This funding supported a variety of initiatives, including:

Education: Microsoft supports a variety of educational programs, including scholarships, grants to schools and universities, and support for STEM education.
Environmental sustainability: Microsoft supports a variety of environmental sustainability initiatives, including renewable energy projects, carbon capture and storage projects, and support for environmental organizations.
Economic development: Microsoft supports a variety of economic development initiatives, including job training programs, small business grants, and support for community development organizations.
Health and wellness: Microsoft supports a variety of health and wellness initiatives, including programs to fight poverty, hunger, and disease.
Humanitarian relief: Microsoft supports a variety of humanitarian relief initiatives, including programs to help people affected by natural disasters and other crises.

Here are some of the specific initiatives that Microsoft supports through its corporate giving program:

Microsoft Philanthropies: Microsoft Philanthropies is the company's primary vehicle for giving back to the communities where it operates. The foundation supports a variety of initiatives, including education, environmental sustainability, and economic development.
Microsoft Employee Giving Campaign: Microsoft employees are encouraged to give back to their communities through the company's annual employee giving campaign. Employees can donate their time or money to a variety of nonprofit organizations. (Launch an employee giving program with Groundswell here).
Microsoft Volunteering: Microsoft employees are encouraged to volunteer their time to nonprofit organizations in their communities. The company offers a variety of volunteer opportunities, including mentoring, tutoring, and fundraising.
Microsoft Matching Gifts: Microsoft matches employee donations to nonprofit organizations dollar for dollar, up to $15,000 per year. (Learn to launch a matching gift program here)

Chevron’s Corporate Giving Program

In 2022, Chevron donated over $1 billion to charitable organizations around the world. This funding supported a variety of initiatives, including:

Community development: Chevron Humankind supports employees, retirees, and corporate directors in their commitment to building better communities. Chevron offers a 1-to-1 match for your financial contributions to any eligible nonprofit, up to $5,000 per employee and $2,000 per retiree annually.
Education: Chevron supports a variety of educational programs, including scholarships, grants to schools and universities, and support for STEM education.
Environmental sustainability: Chevron supports a variety of environmental sustainability initiatives, including renewable energy projects, carbon capture and storage projects, and support for environmental organizations.
Economic development: Chevron supports a variety of economic development initiatives, including job training programs, small business grants, and support for community development organizations.

Here are some examples of how Chevron's corporate giving program has made a difference in the communities where it operates:

Chevron donated $10 million to support the construction of a new science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) center at a local high school.
Chevron awarded $5 million in grants to support STEM education programs at schools in the company's operating regions.
Chevron partnered with a local environmental organization to plant 10,000 trees in a community that had been affected by a natural disaster.
Chevron supported a small business development program that helped to create 100 new jobs in a local community.

Target’s Corporate Giving Program

Target's corporate giving program offers several features unique to its business. The company uses its resources as a department store in the form of donations and community grants as part of its giving program.

The company also uses a private foundation called the Target Foundationmuch, much like how a donor-advised fund, to facilitate its donations.

Here's a list of what's featured on their corporate giving program:

Target GiftCard donations: Target donates Target GiftCards to local nonprofits and schools. In 2022, Target donated over $20 million in GiftCards to support a variety of causes, including education, hunger relief, and disaster relief.
Target Circle Community Giving: Target Circle is a loyalty program that gives guests the opportunity to vote on how Target donates money to local nonprofits. In 2022, Target Circle members voted to donate over $1 million to support a variety of causes, including food banks, homeless shelters, and youth organizations.
REACH Community Grants: Target's REACH Community Grants program provides funding to Black-led organizations that are working to improve the lives of Black people in the United States. In 2022, Target awarded over $50 million in REACH Community Grants to support a variety of initiatives, such as economic development, education, and health and wellness.
Target Foundation: The Target Foundation is a charitable organization that supports a variety of causes, including education, hunger relief, and disaster relief. In 2022, the Target Foundation donated over $100 million to support these causes.

Lowe’s Corporate Giving Program

Lowe's corporate giving program is a way for the company to give back to the communities where it operates. The program includes a variety of initiatives, such as:

Lowe's Heroes: Lowe's Heroes is a program that encourages Lowe's associates to volunteer in their communities. In 2022, Lowe's Heroes volunteered over 2 million hours in their communities.
Lowe's Hometowns: Lowe's Hometowns is a program that provides grants to local organizations that are working to improve their communities. In 2022, Lowe's Hometowns awarded over $50 million in grants to support a variety of projects, such as building playgrounds, renovating community centers, and providing disaster relief.
Lowe's Foundation: The Lowe's Foundation is a charitable organization that supports a variety of causes, including education, hunger relief, and disaster relief. In 2022, the Lowe's Foundation donated over $100 million to support these causes.

Here are some examples of how Lowe's corporate giving program has made a difference in the communities where it operates:

In 2022, Lowe's Heroes volunteers helped to rebuild a playground that had been damaged by a tornado in Oklahoma.
Lowe's Hometowns grants helped to renovate a community center in Texas that had been damaged by flooding.
The Lowe's Foundation donated money to help provide food and shelter for people affected by a hurricane in Florida.

Amazon Corporate Giving Program

One of Amazon's most well-known corporate giving programs is AmazonSmile. AmazonSmile is a program that allows customers to support their favorite charities every time they shop on Amazon. When customers shop through AmazonSmile, the company donates 0.5% of the purchase price to the customer's chosen charity.

Amazon also has a number of other corporate giving programs, including:

Amazon dollar-for-dollar employee donation matching: In 2019, Amazon launched an employee donation matching program that matches any amount donated to 20 vetted nonprofits that combat homelessness, up to $5 million.
Amazon Future Engineer: This program provides scholarships and other support to students from underrepresented and underserved communities who are interested in pursuing careers in computer science and engineering.
Amazon STEM: This program provides grants and other support to schools and nonprofits that are working to improve STEM education.
Amazon Disaster Relief: This program provides support to communities that have been affected by natural disasters.

Amazon's corporate giving programs have a significant impact on the communities where the company operates. In 2021, Amazon donated over $10 billion to charitable organizations around the world. This funding has helped to support a variety of causes, including education, hunger relief, and disaster relief.

6 mins read

Blog Post

11 Common Types of Corporate Giving Programs

Corporate giving programs are company-subsidized charity programs that businesses use to encourage their employees to participate in donations.

Successful companies build corporate giving programs into their employee benefits packages for a handful of reasons. Those reasons include making the world a better place, attracting and retaining talented employees who want to work for a purpose, and improve the public status of the company.

Corporate giving programs come in many different forms, from gifting and matching to volunteer grants.

Here’s a list of common types of corporate giving programs:

Gifting and Matching

Corporate gifting and matching programs are a way for companies to encourage their employees to give back to their communities. These programs can take many different forms, but they all have the same goal: to make it easier for employees to donate their time and money to causes they care about.

One type of corporate gifting program is a matching gift program. In a matching gift program, the company will match employee donations to certain charities, up to a certain amount. For example, a company might match employee donations to the United Way up to $500 per year. This is a great way for companies to double the impact of their employees' donations.

Another type of corporate gifting program is a volunteer grant program. In a volunteer grant program, the company will give employees paid time off to volunteer for certain charities. This is a great way for employees to give back to their communities without having to sacrifice their work hours.

Corporate gifting and matching programs are a great way for companies to show their employees that they care about giving back. These programs can also help to attract and retain top talent, as employees are more likely to want to work for a company that shares their values.

Here are some of the benefits of corporate gifting and matching programs:

Employee engagement: Corporate gifting and matching programs can help to increase employee engagement by giving employees a way to give back to their communities.
Employee morale: Corporate gifting and matching programs can help to improve employee morale by showing employees that their company cares about giving back.
Company reputation: Corporate gifting and matching programs can help to improve a company's reputation by showing that the company is committed to social responsibility.
Tax benefits: In some cases, corporate gifting and matching programs can provide tax benefits for the company.

If you are looking for a way to give back to your community and show your employees that you care, consider starting a corporate gifting or matching program.

Volunteer Grants

A volunteer grant is a monetary award given to a nonprofit organization by a corporation in recognition of volunteer work being done by a company's employees. This practice is widespread in the United States. Corporate giving programs created to encourage volunteerism by a corporation's employees by providing volunteer grants are called volunteer grant programs or Dollars for Doers programs.

Philanthropic organizations offer grants for individuals to volunteer with nonprofit organizations for an extended period of time. These are sometimes called volunteer grants but are normally referred to as fellowships. In these cases, a volunteer receives a stipend from a nonprofit to live and work within a community in need. Companies typically state that any 501(c)(3) nonprofit or school is eligible for their corporate volunteer grant scheme; most however require a minimum number of hours served.

Volunteer grants can be a great way for companies to encourage their employees to give back to their communities and to support the causes they care about. They can also be a great way for companies to build relationships with local nonprofits and to show their commitment to social responsibility.

If you are a nonprofit organization that is interested in applying for a volunteer grant, be sure to check with your local corporations to see if they offer such a program. You can also find a list of companies that offer volunteer grants online.

Fundraising Match

A fundraising match is a corporate giving program in which a company matches employee donations to a nonprofit organization. For example, if an employee donates $100 to a nonprofit, the company might match that donation with another $100, bringing the total donation to $200.

Fundraising matches are a great way for companies to encourage employees to give back to their communities. They can also help to raise more money for nonprofits.

Here are some of the benefits of fundraising matches:

They can help to raise more money for nonprofits. When a company matches employee donations, it essentially doubles the amount of money that is raised for the nonprofit. This can be a huge help to nonprofits, especially those that are working on important but underfunded causes.
They can encourage employee giving. Fundraising matches can make it more likely that employees will donate to their favorite nonprofits. When employees know that their donations will be matched, they are more likely to give. This can lead to a significant increase in donations for nonprofits.
They can help to build employee morale. Fundraising matches can show employees that their company cares about giving back to the community. This can help to build employee morale and make employees feel more connected to their company.
They can help to improve a company's reputation. When a company has a fundraising match program, it shows that the company is committed to social responsibility. This can help to improve the company's reputation and make it more attractive to potential employees and customers.

If you are looking for a way to support your favorite nonprofit organization, be sure to check with your company to see if they have a fundraising match program. It's a great way to double your donation and help make a difference in the world.

Community Grants

Community grants are financial awards given to nonprofit organizations or other community groups to support their work in the community. They can be used to fund a variety of projects, such as:

Programs that provide direct services to community members, such as food banks, homeless shelters, and after-school programs.
Projects that improve the community's infrastructure, such as parks, libraries, and community centers.
Initiatives that promote social change, such as those that address poverty, hunger, or education inequality.

Community grants are often awarded by foundations, corporations, and government agencies. They can be competitive, so it is important to carefully research the eligibility requirements and application process before applying.

Here are some of the benefits of community grants:

They can help to fund important projects that benefit the community.
They can help to build partnerships between nonprofits and other community groups.
They can help to raise awareness of important issues in the community.
They can help to improve the quality of life in the community.

If you are a nonprofit organization or other community group that is interested in applying for a community grant, be sure to do your research and find a grant that is a good fit for your organization and its work. There are many different types of community grants available, so you are sure to find one that is right for you.

Dollars for Doers

Dollars for Doers is a type of corporate giving program in which a company provides monetary grants to nonprofits where its employees regularly volunteer.

These programs are sometimes referred to by other names such as:

Volunteer grants
Dollar for hour
Matching time
Volunteer matching
Grants for time
Matching gift per hour
Credit per hour
Service credit

Here are some of the benefits of Dollars for Doers programs for both companies and nonprofits:

Companies:
Increased employee engagement and morale
Improved company reputation
Tax benefits
Nonprofits:
Increased funding
Increased visibility
Increased volunteerism

If you are a company or nonprofit interested in learning more about Dollars for Doers programs, many resources are available online. You can also contact your local United Way or other community foundation for more information.

Team Volunteer Grants

A team volunteer grant is a corporate giving program in which a company provides a monetary donation to a nonprofit organization when a group of employees volunteer together. These programs encourage team building, community service, and employee engagement.

Many types of team volunteer grants are available, each with its own set of eligibility requirements and benefits. Some companies offer grants for any team of employees who volunteer together, while others require that teams meet certain criteria, such as a minimum number of volunteer hours or a specific type of service.

In addition to providing financial support, team volunteer grants can also offer other benefits to nonprofits. For example, companies may provide teams with training or resources to help them maximize their volunteer experience. They may also help to promote the nonprofit's work to the company's employees and customers.

If you are interested in applying for a team volunteer grant, you should keep a few things in mind. First, you will need to find a company that offers this type of program. You can search online or contact your company's human resources department. Once you have found a company that offers team volunteer grants, you will need to read the program's eligibility requirements carefully. These requirements may vary from company to company, so it is important to ensure your team meets all of the criteria.

Once you have determined that your team is eligible for a team volunteer grant, you will need to submit an application. The application process will vary from company to company, so be sure to read the instructions carefully. In general, you will need to provide information about your team's volunteer project, the number of hours that your team will volunteer, and the impact that your team's volunteer work will have.

If your team is selected to receive a team volunteer grant, you will be notified by the company. The company will then provide you with the grant money, which you can use to support your team's volunteer project.

Team volunteer grants are a great way to encourage team building, community service, and employee engagement. If your company offers this type of program, I encourage you to apply for a grant. It is a great way to give back to your community and to show your employees that you value their time and effort.

Here are some additional tips for applying for a team volunteer grant:

Start planning your volunteer project early. This will give you plenty of time to find a project that is a good fit for your team and to secure the necessary permissions.
Be clear about the impact that your team's volunteer work will have. This will help the company to see the value of your project and to make a decision about whether or not to award you a grant.
Get creative with your project. The more unique and interesting your project is, the more likely it is to stand out to the company.
Be sure to follow all of the company's requirements. This will increase your chances of being selected for a grant.

Volunteer Support Programs

Volunteer support programs are designed to help volunteers find, prepare for, and succeed in their volunteer roles. These programs can provide volunteers with a variety of resources, such as training, orientation, and support networks.

There are many different types of volunteer support programs available, each with its own focus and target audience. Some programs are designed for specific groups of volunteers, such as new volunteers, young volunteers, or volunteers with disabilities. Other programs are designed to provide support for specific types of volunteer work, such as disaster relief, environmental conservation, or social justice.

Volunteer support programs can be offered by a variety of organizations, including nonprofit organizations, government agencies, and businesses. Some programs are free to use, while others charge a fee.

If you are interested in volunteering, I encourage you to find a volunteer support program that is right for you. These programs can help you make the most of your volunteer experience and make a difference in your community.

Here are some of the benefits of participating in a volunteer support program:

Training and orientation: Volunteer support programs can provide you with the training and orientation you need to be successful in your volunteer role. This training can cover topics such as safety, ethics, and effective communication.
Support networks: Volunteer support programs can provide you with a support network of other volunteers. This network can provide you with encouragement, advice, and friendship.
Resources: Volunteer support programs can provide you with a variety of resources to help you in your volunteer role. These resources can include training materials, equipment, and funding.
Recognition: Volunteer support programs can help you to be recognized for your volunteer work. This recognition can come in the form of awards, certificates, or public recognition.

If you are interested in finding a volunteer support program, there are a few things you can do. First, you can search online for volunteer support programs in your area. You can also contact your local nonprofit organizations, government agencies, and businesses to see if they offer volunteer support programs.

Once you have found a volunteer support program that you are interested in, you can contact the program to learn more about it. The program can provide you with information about the program's requirements, fees, and benefits.

I hope this information is helpful. If you have any further questions, please do not hesitate to ask.

Annual Giving

Annual giving is a type of fundraising that focuses on raising money from individuals on an ongoing basis throughout the year. It is a critical component of a nonprofit's fundraising strategy, as it can provide a steady stream of income to support the organization's ongoing programs and services.

There are many different ways to raise money through annual giving. Some common methods include:

Direct mail
Email
Phone calls
Social media
Special events

Annual giving campaigns can be very successful, but they require careful planning and execution. It is important to identify your target audience, create compelling appeals, and track your results.

If you are a nonprofit, I encourage you to consider annual giving as a part of your fundraising strategy. It is a proven way to raise money from individuals and build a strong donor base.

Here are some of the benefits of annual giving:

It is a reliable source of income for nonprofits.
It helps to build relationships with donors.
It can be used to support a variety of programs and services.
It is a cost-effective way to raise money.

If you are interested in learning more about annual giving, there are many resources available online and in libraries. You can also contact your local nonprofit organization for more information.

Annual Grant Stipends

An annual grant stipend is a type of grant that is awarded to individuals or organizations on an annual basis. These grants are typically used to support ongoing programs or activities, rather than one-time projects.

There are many different types of annual grant stipends available, each with its own eligibility requirements and benefits. Some grants are open to all applicants, while others are only available to specific groups of people, such as students, artists, or nonprofit organizations.

In addition to providing financial support, annual grant stipends can also offer other benefits to recipients, such as:

Access to resources and support networks
Credibility and visibility
Increased opportunities for collaboration and networking
The ability to reach a wider audience

If you are interested in applying for an annual grant stipend, there are a few things you should keep in mind. First, you will need to find a grant that is a good fit for your needs and goals. You can do this by searching online or contacting your local nonprofit organization. Once you have found a grant that you are interested in, you will need to read the application carefully and make sure that you meet all of the eligibility requirements.

The application process for annual grant stipends will vary from grant to grant. However, in general, you will need to provide information about your project, your qualifications, and your budget. You may also be asked to submit letters of support from colleagues, mentors, or other community members.

If you are selected to receive an annual grant stipend, you will be notified by the grantor. The grantor will then provide you with the grant money, which you can use to support your project.

Annual grant stipends are a great way to support your work and make a difference in your community. If you are eligible, I encourage you to apply for a grant. It is a great way to get the financial support you need to achieve your goals.

Here are some additional tips for applying for an annual grant stipend:

Start planning early. The grant application process can be time-consuming, so it is important to start planning early.
Be clear about your goals. The grantor wants to know what you plan to do with the money, so be clear about your goals and how the money will be used.
Tailor your application to the grant. Each grant has its own eligibility requirements and benefits, so be sure to tailor your application to the specific grant you are applying for.
Proofread carefully. Typos and grammatical errors can make a bad impression on the grantor, so be sure to proofread your application carefully before submitting it.

I hope this information is helpful. If you have any further questions, please do not hesitate to ask.

Internal Employee Fundraising

Internal employee fundraising is a type of fundraising that takes place within a company. It is a way for employees to come together and raise money for a cause that they care about.

There are many different ways to raise money through internal employee fundraising. Some common methods include:

Donation campaigns: Employees can donate money directly to the cause.
Matching gifts: Companies can match employee donations, which can double or triple the amount of money raised.
Volunteerism: Employees can volunteer their time to the cause.
Product sales: Employees can sell products or services to raise money for the cause.
Special events: Companies can host special events, such as bake sales or walk-a-thons, to raise money for the cause.

Internal employee fundraising can be a very successful way to raise money for a cause. It is a great way to get employees involved in giving back to their community and to build a sense of community within the company.

Employee Product Donation Programs (EPDP)

An Employee Product Donation Program (EPDP) is a corporate giving program that allows employees to donate company products to nonprofit organizations. EPDPs are a great way for companies to give back to their communities and to engage their employees in philanthropy.

There are many different ways that EPDPs can be structured. Some companies allow employees to donate any company product, while others only allow employees to donate specific products. Some companies also require employees to get approval from their manager before donating, while others do not.

The benefits of EPDPs for companies include:

Increased employee engagement: EPDPs can help to increase employee engagement by giving employees a way to give back to their communities and to feel like they are making a difference.
Positive public relations: EPDPs can generate positive public relations for companies by showing that they are committed to giving back to their communities.
Tax benefits: In some cases, companies may be able to deduct the cost of donated products from their taxes.

The benefits of EPDPs for nonprofits include:

Increased access to resources: EPDPs can help nonprofits to get access to resources that they might not otherwise be able to afford.
Increased visibility: EPDPs can help nonprofits to increase their visibility in the community.
Increased donations: EPDPs can help nonprofits to raise more money from donors.

If you are considering implementing an EPDP, there are a few things you should keep in mind. First, you must ensure you have the resources to support the program. Second, you need to ensure that you have a process for managing the program. Third, you need to make sure that you are promoting the program to your employees.

EPDPs can be a great way for companies to give back to their communities and to engage their employees in philanthropy. If you are considering implementing an EPDP, I encourage you to do so. It is a great way to make a difference in the world.

6 mins read

Blog Post

Nonprofit Organizations Supporting National Mentoring Month

January is National Mentoring Month, a nationally recognized time to spread awareness about the importance of mentoring, and highlight the positive impact it has on people's lives.

It was established in 2002 by the Harvard School of Public Health and MENTOR: The National Mentoring Partnership, with the support of the Corporation for National and Community Service, the U.S. Department of Education, and the U.S. Department of Justice.

In addition to raising awareness, this month is also a time to help inspire and motivate people to become mentors, especially for younger generations. And it is a time to create or support existing mentorship programs at companies and other organizations.

There are numerous nonprofits that have programs to encourage mentorship for people of all ages, including those who are underprivileged or at risk. Consider supporting one of these amazing organizations working to provide critical mentorship to those who need it most.

List of Nonprofits for National Mentoring Month

Hidden Genius Project

The Hidden Genius Project is a nonprofit organization based in Oakland, California that aims to empower young men of color through technology, leadership, and entrepreneurship. The organization was founded in 2012 and offers a variety of programs and services, including a technology bootcamp, a leadership development program, and an entrepreneurship incubator.

The goal of the Hidden Genius Project is to help young men of color develop the skills and knowledge they need to succeed in the tech industry and become leaders in their communities.

Women’s Mentoring Network

Women’s Mentoring Network is an organization serving Fairfield County, Connecticut. Their mission is to provide career, educational and personal resources that lead to the economic empowerment of low-income women and their families.

100 Black Men Of America Inc.

100 Black Men of America, Inc. is a nonprofit organization that works to improve the quality of life for African Americans and other underserved communities through programs in education, health and wellness, economic empowerment, and leadership development.

The organization was founded in New York City in 1963 and has chapters in cities throughout the United States.

Some of the programs and initiatives offered by 100 Black Men of America, Inc. include mentorship and leadership development for youth, health screenings and wellness education, financial literacy and economic empowerment workshops, and college preparation and scholarship programs. The organization also advocates for policies and initiatives that promote equity and opportunity for African Americans and other underserved communities. I hope this information is helpful. Let me know if you have any other questions.

Big Brothers Big Sisters of America

Big Brothers Big Sisters of America (BBBSA) is a non-profit organization that provides one-to-one mentorship programs for children and youth facing adversity. The organization was founded in 1904 and has a network of affiliates located in all 50 states.

BBBSA's mentorship programs are designed to help young people develop positive relationships, improve their academic and social skills, and achieve their full potential. The organization matches young people, or "Littles," with adult volunteers, or "Bigs," based on shared interests and goals. Littles and Bigs participate in activities together, such as spending time outdoors, playing sports, or participating in community service projects.

BBBSA's programs are designed to be flexible and adaptable to the needs and schedules of Littles and Bigs. The organization offers a variety of mentorship programs to meet the needs of different age groups and populations, including programs for children, teenagers, and young adults.

BBBSA's mission is to provide children facing adversity with strong and enduring, professionally supported one-to-one relationships that change their lives for the better, forever. I hope this information is helpful. Let me know if you have any other questions.

Anthropos Arts

Anthropos Arts is a nonprofit organization founded to address a need in Austin for high-quality music education for low-income students. Their mission is to connect low-income youth with professional musicians, cultivating confidence, integrity and life-skills through musical instruction and mentorship.

Since inception, Anthropos Arts has provided over 18,000 music lessons, over 100 incredible workshops in Title 1 schools with world- class and Grammy- winning artists, over 150 public student performances and collaborations with world-renowned artists.

HER Resiliency Center

HER Resiliency Center is a nonprofit organization dedicated to serving vulnerable young women ages 18 to 25, regardless of race, class and background, with the support, skills and resources they need to make educated decisions in their life.

The organization works to combat isolation, domestic violence, substance use, homelessness, and sexual exploitation.

Foundation For Choice

Foundation for Choice is a nonprofit organization that promotes choice in education and advocates for policies that give families more control over their children's education.

The organization supports a variety of educational options, including traditional public schools, charter schools, private schools, and homeschooling. It believes that all families should have the right to choose the best educational option for their children, and that competition among schools can drive improvements in education.

Foundation for Choice works to educate the public about the benefits of school choice and to advocate for policies that increase the availability of educational options for families.

GEMS

Girls Educational and Mentoring Services (GEMS) is a non-profit organization that provides support to young women and girls who have experienced commercial sexual exploitation and domestic trafficking.

GEMS was founded in 1998 by Rachel Lloyd, a survivor of commercial sexual exploitation, with the goal of helping young women and girls escape the cycle of violence, exploitation, and trauma that they have experienced. The organization provides a range of services to its clients, including crisis intervention, counseling, education and vocational training, and legal and advocacy support.

GEMS also works to raise awareness about the issue of commercial sexual exploitation and domestic trafficking and to advocate for policy and legislative change at the local, state, and national level.

Summer Search

Summer Search is a nonprofit organization that helps low-income high school students develop the skills and confidence they need to succeed in college and beyond. The organization provides students with mentorship, leadership development, and experiential learning opportunities through summer programs and ongoing support throughout high school and college.

Summer Search helps students discover their passions and potential, and empowers them to make a positive impact in their communities.

Minds Matter Southern California

Minds Matter is a national organization that provides academic enrichment and support to high-achieving, low-income students in order to help them get into college.

Minds Matter Southern California is a chapter of the national organization, and it serves students in the Southern California region. The organization provides students with a variety of resources, including tutoring, test preparation, and college admissions counseling, to help them succeed in school and prepare for college. It also provides students with the opportunity to participate in college visits, cultural events, and other activities designed to broaden their horizons and help them succeed in the future.

Scholar Match

ScholarMatch is a nonprofit organization that helps students from low-income families find and apply for college scholarships. It was founded in 2010 by Kofi Andoh, a graduate of the University of California, Berkeley.

The organization's mission is to make college more accessible and affordable for students who might not otherwise have the opportunity to pursue higher education.

ScholarMatch provides a variety of services to its users, including assistance with finding and applying for scholarships, mentorship, and college readiness resources. It works with high schools, colleges, and community-based organizations to identify talented students who could benefit from its services and to provide them with the support they need to succeed in college and beyond.

Learn more about corporate giving with Groundswell.

6 mins read

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Spotlight: The Hidden Genius Project

For National Mentoring Month, Groundswell highlights the Hidden Genius Project.

Founded in 2012, the Hidden Genius Project came together when five men sought after higher employment for Black communities by establishing programs that connect the youth with skilled, experienced mentors.

HGP trains and mentors Black male youth in technology creation, entrepreneurship, and leadership skills to transform their lives and communities.

Join us in congratulating and thanking the Hidden Genius Project for the impact they’ve made on communities all across the nation.

Learn more about the Hidden Genius Project programs:

Intensive Immersion
Catalyst Programs
Community Partner
Youth Education
Alumni Venture Seed Fund
Uber Career Prep Program

Envisioning a Future with More Black Entrepreneurs and Technologists

In 2019, the Hidden Genius Project laid out a strategy plan for growth. As a fast-growing, innovative organization, they envisioned themselves becoming the global leader in Black male youth development.

Their plan to become the leading incubator of dynamic young Black male entrepreneurs and technologists has come a long way since launching its flagship program, Intensive Immersion.

With only $1,500 and a staff of volunteers, their organization grew from serving five students in 2012 to 1478 by 2018.

The Hidden Genius Project continues expanding its operation from its roots in Oakland, CA and the Bay Area. By 2025, HGP aims to open the Intensive Immersion program in five more cities, bringing the total to 10 sites.

National Mentoring Month

Since January is National Mentoring Month, a nationally recognized time to spread awareness about the importance of mentoring, we’re showcasing the positive impact nonprofits like the Hidden Genius Project have on the lives of people.

In addition to raising awareness, this month is also a time to help inspire and motivate people to become mentors, especially for younger generations. It is also a time to create or support existing mentorship programs at companies and other organizations.

Donate to the Hidden Genius Project on the Groundswell app.

Follow The Hidden Genius Project on social media:

6 mins read

Blog Post

From Dock to Dish: A Deep Dive Into Seafood Sustainability

This week we dive into an interview with Wendy Norden, Director of Science and Global Strategies at Seafood Watch Program at the Monterey Bay Aquarium, discussing the interconnected depths of consumer buying, aquaculture, climate change, and economics of seafood.Celebrating seafood sustainability is a cause bigger than itself affecting human populations around the world as much as the species we fish and farm, and a cause that Meg Vandervort of Groundswell is particularly passionate about. Meg sat down with Wendy Norden from the Monterey Bay Aquarium’s Seafood Watch Program with questions to help all of us non-marine biologists understand the challenges and successes surrounding sustainable seafood. Wendy spent years working underwater as a marine biologist and researcher, before moving to New Zealand and working in a government role overseeing their seafood industry. For the past twelve years, Wendy has been with the Monterey Bay Aquarium and is currently the Director of Science and Global Strategies for their Seafood Watch Program, responsible for the overall scientific integrity, vision, innovation, and direction of the program. She’s also in charge of maintaining global strategic direction and partnerships that support global fisheries and aquaculture improvement.

Welcome! In celebration of World Oceans Day this year, I’m excited to dive into a topic near and dear to me—seafood sustainability. I’m a huge fan of Monterey Bay Aquarium and have been following the Seafood Watch program for some years now. For those who aren’t as familiar, can you give a brief overview of what Seafood Watch is doing to advance healthier oceans?

Wendy: Sure, and of course. Seafood Watch provides the information needed to make better choices at the supermarket, and we'll work with business partners to really source seafood and see that it’s more responsibly done. And it really boils down to very difficult subject matter into a guide, like red, yellow, and green, knowing what to source and also knowing that you know, consumer choices really do matter quite a bit. You know, that also has very broad reaching applications as well. So when consumers make choices in the United States, our business partners kind of come to the table—they want to source those seafood products that the consumers are looking for and also to make a better planet as well. But on top of that, it also gives producers around the world an idea of where their product is in terms of sustainability. And it is a big landscape, right, from really great production to really poor and everything kind of in between. So, we provide that information that helps guide purchasing but also helps industry understand about sustainability in order to make change and make things better, because our goal really is about celebrating seafood, making the right choices, and hopefully improving the rest.

That’s wonderful! I’m actually curious to learn a little bit more about you. We always love to highlight the people behind some of these amazing movements that are happening, but can you give us a brief history or your journey to the Monterey Bay Aquarium, Seafood Watch program, and have you always had a passion for the ocean growing up?

Wendy: It’s a very winding path. Growing up I got into scuba diving. Before college, I worked several jobs and saved a lot of money because I wanted to travel, so then I went to New Zealand, Australia, and Fiji as a young person. When I went scuba diving in most of these places for the first time, I did not realize at that point that it could be a job, like you could actually do this kind of work. The minute I came back home, I officially got advanced certified and I enrolled in college to really be a marine biologist. Everyone told me at that point, “that's nice, you'll never get a job”, but I was determined to do it anyway because I knew I’d figure it out. Throughout college, I had a lot of great internships, and I did a lot of work underwater. I got more experience doing research, but I wanted to do more. I ended up moving to New Zealand for several years, and I got a really great job working for the government working on a program to reduce bycatch, and I actually worked on the observer program for the whole country. That really helped me understand how to work better with the industry, how to set goals that maybe people didn't agree with, but learned how to actually work together. That and science, plus understanding what to actually call it, really helped me. With that experience, I ended up working in academics for a while. When I got to Seafood Watch, all that experience helped me understand how to apply science in an understandable way—how to work with the industry, knowing that you might be at odds at some point, but you actually all want the same end goal as well. It really helped me set up my career, and I’ve been with Seafood Watch for almost twelve years now. It’s been a very exciting journey. I learn every day—something different, something new—and I have amazing partners.

That’s exciting! Sounds like a dream job.

Wendy: Yeah, I feel really lucky. I never get bored. I find I'm amazed at the people that I meet all the time because I travel—or I used to before COVID— all over the place, talking to people about seafood, working with producers, understanding where everyones’ values are. At the end of the day, everyone wants to do a good job for seafood sustainability.

You touched on something that leads me to my next question about seafood sustainability in general, which is that it's actually an extremely complex thing, and it's not so cut and dry, like just buying from the local fisherman, or don’t eat fish.

But between sustainable fishing practices, aquaculture and the seafood supply chain – it's a lot to wrap your head around. What would you say for someone who's just getting into understanding this topic? What is the most pressing thing we can focus on?

Wendy: I feel like at any level, if you want to get involved, there's a place for you. I think if you really just want to, say, I want to understand the source of a particular seafood and I'm going to purchase responsibly, use our information. We boil it all down into very simple red, yellow and green. All of our reports and assessments are online, so if you want to dig a little deeper, you can read those assessments and understand the issues. There really is a place for any level of information you want, essentially, because we put it all out there. It's all out there publicly available. I think it really is important to know that the choices we make do matter at the grocery store. They do mean something. And they help us do our work and improve, because we want to celebrate seafood. We think eating seafood is a great thing. We want to have all seafood produced in a way that's sustainable and when I say sustainable, I mean the environment. I mean food security. I also mean things like better equity and supply chains. So, it really has to be good for people and the ocean.

Oh, that's so interesting. I'm also curious, from the general consumers’ perspective, a question that might come up is “should I potentially avoid buying a particular type of seafood?” For example, if I'm buying shrimp, is it more likely that it's unsustainably caught or has human trafficking attached to it?

Wendy: I go back to using our recommendations. The red is really what things you should avoid. Our hope is that red doesn't stay red. Our hope is not like you just abandon it and say, I'm not buying this again. But it does matter because when consumers don't buy something because it's red, that gives us a lot of incentives to go to the industry and say look, this is really what people are wanting. They want more sustainable products. That does go a long way. What we do in our reports is dig into those major issues. Why does it cause red? So we have standards that we develop from wild-capture and fisheries. We know scientifically why it's not sustainable, and it gives us the consumer demand. It really gives us that extra incentive for the industry to make those changes, which are also good for them. Any seafood product generally can be the best choice, farmed from any country that has a species—it's just a matter of us getting the right data, and us being able to say it isn't being done the right way. So the ability is there, like our green listing isn’t completely aspirational. It is doable, but it's a high bar. Everyone can actually get there. And that is our goal: To push the entire industry and have a much more sustainable industry overall.

On a brighter note, what are some of the bigger recent accomplishments that the Seafood Watch program has had that maybe people don't know about?

Wendy: Well, I think a big one that we haven't talked about enough is our development of our improvement verification platform, which doesn't sound very exciting, but it really is. We have developed the technology with partners to collect data efficiently and quickly on a farm and then scale it up to a region to understand. We actually can assess thousands of farms and in little time spent, get them to that green level. That has not happened in the past. We've developed technology that basically works online or offline and collects data efficiently and quickly, and then we scale it up to a region so you can have more scalable change. It also identifies areas needing improvement. We already have 2,000 shrimp farms going through the system that are green. To me, that's a huge accomplishment that's taken us a long time to develop. Very exciting. We also have recently launched aquaculture governance indicators, which again doesn't sound exciting, but it is because we have developed these indicators. We don't really know what makes really good aquaculture governance structures. What do you need to have? What are the key elements? We worked on developing those key elements to help the governance structures, and it isn't just about legislation, it's about how the industry is formed, and how reactive it is to change and how adaptable it is that the system in place in a country or region that allows for good things to happen allowing for sustainability. Understanding those underlying conditions and what gets in the way of sustainability is super important, because it isn't as simple as saying, here's a checklist. There's a reason why that isn't happening. And it could be infrastructure, it could be poverty, it could be too many illegal things happening. It could be many different things. It helps us understand underlying conditions that exist. A third one I'll just briefly talk about, one issue, is why use antibiotics for aquaculture? And that’s spread across every production system from farm salmon, shrimp, tilapia, you name it. We convened a large working group of fifty people from over twenty-one countries in the last year with the World Bank and came up with the key areas of impact on antibiotics, because we still don't even know that necessarily. What are our key recommendations going forward about what we think we should do, and how do you actually make sure the antibiotic issue doesn’t get out of control? Because right now, with warming water temperatures, you're gonna have more disease, more need for antibiotics. And in poor countries, you often don't even have labels on bottles for these things. Some people don’t really know what they're putting in their ponds. We are going to be launching our key recommendations very soon on that government and industry and then we're also doing a series of workshops to talk to farmers directly and find out what their needs are.

Wonderful, thank you so much for your insight and time, Wendy!

For Seafood Watch’s consumer guides to buying sustainable seafood that Wendy mentions, you can find them at SeafoodWatch.org.Log into your Groundswell Personal Giving Account to support Monterey Bay Aquarium and the Seafood Watch Program.

6 mins read

Blog Post

Anna Malaika Tubbs: On Celebrating Black Motherhood, and Creating a Social Justice-Driven Portfolio

At Groundswell, we are privileged to talk to a wide range of individuals about philanthropy in all its forms. That is why we are so grateful to have had the opportunity to speak with New York Times best-selling author of The Three Mothers, Anna Malaika Tubbs. The Three Mothers shines a light on mothers Alberta King, Louise Little, and Berdis Baldwin, who raised and shaped Martin Luther King Jr., Malcolm X., and James Baldwin. The book celebrates their legacy and Black motherhood which has shaped much of American history. Anna believes in supporting philanthropic organizations that recognize the importance of motherhood, particularly for black women in America.

Thanks for joining us, Anna. It’s an honor to speak with you. You begin your book by outlining your personal tie to three very incredible mothers — Alberta King, Louise Little, and Berdis Baldwin — and how their history spans over the past century. That’s incredible. What ultimately led you to exploring these three incredible women in particular?

It was done out of curiosity, and it was a sort of elimination process, in the sense that I knew I wanted to do a project like Hidden Figures, Margot Lee Shetterly's book. I wanted to be a person who discovered other hidden figures; other black women whose tales we should have known all along but had been lost, erased, or hidden.

I had an amazing mother who was always talking about the significance of celebrating mothers and paying more attention to the crucial role that moms play in our society.

So I've always had this idea in my head that I'm going to do something about black mothers who should have been known.I wanted to focus on the civil rights movement because it comes up so frequently in our policy debates and other discussions. I whittled it down to these three since they were born within six years of each other, and their famous kids were born within five years of each other. This brought them together over time without reducing their complexity and diversity, while celebrating their differences; each chapter covers ten years of their lives.

What I think is so great about your book is your approach to research, and how you were so honest about what information you could find and what you could not. The absence of history is equally as important. That said, you talk about the erasure of Black Women in history, especially through the eyes of Alberta, Louise, and Berdis. Even through your initial research it was hard to nail down exact details like birthdays, and you say Berdis’s name wasn’t even listed in the US. Census. For those who are unaware, can you outline why this Is so important to explore this history and how it better informs us today?

The research process was really difficult, and I'd like to point out that this was also the subject of my PhD dissertation, so this is completely original research.

I needed to dig for every single detail that I uncovered, and even if I found a small nugget of information, I needed to push further to understand the context behind it.

Also, I needed to remember that a lot of what I was finding had been filtered via men, typically white men, who recounted these stories quite differently from how I would. So it was highly complicated, requiring a variety of procedures such as contacting local historians, searching census data, locating land deed, birth certificates, death certificates, and interviewing family members. I'm doing my best to fill in the blanks with information from documents I discover. But it is a reminder to us, first and foremost, of how we value various lives in different ways.

I like to speak about each of our lives as if they are puzzles, and certain puzzles we put together, frame, and hang, either on a mantel or on a wall, to treasure, marvel at, celebrate, and honor.

Then there are the puzzles that we just leave on the ground; every time we move, we leave some pieces in one house, we may throw them away, or the dog may chew on them; no one is ensuring that we retain this information, notice it, or care about it. So I was there, putting the puzzle pieces together.

What I believe is important is that we do this for more people; each story does matter, especially when we see how black women have contributed everything they could to the progression of this nation.

Unfortunately, we continue to disregard their lives, saying, your history doesn't matter, your contributions don't matter. As a result, we've arrived at a point where we don't understand what's going on in our country. We believe that all of these instances of sexism and racism, the intersectionality of the two, as well as the many other isms with which it intersects, occur at random or independently of one another, rather than as a product of years and years of devaluing lives.It's done through systems, regulations, and extremely strategic tactics to eliminate people in order to keep those puzzle parts scattered and concealed. So I simply want more of us to take on that project. I don't want this to be the only book about the three of them. I was declaring that they are worthy of study, worthy of celebration, and worthy of being on the cover of a book. Because what they deserve, in my opinion, was to be seen, celebrated, and honored.

Speaking especially of Alberta, Louise, and Berdis' stories, what surprised you when writing your book, and what was left out of their history?

When I first came up with the idea, I merely wanted to recognize them as individuals with their own interesting lives. I knew they'd be not just intriguing, but also valuable to our society in the ways they were generating life beyond their children through activism and creativity. I wasn't trying to argue that since Alberta [King] did this, Martin [Luther King] did this—I wasn't trying to emphasize the sons in that way. But every piece of information madethe relationship and connections so evident, they’re undeniable.Even if I didn't tell you their names and only described the women based on their passions and approach to fighting for freedom, you'd be able to connect them with their sons. Even if you only know a little bit about the sons.Those are the instances where it's surprising we didn't already know their names.

Moms affect their children in a variety of ways, and you can't dispute it in these three cases.

Because you almost had to work at separating them, it made the erasure even more infuriating. You must purposefully leave out the fact that they are linked. During the course of writing this book, I discovered that the sons did give credit to their mothers. So it's not really their fault; rather, it's those of us who have researched them and determined that they don't fit our racist patriarchal view of who matters. Those who have said, we'll leave that as a footnote but we're not going to center it in the way you believe it should be centered in the record.

You talk about how the media played a role in the erasure of these women’s stories, which essentially shaped what the narratives would become. How does this affect those that are intentionally being erased?

This is a fantastic segue for me to speak about my TED talk, because it's all about storytelling and how we follow the stories that we’re told and how our policy reflects that. In the TED talk, I address the way we talk about moms in the stories we share, not only on an interpersonal level, but in media and in literature. We thank moms for being selfless and putting everyone else's needs ahead of their own.

Moms themselves then believe they should be individuals who don't have their own needs and don't have their own identities.

That can be excruciatingly painful, frustrating, and confusing. It also expands on the stories we're telling in the media that don't highlight the contributions of mothers. We as a society believe that mothers are exclusively important in the domestic sphere, or we take those contributions for granted, or employers will try to fire mothers because they believe they are distracted, even though there is no evidence to support this.Then we see that when it comes to voting for policies that could actually help moms and provide them the support and resources they need for their important job, we can't get them passed because people don't seem to believe they're required. So, if you don't believe the role is important, or that it is easy, you're not going to vote for things like parental leave.We live in a country that does not value motherhood; we do not have affordable childcare, universal preschool, or even universal health care, all of which overlap with the role of motherhood. During the pandemic, we saw many women, particularly moms of color, leave their work because they had no other option. I do believe that a lot of that stems from our cultural understanding of motherhood; if more of us understood the essential nature of the job, stay-at-home moms, for example, what they do for all of us, not just for their children, but for all of us day in and day out, it would be easy for us to say, "Yeah, let's vote for those things. We need that," so I want us to see more stories that represent mothers accurately and their role more appropriately.

Out of curiosity, are you aware of any other cultures outside of America that properly values motherhood?

We've seen these rankings in terms of maternal health and motherhood happiness in the United States, which is really low when compared to other countries. We have a maternal health problem that is disproportionately affecting black women and women of color, but it also affects all women; women are dying at higher rates in this country. That is something that we should all be very concerned about.

Mothers are reporting higher levels of postpartum depression, they're burning out, they're exhausted.

They feel like there's something wrong with them, because they've been told they're supposed to take care of all of this, and then not be thanked for it. As if it's okay to be invisible.Sweden and other Scandinavian countries, for example, have models and policies that we may replicate in the United States. Scandinavia has a more homogeneous culture than the United States; we have a lot more diversity here. However, this does not preclude the adoption of universal parental leave or the distribution of baby boxes in the United States. In Sweden, for example, parents receive a package including the fundamental necessities that they will require when raising a child. That is something we could do in the United States. We could create daycare centers in companies so that if parents do return to work outside the home, they may bring their children with them to the same location, which would increase production for the entire company.

There are many bits and pieces and policies from other countries that I believe we can still apply to the United States, despite the fact that our population is considerably more diverse than that of most other countries.

What organizations would you include now in your own giving portfolio for advocacy work, particularly around motherhood?

The first one I think of is Black Mama's Matter. In the United States, black women, particularly black moms, are still considered as less than human beings. Their effort to build this alliance of people with diverse knowledge, backgrounds, and experiences to address the core causes of black maternal health and the black mother’s experience in the United States is critical.

I wanted to write about black mothers because the dehumanization is evident when you look at the relationship between our country and black mothers in the United States – mothers being refused basic treatment, denied human respect, and being treated with a lack of basic decency.

I also really love the work of the Young Women's Freedom Center. It's in San Francisco, and it works with women who have been impacted by various systems, such as incarceration or juvie. All of these other things that have locked our young women of color away and then blamed them for their experiences, rather than the systems that have pushed them to the margins and forgotten about them and tried to ignore them. Through working with the center, they can reclaim their identity and use their voice.Essie Justice Group is another. It is led by a friend of mine. We see that the cost of having a loved one in prison is quite high, and black women are spending a lot of their money paying into this mass incarceration system in the United States. Instead of addressing the various issues that lead to them being taken away and locked up, we continue to place that burden on the shoulders of black women. So anything that relieves that weight, anything that reminds us that this isn't just a black woman's problem to fix, but that it will affect our entire nation is work that I support and a message that I try to elevate.

If we can come together and really focus on the experience of black women, it will be beneficial to us all.

All of those organizations sound incredible. What is your process of finding which organizations to support around a cause?

I like to begin by asking why we want to talk about black women, and by discussing the legislation that has existed from the beginning of slavery and states that black women are the producers of property rather than the producers of life. It is important to understand that from the start, the idea that a black person's life begins as property is key to understanding the ills of our nation.That is what we want to examine, as well as how this concept about the life of a black person has permeated so many different systems. Then we'd want to know who the organizations are that are dealing with those various systems. So whether that's through tackling mass incarceration – which continues to say that these people are objects and not people, and we can control their lives and their lives matter less than other people's lives – or through thinking about the American gynecological system, and how it's based on experimenting on the bodies of enslaved black women.I’d ask: How is all that still playing out today? Who are the organizations that recognize black women as having been viewed as less than human? What are they doing now to fight for humanity? That's how I'd organize a portfolio.

For our last question, what advice would you give to someone who wishes to be a true ally, especially after reading your book?

That's a great question. When the topic of allyship comes up, I remember my mother, a white woman with black children.

She would approach me and say, "In this world, I have no idea what it's like to be a black girl or a black woman. And I'm not going to pretend I know; I'm not going to claim to understand your experiences. But what I can say is that I believe you are worthy of the same respect and dignity that everyone else is, and I will walk with you, learn with you, and do my best to make this world a better place for you."

I'm paraphrasing; these are not exact words; they are a compilation of lessons learned throughout the last 29 years of my life. But this was her general approach to things, and that's exactly what we're looking for in allies.We're not expecting somebody to say, "I know what it's like to be a black woman," because that's not the correct thing to say. Don't say anything like that. It's fine to recognize that your and mine experiences will differ in this regard. You may say "I feel you are entitled to be regarded as a human being and to have access to the same resources as I do. And I will do my part to help with that. And I will walk beside you and learn alongside you. And it shouldn't be much more complicated than that as a result of that mindset, there will be sacrifices. And I'm not going to pretend that I understand what it's like to be you." I believe it is an accurate summary. And perhaps, more individuals will feel at ease embracing that charge.

6 mins read

Blog Post

The Guide to Being a Modern Philanthropist: Elevate Your Impact With Groundswell

Six Tips to Becoming a Modern Philanthropist

Summary

Pick causes and charities that align with your values: When deciding what you want to support, start by taking into consideration the people, places, or problems that you care about most.
Understand impact through the lens of size & geography: The geographic reach of different charities' programs, and how large or small they are, can help as you determine what to support.
Evaluate best in class charities: Learn how to assess not only the financial health of an organization, but also what questions to ask when looking at other impact metrics.
Set a giving goal: Decide how much you want to give annually through Groundswell, and follow the simple steps to set up contributions to achieve that goal.
Maximize impact through recurring donations: Simplify your giving and provide nonprofits with a steady stream of revenue through monthly, recurring donations.
Optimize your giving through tax-efficient strategies: Leverage the versatility of Groundswell to reduce your tax burden through payroll giving, stocks contributions, and bunching.

1. Pick Causes & Charities that Align with Your Values

2. Understand Impact: Size & Geography

Where to donate

Does size matter?

3. Evaluate "Best in Class" Charities

Programmatic Impact: Understanding a nonprofit’s impact - through its programs and the populations that it serves - is an important way to evaluate its effectiveness in tackling the causes you care about. Many nonprofits provide details about programming approaches on their websites, including testimonials, photos, and reports detailing specific results. Keep in mind that understanding and assessing impact is highly qualitative - there is no clear ‘score’ - especially because what or who is being impacted varies across the thousands of nonprofits.

Financial Management: Nonprofits, especially larger ones, are required to disclose details related to their financial performance annually – to include assets, revenue and breakdown of expenses in forms submitted to the IRS. Many nonprofits are proactively transparent about their finances and post audited financial statements and other reports on their websites. But financial data does not always tell a complete story. There may be important investments in fundraising staff, which two years later yield a windfall in donations that can be put towards programs.

Advisories: Sometimes there are advisories based on pending or ongoing legal action. Groundswell works to monitor these advisories and remove any charities that it believes are acting improperly or mismanaging donor funds. We also remove any charities that have had their nonprofit status revoked by the IRS.

Groundswell-curated Featured Causes: While many donors might want to do their own research, sometimes it’s far easier (and efficient) to put your trust in others. Groundswell’s impact team provides donors with additional inspiration, and has done the vetting work to determine cause-specific organizations that are well run and most importantly having a strong impact.

4. Aim High with a Giving Goal

Your giving goal can help fund recurring donations, as well as account for unexpected events that you may want to donate to.

5. Level Up with Recurring Donations

Recurring donations can be a great component of your philanthropic strategy. As a bonus, there are benefits for both donors as well as nonprofits.

For donors, setting recurring donations to autopilot every month or quarter means you don’t have to think about it or go through the steps to do it on a regular basis.

6. Optimize Your Tax-Efficient Giving

You can leverage the versatility of your Groundswell Personal Giving Account, which is underpinned by a Donor-Advised Fund, to be strategic and reduce your tax burden.

Donate appreciated stock

Plus, you'll be eligible for a tax deduction for the full fair market value of the stock at the time of contribution into your Groundswell account.

Give with payroll

Bundle contributions

Want access to other toolkits like this?

Groundswell enables companies to lay the foundation for their employees to adopt a generous giving attitude towards charities and world-shaping efforts.

6 mins read

Blog Post

The Science of Giving: Why Do People Donate to Charity?

It’s easy enough to give away that old sofa stashed in the corner of your garage. But why do people donate to charity? What causes you, or anyone else, to send a $100 check to a foundation or spend an evening tutoring underserved youth? We have dozens of sayings about giving. Do good and good things will happen to you. To whom much is given, much is expected. I can’t do everything, but I can do something. There’s more, but the point is that giving is a part of the human experience. Without a doubt, for many people, it seems the right thing to do. People give because it feels good to do so. Americans are a particularly generous lot. In fact, 60% of us give money, 72% help strangers and 42% volunteer, often just because we are asked. And during the pandemic? Americans became even more generous. In 2020 and 2021, donations were higher than they were in 2019. The average donation per person was $574 in 2021.What’s more, there are undeniable psychological and scientific benefits that make donating important to the human spirit and will keep people giving generously into the foreseeable future.

The Science of Giving: What Happens in the Brain

For Americans, there are plenty of opportunities to spend money which, researchers admit, provide a dopamine hit. So it can be tempting to think that we’re just a purchase away from nirvana. But the accumulation of things is not the type of spending that makes a difference in our lives or the lives of others. We get more bang for the buck, so to speak, when we give to others. That’s because giving has a positive impact on the brain. It makes sense that our brains would reward us for helping to preserve society, releasing the same types of feel-good chemicals as during exercise. It is one of the evolutionary traits that has helped us build prosperous civilizations. In fact, in 2006, Jorge Moll and Jordan Grafman, neuroscientists at the National Institutes of Health, were able to measure the neural activity of giving, thus proving what we intuitively knew already. Subjects were allocated money that they could either keep for themselves or donate to selected charities. By tracking the impact on the pleasure centers of the brain, researchers discovered that the midbrain ventral tegmental area (VTA) and the subgenual area lit up when subjects donated the money. These are the same parts of the brain that light up when presented with a delicious meal or when talking about a romantic partner.

Why Do People Donate to Charity?

For years, there has been a philosophical discussion about whether or not charitable giving is altruistic. Do people give their money and donate their time just for the purpose of doing good, expecting nothing in return? Psychologists and philosophers argue that because charitable acts lead to feelings of happiness and satisfaction, true altruism does not exist.But many people consider this argument flawed. When it comes to human behavior, there are many shades of gray. If a benefactor feels happier following an act of kindness, that doesn’t mean that the motivation is self-serving.

Altruism

Altruism is a hallmark of cooperation. Cooperation underpins our society and is, in part, what separates humans from animals. Why do people donate? Because it feels good. Our society is built on the values of empathy, compassion and solidarity, among others. People give because doing so fosters a sense of belonging and generates meaning and purpose in their lives. There are other good outcomes, as well.

Giving May Help Depression

It’s pretty obvious that giving makes people happier. Michael Norton, professor of psychology at Harvard and co-author of the book, “Happy Money: The Science of Happier Spending,” agrees. “When we tell people ‘Hey, did you know that giving to other people can make you happy?’ Most people are not blown away. They’ve had experiences that make them happy. They understand the concept, but it doesn’t occur to us that often to give instead of getting stuff for ourselves.”If you’re assuming that depression is not a major factor in your company, don’t be so sure. According to a July 2021 survey by SilverCloud Health, approximately two-thirds of U.S. workers suffer from clinical levels of depression or anxiety. Depression may mean that employees exhibit a high rate of absenteeism and fall short in key areas of performance, including decision-making, focus and communications. When an employee is depressed, it can have a devastating effect on the workplace. Depression is generally accompanied by a decline in how an individual views themselves. It may seem intuitive for those suffering from depression to attempt to bolster their self-image by focusing on, for example, getting others to notice their positive qualities. But researchers found that goals centered around self-image will likely make matters worse. Alternatively, they found that the pursuit of compassionate goals, that is, helping others, seems to alleviate the symptoms of depression and improve personal relationships. Perhaps that’s because helping others puts one’s own life into perspective and generates a more optimistic outlook.

Giving Increases Longevity

Charitable volunteering could even increase your lifespan. A classic study published in the Journal of Health Psychology concluded that elderly volunteers had a 44% lower mortality rate within the next five years after controlling for health habits, social support and other factors. According to researchers, prosocial spending or spending money on other people (which includes charitable donations) can even lower blood pressure and reduce inflammation, both risk factors for a number of health conditions.

The Charitable Brain and Your Corporate Giving Programs

According to Michael Norton, automatic withdrawals may not be enough to engage your employees. “(Automatic withdrawals are) not going to have as big an impact on my life as if I’m thinking about who I’m giving to and why I’m giving to them and the impact that I’m having.” When you understand how and why charitable giving makes people happy, you can leverage this information to make your corporate giving program one that will not only engage and delight your employees but accrue benefits to the company and to the broader society as well. The best programs align with corporate values and help employees establish habits that facilitate giving in a memorable and meaningful way. Certainly, it makes sense for companies to implement programs that are easy to administer. But they must also ensure that employees are involved in selecting charities, auditing themselves, managing their giving targeting, tracking the good deeds of the non-profits and maybe even volunteering. With a properly executed corporate giving program, companies can realize the many benefits that such a plan has to offer to its employees and to the communities it serves. At Groundswell, we can help you give your corporate giving program a whole new look and feel and make it a pillar of your compensation system. Contact us for more information.

6 mins read

Blog Post

From Dock to Dish: A Deep Dive Into Seafood Sustainability

Welcome! In celebration of World Oceans Day this year, I’m excited to dive into a topic near and dear to me—seafood sustainability. I’m a huge fan of Monterey Bay Aquarium and have been following the Seafood Watch program for some years now. For those who aren’t as familiar, can you give a brief overview of what Seafood Watch is doing to advance healthier oceans?

That’s wonderful! I’m actually curious to learn a little bit more about you. We always love to highlight the people behind some of these amazing movements that are happening, but can you give us a brief history or your journey to the Monterey Bay Aquarium, Seafood Watch program, and have you always had a passion for the ocean growing up?

That’s exciting! Sounds like a dream job.

You touched on something that leads me to my next question about seafood sustainability in general, which is that it's actually an extremely complex thing, and it's not so cut and dry, like just buying from the local fisherman, or don’t eat fish.

But between sustainable fishing practices, aquaculture and the seafood supply chain – it's a lot to wrap your head around. What would you say for someone who's just getting into understanding this topic? What is the most pressing thing we can focus on?

Oh, that's so interesting. I'm also curious, from the general consumers’ perspective, a question that might come up is “should I potentially avoid buying a particular type of seafood?” For example, if I'm buying shrimp, is it more likely that it's unsustainably caught or has human trafficking attached to it?

On a brighter note, what are some of the bigger recent accomplishments that the Seafood Watch program has had that maybe people don't know about?

Wonderful, thank you so much for your insight and time, Wendy!

6 mins read

Blog Post

How To Become a Philanthropist: 7 Steps To Change the World

If you’re wondering how to become a philanthropist, it’s easier than you think. Anyone can do it and, contrary to popular belief, it’s not just for the wealthy. Make no mistake about it: Humans are social creatures. We love to help one another. That’s why philanthropy is so popular. It’s a feel-good activity that improves our world. And the benefits far outweigh the costs. Before you start contributing to worthy causes, however, it helps to understand the options available to you. You’ll want to make good decisions so that you maximize the impact you want to make in the world. No worries, either, about how much — or how little — money you have. All you need is a vision and a plan.

What Is Philanthropy?

A philanthropist is an entity, either a person or a corporation, that provides time, money, or resources — and perhaps all three — to people or nonprofits in need of assistance. The overarching goal is to make lives better for others (or the world we inhabit). Philanthropy is often associated with large sums of money and wealthy people. But, as mentioned, philanthropists can be any person or entity. Even a tiny business can be philanthropic.Some philanthropists rise to rockstar status and are known for their generosity. For example, Warren Buffett, Melinda Gates and Oprah Winfrey are just a few among the mega-rich who have given large sums and had an impact on important social and environmental issues. But you don’t have to be a millionaire, and indeed - many nonprofits are supported by hundreds of thousands of people who give modestly. Even a relatively small donation - alongside hundreds of others who also are giving a small amount - can add up to hugely impactful levels of support for nonprofits working to support communities in need.

What Philanthropy Looks Like

Philanthropy can take a number of forms. These include, for example:Money: Donations may be one time only or on a regular basis. Philanthropists may also bequest money after death or establish a trust.Time: Those who don’t have money to donate or prefer to contribute in other ways can donate time and labor. Examples include volunteering at a homeless shelter or tutoring students after school. As with monetary donations, these can be one-time, yearly or more frequent contributions. Many small, community-based nonprofits are dependent upon the generosity of their volunteers’ time to extend the impact of their mission.Resources: These donations, known often as “in-kind,” include furniture, vehicles, food, clothing, toys, computers, etc.

Benefits of Changing the World With Philanthropy

It may seem to be a cliche, but the benefits of philanthropy are immeasurable for those donating time, money or other resources:

Lends perspective: Philanthropy heightens your sense of connectivity to the world and the things that really matter.
Better health: Your mental health and physical wellbeing both improve when you give back.
Lower stress levels: Volunteering has been proven to lower stress and enhance feelings of well-being by releasing dopamine.
Tax reductions: Donations may be written off on personal taxes.
Social interaction: Volunteering can offer opportunities to network and meet others who are committed to similar causes, and connections can be formed among a group of donors providing financial support.
Improved skill set: As a volunteer or a donor who has researched the causes that nonprofits are working on, you will learn new skills, both hard and soft, and improve your leadership acumen.

How To Become a Philanthropist

As with any good strategy, you’ll need a road map to get to your final destination. Follow these seven steps to become a philanthropist:

1. Clarify Your Goals

Before you decide where to put your time and effort, you’ll need to understand what’s most important to you. What do you value? Where can you make a difference? What would feel good to do? Include your personal or professional goals such as expanding your network. Whether it’s working for climate change or helping your community’s underserved population get the resources they lack, make sure that you feel passionate about the issue.

2. Determine Your Commitment

Before you decide what to do, you need to determine how to do it. Do you want to give money or time? If it’s money, what can you afford? If you plan to volunteer, how much time do you have? When can you volunteer?

3. Choose Your Organization

Once you know the type of commitment you can make, research and vet organizations. Do they align with your mission and values? Where do they work? If you know you want to focus on homelessness in your community, determine if the organization is serving the homeless population in your city. Most organizations share information about their programs, their leadership and how they use their charitable donations. If you have questions, ask. The organization should be transparent and credible.

4. Check With Your Company

Before you completely nail down a target nonprofit, check out the support your company may offer – whether that be a match or volunteer opportunities.

5. Establish a Plan

Based on the causes you care about, the resources you want to commit to and the organizations you want to support, determine your giving cadence. For many, setting up recurring, monthly donations means you can ‘set it and forget it.’ But you might also want to consider setting aside some funds for donating during an emergency - whether it's a hurricane on the Gulf Coast, the war in Ukraine, or a social justice issue.

6. Stay Engaged and Curious

Find your community, and learn about other organizations that are doing important work in support of the causes you care about. You might find that in order to tackle an issue that you’re passionate about, multiple organizations are needed to make change. You can create social connections in-person or online to discover more organizations.

7. Trumpet the Cause

Now that you’re a practicing philanthropist, tell others about the organizations you support and why. They may be inspired to help or to find a cause of their own.

Have Fun With It!

Philanthropy is something anyone can do. Whether you donate time or money, it offers great benefits and improves the lives of others. Find the organization or cause you want to support and go for it. It’s a fun and easy way to give back to the community and expand your horizons.If you would like to know more about a corporate giving program, contact Groundswell. We can help turn philanthropic giving into an essential employee benefit.

6 mins read

Blog Post

Donor-Advised Fund vs. Private Foundation: What's the Difference?

Donating directly to a charitable organization might be the simplest way to give, but there are also various philanthropic vehicles available for minimizing taxes and maximizing impact. Two of the better known structures are donor-advised funds (DAF) and private foundations.

Donor-Advised Fund vs. Private Foundation

While there are 1.4 million registered public charities in the United States, less than 1% are donor-advised funds. Likewise, private foundation numbers, at around 90,000, are relatively modest. The impact of these nonprofit organizations, on the other hand, can be considerable. Here are the key differences between donor-advised funds and private foundations.

What Is a Donor-Advised Fund?

The donor-advised fund (DAF) is a tax-advantaged personal giving account established at a public nonprofit sponsor organization. The account is opened in the donor’s name and contributions are made to the organization(s) chosen by the donor. That might be a charity, but it could also be a university, religious foundation or financial institution. DAFs are enjoying unprecedented popularity with donations jumping by 27% since 2019. Giving from DAFs topped $34.67 billion in 2020, with the five largest — Fidelity, National Philanthropic Trust, Schwab, Vanguard and Silicon Valley Community — accounting for $24.5 billion alone. That said, the size of the average fund is a lot less, at around $150,000. Donors can gift cash, stock, real estate or other assets to a donor-advised fund. Traditionally, DAFs have been viewed as a tax-efficient way to give over a longer period of time without any annual obligation to distribute funds (thus the nickname “zombie philanthropy”), but now Groundswell is empowering corporations to unlock the advantages through our Philanthropy-as-a-Service platform. Whereas DAFs have conventionally been the preserve of the ultra-rich and brokerages, we’re offering access starting at $1 million (the lowest minimum contribution in the industry) to help employees with meaningful giving that benefits communities.

What Is a Private Foundation?

A private foundation, on the other hand, is a legal entity established solely for charitable purposes. Usually launched as a family or organization’s legacy initiative, the private foundation is a long-term project whose influence can spread worldwide. That’s certainly true of three of the biggest three: the Bill and Melinda Gates, Ford and Getty foundations. Private foundations are administered by a board of directors and can receive funds via real estate, investment assets or charitable donations. Unlike public charities, however, they usually derive their financial support from a single source, whether it’s a person, family or organization.

Key Differences Between Donor-Advised Fund vs. Private Foundation

There are a few important distinctions to note between the two, particularly when it comes to the overarching mission and vision.

Longevity

Most donor-advised funds are intended to support charitable giving during the philanthropist’s lifetime, although some do extend to a further generation or two. One of the criticisms of DAFs is that rather than distributing donations to non-profit organizations in need, they are used by the rich to “park” private wealth in a tax deductible fund. That’s not the Groundswell approach. Our platform is designed to establish a minimum annual distribution for DAFs to bring communities to life, not mothball zombie philanthropy funds. Private foundations, by contrast, focus firmly on the future legacy, and most are established as permanent entities that will outlive the founder.

Control

The board of directors (which can include the founder) manages a private foundation. For a DAF, the sponsor organization has control, although the donor may give their recommendation or advice on how grants are distributed.

Profile

Private foundations often celebrate a particular goal or set of values, so concealing the founder’s identity is rarely a concern. DAFs do offer confidentiality, so they are a useful vehicle for benefactors who want to support a charitable organization anonymously.

Establishment

There is a lower barrier to entry for donor-advised funds, some of which can be set up with as little as $5,000, although upwards of $100,000 is more common. Because all legal formalities are covered by the parent organization, DAFs are relatively easy to set up. By contrast, private foundations take longer to establish, and the legal, administrative and tax affairs require professional support. Private foundations usually start with funds of $10 million or more.

Tax Matters

Arguably the biggest difference between the two is in terms of tax regulation. For private foundations, the IRS dictates that a 5% minimum of net investment assets must be distributed annually in the form of grants or administrative expenses. To set up a private foundation, the founder(s) must apply for recognition of exemption under Section 501(c)(3) with the IRS, and will subsequently need to file detailed tax returns on board members’ compensation, fees and grants. All are a matter of public record. Donor-advised funds, on the other hand, do not require any annual grants to be administered but do offer immediate tax advantages, particularly if the donor is receiving a windfall, inheritance or revenue from a business or property sale. Neither do DAF donors have to file tax returns to the IRS, not least because ultimate control of the DAF is with the sponsor nonprofit organization.

We’re Here To Support Your Giving Efforts

Despite the “zombie” tag, DAFs are by no means evil by nature. In fact, they can be an effective way to drive meaningful giving that brings communities to life. To find out how we’re raising zombie philanthropy from the dead with an employee benefit that benefits the world, get in touch with us today.

6 mins read

Blog Post

Anna Malaika Tubbs: On Celebrating Black Motherhood, and Creating a Social Justice-Driven Portfolio

Thanks for joining us, Anna. It’s an honor to speak with you. You begin your book by outlining your personal tie to three very incredible mothers — Alberta King, Louise Little, and Berdis Baldwin — and how their history spans over the past century. That’s incredible. What ultimately led you to exploring these three incredible women in particular?

I had an amazing mother who was always talking about the significance of celebrating mothers and paying more attention to the crucial role that moms play in our society.

What I think is so great about your book is your approach to research, and how you were so honest about what information you could find and what you could not. The absence of history is equally as important. That said, you talk about the erasure of Black Women in history, especially through the eyes of Alberta, Louise, and Berdis. Even through your initial research it was hard to nail down exact details like birthdays, and you say Berdis’s name wasn’t even listed in the US. Census. For those who are unaware, can you outline why this Is so important to explore this history and how it better informs us today?

The research process was really difficult, and I'd like to point out that this was also the subject of my PhD dissertation, so this is completely original research.

I needed to dig for every single detail that I uncovered, and even if I found a small nugget of information, I needed to push further to understand the context behind it.

I like to speak about each of our lives as if they are puzzles, and certain puzzles we put together, frame, and hang, either on a mantel or on a wall, to treasure, marvel at, celebrate, and honor.

What I believe is important is that we do this for more people; each story does matter, especially when we see how black women have contributed everything they could to the progression of this nation.

Speaking especially of Alberta, Louise, and Berdis' stories, what surprised you when writing your book, and what was left out of their history?

Moms affect their children in a variety of ways, and you can't dispute it in these three cases.

You talk about how the media played a role in the erasure of these women’s stories, which essentially shaped what the narratives would become. How does this affect those that are intentionally being erased?

Moms themselves then believe they should be individuals who don't have their own needs and don't have their own identities.

Out of curiosity, are you aware of any other cultures outside of America that properly values motherhood?

Mothers are reporting higher levels of postpartum depression, they're burning out, they're exhausted.

There are many bits and pieces and policies from other countries that I believe we can still apply to the United States, despite the fact that our population is considerably more diverse than that of most other countries.

What organizations would you include now in your own giving portfolio for advocacy work, particularly around motherhood?

I wanted to write about black mothers because the dehumanization is evident when you look at the relationship between our country and black mothers in the United States – mothers being refused basic treatment, denied human respect, and being treated with a lack of basic decency.

If we can come together and really focus on the experience of black women, it will be beneficial to us all.

All of those organizations sound incredible. What is your process of finding which organizations to support around a cause?

For our last question, what advice would you give to someone who wishes to be a true ally, especially after reading your book?

That's a great question. When the topic of allyship comes up, I remember my mother, a white woman with black children.

She would approach me and say, "In this world, I have no idea what it's like to be a black girl or a black woman. And I'm not going to pretend I know; I'm not going to claim to understand your experiences. But what I can say is that I believe you are worthy of the same respect and dignity that everyone else is, and I will walk with you, learn with you, and do my best to make this world a better place for you."

6 mins read

Blog Post

Night of the Living DAF: How Groundswell is Raising Zombie Philanthropy From the Dead

No one likes zombies. They’re noisy. They’re disgusting. Worst of all, they try to eat your brain.But perhaps the spookiest thing about them? They’re mindless. Zombies are automatons who amble along without thinking. Left to their own devices, they would go on like that, mindlessly, forever. Never changing, never helping, never improving.It is this critique of the undead that gets levelled at a form of charity dubbed zombie philanthropy. In this critique, the drivers of zombie philanthropy are Donor-Advised Funds (DAF)s. To quote The Washington Post:This is problematic. We’re in a world where there is no time to waste. There are too many crises facing our country and global community and it serves no one to have money sitting on the sidelines. At Groundswell we’re going to change that by building a platform that will better facilitate these funds and empower donors to make an impact quickly.

WTF is a DAF and who contributes to them?!

A Donor Advised Fund allows donors to put all of their charitable dollars into one single fund, receive an immediate tax deduction, grow those assets over time, and distribute assets to nonprofits of their choice at any given time. It was established in the 1930’s to handle charitable donor-advised fund contributions on behalf of organizations, private individuals, and families. Since then, DAFs have been primarily utilized by the ultra-wealthy. According to the 2020 Donor-Advised Fund Report, grants to qualified organizations from DAF accounts totaled $27.37 billion in 2019, up 15.4% from $23.72 billion in 2018. But considering there are over $140 billion in total assets squirreled away in DAFs, $27 billion is merely a fraction of the impact potential they represent.

Why Do DAFs (Sometimes) Become Zombies?

Donor Advised Funds are popular due to their ease of use. Donors typically struggle with deciding where to direct their philanthropic contributions, especially when large sums of low-value assets are contributed. Managing several beneficiaries while meeting a deadline might be difficult. As a result, one-stop-shop giving simplifies the philanthropic process.Why have DAFs become the target of “zombie philanthropy” accusations? The critiques typically go like this:

Unlike with private foundations, there is no requirement for minimum distributions from Donor Advised Funds. As a result, investors routinely deposit significant amounts of equity or cash in those accounts with no need to distribute them right away. This means that a DAF’s capital can sit static for years or decades, and never actually reach a nonprofit.
This is particularly worrisome at a time when nonprofits need funds urgently, not in a distant future.
Some individuals use DAFs primarily for income tax reductions, balancing their tax bill with their giving, so that the upside, like capital gains, is neutralized. Others use DAFs to pass on money to their offspring, once again with minimal taxes.

With DAFs, people can sidestep learning about the best causes in place of simply dumping the money in a pot on the advice of someone else.We recognize these critiques. Any tax instrument can be manipulated depending on a user’s intentions (we’re looking at you, Peter Thiel). However, we don’t believe DAFs are inherently evil and are instead breathing new life into the zombie philanthropy model.Groundswell reaps the benefits of DAFs without the downsides. And we believe that this approach can be scaled to reach any prospective donor, not just the ultra-rich.

How Groundswell is Raising Zombie Philanthropy From the Dead

Groundswell is built differently.Legacy DAF providers also happen to be massive asset managers. No wonder their platforms are designed to keep money in the DAF, and not move it out to charity. In fact, it’s in their best interest for it to play out that way.However, Groundswell is built to move money as efficiently as possible out of the system and into the hands of charities.The objectives of our platform are aligned directly with the goals of charities – including the goal of disbursing as much money as possible into the community. That’s probably because we were founded by a former nonprofit executive, a key difference in Groundswell vs. the competition.We have no beef with DAFs and not every DAF fund is a zombie. The fact is, when funds are transferred to a DAF, they will eventually finance a program sponsored by the donor, though it may be slow and delayed funding means delayed impact.As we already mentioned, we believe that Donor Advised Funds are not inherently evil – even if they are exploited by a large number of ultra-wealthy individuals and fail to generate as much good as intended. In principle, DAFs can be powerful but, like everything else, they must evolve.That’s why Groundswell is supportive of recent talks aimed at reforming Donor Advised Funds to include, among other things, a minimum annual distribution. DAFs, built and leveraged appropriately, can bring massive efficiencies to the nonprofit sector and the giving of ordinary Americans.So instead of allowing these legacy Donor Advised Funds to shuffle around mindlessly like zombies, let's build an alternative like Groundswell that breathes life back into the Donor Advised Fund and democratizes philanthropy for the 99%.

6 mins read

Blog Post

12 Employee Benefits Survey Questions Modern Companies Should Ask

Scroll down for a free survey template below.

Let's dive in to the importance of asking the following questions.

Is our workforce satisfied with the current employee benefits package?

How comprehensive are the employee benefits we offer?

Are we showing true commitment to Diversity, Equity, & Inclusion through our benefits?

Do our benefits reflect our company culture and values?

The question, "do you feel our benefits package supports our cultural values?" will highlight any potential discrepancies in practicing what you're preaching.

Did you know? Two-thirds of employees say it’s important for a company to align to their values.

Are we catering to the needs of a remote or multi-location workforce?

With remote work on the rise, is the company adapting its benefits accordingly? It's essential to find out if employees feel supported, regardless of their work setting.

Would employees recommend the company based on our benefits?

How do specific benefit categories fare?

What additional benefits do employees desire?

If your workforce desires a more meaningful benefit, see why decentralizing your corporate philanthropy strategy can achieve greater impact at scale.

How often should I send an employee survey about our benefits?

While every business has their own set of unique needs, conducing a quarterly employee survey at minimum can help you get a pulse check.

What are some affordable benefit options we can provide employees?

Request a demo

[Free Template] Employee Benefits Survey Questions

How satisfied are you with our company’s benefits package?
Do you feel our benefits package is comprehensive in its offering?
Do you feel our benefits package supports our cultural values?
Do you feel our benefits package supports our commitment to Diversity & Inclusion?
Do you feel our benefits package supports our remote or multi-location workforce?
How likely are you to recommend applying based on our benefits package?
How satisfied are you with our physical health benefits (i.e. health care, sick leave, etc)?
How satisfied are you with our social impact benefits (i.e. corporate matching, volunteering, etc)?
How satisfied are you with our mental health benefits (i.e. vacation time, EAP, etc)?
How satisfied are you with our financial health benefits? (i.e. retirement, student loan assistance, etc)
How satisfied are you with our fringe benefits and perks? (i.e. fitness subsidies, stipends, etc)
If you could choose one benefit not currently offered, what would it be?

6 mins read

Blog Post

The Guide to Being a Modern Philanthropist: Elevate Your Impact With Groundswell

Six Tips to Becoming a Modern Philanthropist

Summary

Pick causes and charities that align with your values: When deciding what you want to support, start by taking into consideration the people, places, or problems that you care about most.
Understand impact through the lens of size & geography: The geographic reach of different charities' programs, and how large or small they are, can help as you determine what to support.
Evaluate best in class charities: Learn how to assess not only the financial health of an organization, but also what questions to ask when looking at other impact metrics.
Set a giving goal: Decide how much you want to give annually through Groundswell, and follow the simple steps to set up contributions to achieve that goal.
Maximize impact through recurring donations: Simplify your giving and provide nonprofits with a steady stream of revenue through monthly, recurring donations.
Optimize your giving through tax-efficient strategies: Leverage the versatility of Groundswell to reduce your tax burden through payroll giving, stocks contributions, and bunching.

1. Pick Causes & Charities that Align with Your Values

2. Understand Impact: Size & Geography

Where to donate

Does size matter?

3. Evaluate "Best in Class" Charities

Programmatic Impact: Understanding a nonprofit’s impact - through its programs and the populations that it serves - is an important way to evaluate its effectiveness in tackling the causes you care about. Many nonprofits provide details about programming approaches on their websites, including testimonials, photos, and reports detailing specific results. Keep in mind that understanding and assessing impact is highly qualitative - there is no clear ‘score’ - especially because what or who is being impacted varies across the thousands of nonprofits.

Financial Management: Nonprofits, especially larger ones, are required to disclose details related to their financial performance annually – to include assets, revenue and breakdown of expenses in forms submitted to the IRS. Many nonprofits are proactively transparent about their finances and post audited financial statements and other reports on their websites. But financial data does not always tell a complete story. There may be important investments in fundraising staff, which two years later yield a windfall in donations that can be put towards programs.

Advisories: Sometimes there are advisories based on pending or ongoing legal action. Groundswell works to monitor these advisories and remove any charities that it believes are acting improperly or mismanaging donor funds. We also remove any charities that have had their nonprofit status revoked by the IRS.

Groundswell-curated Featured Causes: While many donors might want to do their own research, sometimes it’s far easier (and efficient) to put your trust in others. Groundswell’s impact team provides donors with additional inspiration, and has done the vetting work to determine cause-specific organizations that are well run and most importantly having a strong impact.

4. Aim High with a Giving Goal

Your giving goal can help fund recurring donations, as well as account for unexpected events that you may want to donate to.

5. Level Up with Recurring Donations

Recurring donations can be a great component of your philanthropic strategy. As a bonus, there are benefits for both donors as well as nonprofits.

For donors, setting recurring donations to autopilot every month or quarter means you don’t have to think about it or go through the steps to do it on a regular basis.

6. Optimize Your Tax-Efficient Giving

You can leverage the versatility of your Groundswell Personal Giving Account, which is underpinned by a Donor-Advised Fund, to be strategic and reduce your tax burden.

Donate appreciated stock

Plus, you'll be eligible for a tax deduction for the full fair market value of the stock at the time of contribution into your Groundswell account.

Give with payroll

Bundle contributions

Want access to other toolkits like this?

Groundswell enables companies to lay the foundation for their employees to adopt a generous giving attitude towards charities and world-shaping efforts.

6 mins read

Blog Post

Unleash the Power of Your Employee Giving Program: Best Practices Guide

Your Best Practices Guide for Maximizing Your Employee Giving Participation

This guide provides you with tools and tips to maximize employee participation in your giving program, not just when the program launches but throughout the entire year.

Leveraging our expertise in the social impact and nonprofit sectors, Groundswell is here to support you and your employees on your impact journey.

Overview

6 Tips for Maximizing Participation in Your Employee Giving Program

1. Communicate Early and with Intention

Program Launch Communications:

Keep it short, and emphasize that the intent is to center employees in corporate philanthropy and make it as easy as possible for employees to give.
If the Giving Program is new: Why now? How does it align with your company’s values? Why is Groundswell a good fit for the company?
If the program is replacing an existing program: Why now? What’s different (and better) from the previous program? New matching or gifting features? It may also be helpful to highlight the tax effectiveness of the donor-advised fund model.

Monthly Program Communications

Monthly Cause Spotlights

Start off the month by highlighting some timely causes - make sure to link to Groundswell-curated “Featured Cause” Portfolios that Groundswell uploads to the dashboard every month for a hand-off approach to spotlighting.
Share “Cause of the Month” information with employees, leveraging the toolkits found in Groundswell’s Resource Center.

Engagement & Impact Reporting

Utilize the data that you can find on your company Dashboard or download via CSV to highlight some of your company’s collective impact - including a percentage of employees enrolled, the total dollar amount that has been donated, as well as top nonprofit donation recipients and/or cause areas.
This helps employees see how their individual donations are having a larger impact as part of your company’s collective giving program.

2. Drive Early Adoption through Gifts

Gifts can be a terrific way to get employees to sign up and start using the Groundswell platform immediately. Here are a few tips on how to drive early adoption using the Gifting feature:

Launch with a one-time gift into employees’ Giving Accounts that will show up as soon as employees enroll. This can be a great way to create buzz about the program and empower employees to donate and make an impact immediately - even before they contribute their own funds to their Groundswell account.
Throughout the year, provide unexpected, ad hoc gifts into employees’ accounts - for work anniversaries, milestones, great performance, etc.
A way to make it fun is to do a lottery at All Hands meetings by randomly selecting an employee to receive $25 in their Groundswell account. Follow this link or reach out to the Groundswell Customer Success team to learn more.

3. Inspire Engagement through Matching

Set up a matching program that immediately doubles the impact when an employee puts funds into their Groundswell Giving Account. This creates a feeling of “we’re in this together” - and drives home the message about an equitable approach to corporate philanthropy.
A match program can run for an entire year, or be tailored to specific months.
With the Groundswell match happening at the point of contributing funds to the Groundswell account, employees can tangibly see and feel what it means to double the impact for the charities and causes that matter most to them.

4. Leverage Cause Campaigns & Respond to the Emergent Events

Planned Campaigns:

Utilize a Social Impact Cause Calendar to plan monthly or bi-monthly communications to employees highlighting specific causes - with resources to educate employees about the cause, and a curated list of nonprofits most relevant to the cause. You can refer to Groundswell’s monthly cause portfolios that are updated to reflect timely causes and issues.
Tip: Plan your annual budget to launch match campaigns focused on specific charities or cause areas throughout the year.

Unforeseen Events:

Utilize Groundswell’s curated list of best-in-class nonprofits responding to disasters in the United States or globally. Being able to quickly and confidently point your employees to vetted nonprofits to donate to shows that you are responsive as a company and empowering employees to take action in moments of crisis.
Tip: Keep a portion of your annual budget in reserve so that you can match employee donations and/or provide gifts to employees to expand the impact in response to the unforeseen emergency.

5. Engage Employee Resource Groups

ERGs can take the opportunity to recommend nonprofits that they think are most effective and related to the cause, and share their commitment to specific causes with the tag-line “My cause is ____ “
Tip: Solicit recommendations from the Employee Resource Group for books to read, films, and documentaries to watch, and podcasts to listen to. This can generate a deeper understanding of causes and lead to engagement via donations to support the causes.

6. Lean Into End-of-Year Giving Spirit

You can leverage Groundswell's Giving Tuesday resources to launch an end-of-year donation campaign, featuring specific cause areas and nonprofits.

Tip: Set a budget aside for a surprise end-of-year gift - leveraging the fact that a large percentage of people prefer to donate at the end of the year.

Read related articles

Groundswell is your ally in corporate philanthropy.

Groundswell enables companies to lay the foundation for their employees to adopt a generous giving attitude towards charities and world-shaping efforts.

6 mins read

Blog Post

Complete Handbook to Corporate Grants

Corporate grants are financial support provided by a business to a nonprofit organization, educational institution, or another type of community group.

These grants can be used to fund a wide range of projects, including programs and initiatives that align with the values and mission of the funding organization.

In this ultimate guide, we will explore the various types of corporate grants available, how to find and apply for these grants, and tips for success in securing funding.

Types of Corporate Grants

There are several types of corporate grants that organizations can apply for, depending on their needs and the focus of the funding organization. Some common types of corporate grants include:

General Operating Support: These grants provide funding for the general operations and administration of an organization, including salaries, rent, and other overhead costs.

Project-Specific Grants: These grants are provided to fund a specific project or initiative, such as a research project, community development program, or arts and culture event.

Capital Grants: These grants are provided to fund the purchase of long-term assets, such as equipment, real estate, or vehicles.

Sponsorship Grants: These grants provide financial support for a specific event or activity, such as a charity fundraiser or sporting event.

Matching Grants: These grants require the recipient organization raises a certain amount of funds on their own, which is then matched by the funding organization.

How to Find Corporate Grants

There are a few different ways to find corporate grants that may be a good fit for your organization. Here are some tips:

Research funding organizations: Many businesses have corporate social responsibility (CSR) programs that provide grants to nonprofit organizations. Research the CSR programs of businesses in your industry or local area to see if they offer grants.

Use grant databases: There are many online databases that list corporate grants, such as Grants.gov and the Candid, formally known as Foundation Center. These databases allow you to search for grants based on your organization's location, mission, and area of focus.

Join grant-seeking networks: There are many online networks and forums for grant seekers, such as Candid, formally known as GrantSpace, and the Grant Professionals Association. These communities can be a valuable resource for finding corporate grants and learning about the grant-seeking process.

How to Apply for Corporate Grants

Once you have identified a corporate grant that is a good fit for your organization, the next step is to prepare and submit a grant proposal. Here are some tips for success:

Follow the application instructions carefully: Each grant program will have its own application requirements and guidelines, so it is important to follow these instructions carefully. Be sure to complete all required forms and provide any supporting documents that are requested.

Clearly articulate your needs and objectives: In your grant proposal, be sure to clearly explain your organization's needs and the specific objectives that you hope to achieve with the funding. Use specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and time-bound (SMART) goals to demonstrate the impact that the grant will have.

Demonstrate your organization's capacity to deliver: In addition to outlining your needs and objectives, it is important to demonstrate your organization's capacity to deliver on its proposed project or initiative. This may include information about your staff, volunteers, resources, and past successes.

Proofread and edit: A well-written and well-organized grant proposal is more likely to be successful. Be sure to proofread your proposal carefully and have at least one other person review it before submitting it.

Tips for Success in Securing Corporate Grants

Start early: Many corporate grant programs have deadlines that are several months in advance of the funding period. It is important to start researching and preparing your grant proposal as early as possible to allow sufficient time for revisions and any additional information that may be requested by the funding organization.

Build relationships with funders: Building relationships with potential funders can be a valuable asset in the grant-seeking process. Attend events and networking opportunities where you can meet with representatives from funding organizations, and consider reaching out to them directly to introduce your organization and its work.

Be persistent: Securing corporate grants can be competitive, and it is not uncommon to be rejected on the first try. Don't be discouraged by rejection – use it as an opportunity to learn and improve your grant proposal for the next round of funding.

In conclusion, corporate grants can be a valuable source of funding for nonprofit organizations, educational institutions, and community groups. By researching and identifying appropriate grant programs, preparing a strong grant proposal, and building relationships with potential funders, your organization can increase its chances of success in securing corporate grants.

More about Groundswell

Groundswell is an affordable workplace giving program built for modern businesses. We give organizations the infrastructure and tools to make it easy to empower employees to support the causes they care about during moments that matter most.

Subscribe to our newsletter and reach out to our team to learn more about Groundswell.io.

6 mins read

Blog Post

The Workplace Giving Handbook: Everything You Need to Know

Workplace giving programs offer employees an important benefit.

It gives employees a way to support the causes they care about and trust that their support is actually doing good in the world.

It's not news that people are skeptical of corporate charity — it's why words like pink-washing and greenwashing have entered the public vocabulary. Workplace giving programs offer a way to combat that skepticism and give employees a reason to feel good about the places where they work.

But what exactly is workplace giving, and how do you set up an employee-powered giving program at your company?

What is Workplace Giving?

Workplace giving is any organized program that collects employee donations for charitable causes through payroll deductions and/or one-time donations. The company then disburses those donations to nonprofits.

Over the years, the term has evolved to include volunteer giving programs, and other forms of employee giving programs. These giving programs take many forms today, including payroll deductions, donation match programs, and volunteer giving programs.

Matching Gift Programs

Donation match programs are among the most popular types of workplace giving programs, offered at nearly 65% of Fortune 500 companies, and accounting for $2 billion to $3 billion in donations annually.

The concept is simple in theory: an employee donates to a qualified nonprofit, and the company then makes a matching donation to the same nonprofit.

In practice, matching gift programs can be cumbersome and difficult to manage. In fact, for every dollar donated through matching gift programs, more than $2 goes unclaimed.

Volunteer Programs

In addition to typical volunteer programs — serving dinners at a local shelter or reading to school kids, for example — many companies create or participate in volunteer fundraising events, such as walk-a-thons or charity 5k runs.

Employees participate as a team, and the money raised is donated to the specific non-profit named. These campaigns can be great for team building and bonding, not to mention providing high-profile PR opportunities for the company.

Volunteer Grants

Many companies offer grants to organizations where their employees volunteer. This kind of program ensures that the company is helping to support genuine community organizations that their employees care about. They help deepen the ties between the company and the community and send the message to your employees that you care about the things that are important to them.

Volunteer Hours Matching

The third iteration of volunteer donation programs rewards your employees with the extra cash they can donate to others based on hours that they spend volunteering with community organizations.

Giving employees paid time off for volunteering can make it difficult for workers to keep up with their workload and make more work for nonprofits. Some companies have found ways to reimburse employees for their time working in their communities.

One way is to deposit the equivalent of their salary for hours spent into a Groundswell Personal Giving Account. From there, the employee can direct the donation to their chosen cause, effectively doubling their impact on the ground.

Donations Through Payroll Deduction

Many companies offer employees the opportunity to make giving easy by enrolling in an automatic payroll deduction for a chosen charity. Payroll deductions allow employees to essentially budget their charitable contributions over the course of the year.

However, the choice of charities to support is usually very narrow — often only one or two charities are chosen by the board.

A growing number of CEOs are moving away from the top-down approach to corporate giving, and moving to a model that puts the choice in the hands of their employees.

What Is a Workplace Giving Campaign?

Workplace giving campaigns are typically annual events companies hold to encourage employee donations to a cause.

They're often held in the fall, to coordinate with the holiday season — and of course, the end of the tax year. They can, however, take place at any time. Their purpose is to publicize and raise awareness of any company-sponsored employee giving programs, and get more people involved in them.

Campaigns may also revolve around a specific need or event. These campaigns include disaster relief campaigns, or campaigns to support specific needs in the local community — supporting the unhoused, or providing funds for meals during a pandemic, for example.

How Does Workplace Giving Work?

The nuts and bolts of employee giving programs are rapidly evolving. Legacy workplace giving programs collected donations from employees then combined them and funneled them to one or two charities chosen by the board of directors or the CEO. Historically, there are two major models for doing this.

Payroll Deduction

Programs that collect charitable donations through payroll deductions are the most common workplace giving programs, accounting for nearly 75% of all employee giving annually. Payroll deductions make charitable giving easy on employees — they fill out a payroll deduction form once, and HR/Payroll does the rest. It's so easy, in fact, that when Google implemented a pilot payroll giving program, it increased the likelihood of donations to a promoted charity by 50% without reducing the average amount donated.

In addition, each participating employee has a running record of their deductions on their pay stub, with the current and year-to-date donations recorded. That's a big boon at tax time — their pay stub serves as proof of their donation, so they don't have to scrounge around looking for acknowledgment letters from the nonprofits they donate to.

Nonprofits also benefit from this type of workplace giving program in several ways: they get predictable, sustainable donations, and often get more donations. Just as important, a payroll deduction model reduces the amount of work that falls on their shoulders by transferring much of it to the company's payroll department. Managing a workplace giving campaign is a complex undertaking involving multiple steps and responsibilities.

The company creates a campaign to engage and encourage employees to sign up for the giving program. This is no small undertaking — entire toolkits are devoted to teaching employees and volunteers to run successful campaigns.
The employee fills out a pledge card, designating the amount of the donation and/or the amount to be deducted each pay period. If the company allows it, they may also choose one of several pre-approved nonprofits to receive their donation.
The payroll department — or the company's payroll provider — sets up the recurring deduction for each employee.
If the company also operates a matching donation program, HR processes all donations to set up the matching donation.
Each pay period, the payroll department deducts and deposits the funds from each employee into a central account, then sends the final donation amount to the paying agent, such as the United Way.
The paying agent distributes the funds to the designated organizations.

Donation Matching Programs

Donation match programs can also be time-consuming and difficult to navigate — so much so, that billions of dollars in matching funds go unclaimed every year. A typical donation match program works like this:

The company determines which organizations will qualify for a matching gift and makes the list of qualifying organizations available to employees, and creates rules to determine the amount of the match. There may be differing amounts depending on the employee's position or other criteria. For example, all full-time employees may qualify for 100% matching, while managers qualify for 200% matching.
The employee makes a donation to the charity of their choice.
After determining that their chosen organization qualifies for a match, the employee fills out and submits a request to HR for their employer to match their donation.
HR processes the request and determines the match amount based on the rules.
The company sends a check for the matching amount to the qualifying organization.

Emerging Trends in Workplace Giving

Since the early 2000s, there's been a growing movement to allow employees more choices of donors. Many donation match programs, for example, will match employee donations to any 501(c)3 charity. New platforms are streamlining corporate and employee giving, reducing the amount of work and time that goes into managing workplace giving campaigns and employee giving programs in general.

The newest trends in corporate giving include making charitable giving part of the employee's benefits package and providing granular control and choice on when and where to donate their funds.

Advances in technology provided new tools — yes, there's an app for that — to help companies manage and deploy their corporate giving programs in ways that make sense for their workforces. As the workplace and trends in giving continue to evolve, employee giving programs will also evolve to keep pace and provide the most seamless, empowering giving experience.

Benefits of Workplace Giving Programs

Employee giving programs are not just good for the causes that get the donations. They provide important positives for employees, the company, and the community. These are a few of the most important.

Improved Employee Recruitment: 55% of employees — including 75% of Millennials — would choose to work for a socially responsible company, even if they got paid less.
Increased Employee Engagement: Employees are more engaged at work when they feel their employer aligns with their values.
Increased Profitability: Companies with the most engaged workers are 21% more profitable.
Better Public Image: People think more positively about businesses that give back to the community.
Deeper Community Connections: A well-planned employee giving program helps the business connect and cement relationships with organizations in the community.
Increased Employee Loyalty: Employees are more likely to recommend businesses that support them and their interests.
Higher Retention Rates: Employees who take advantage of employee giving programs stay with the company 75% longer.

What Employees Care About

According to a recent Deloitte Workplace Giving survey, 37% of workers donated to charity through a workplace giving program, but — and this is a big but — when they looked at Millennial and Gen Z employees, that percentage skyrocketed to 58%.

Younger workers, those destined for leadership positions in future companies, care deeply about doing good in the world, and they reflect it in their behavior. They donate because they are connected to a cause or charity, because they want to support their community, and because giving makes them feel good.

When you make it easy for them to plant a tree, buy a kid a desk, or adopt sheltered puppies, your company is showing them that they respect and support the people that they are, not just the work that they do for your business.

Why Is Employee Giving Important?

In addition to the benefits to your employees and your business bottom line, employee giving also brings an immense benefit to the community.

In 2021, workplace giving programs raised more than $5 billion, with about 50% of that coming from matching gift programs. Those donations went to

Education-related causes: 29%
Health and wellness causes: 25%
Community and economic development causes: 15%

Employees who donated through workplace giving programs reported that they donated to

Hunger and homelessness relief: 47%
Education: 23%
Social and racial equity causes: 20%

The right workplace giving program empowers your employees to support the causes closest to their hearts, without judgment and with the confidence that their employer trusts them to put their money where it will matter the most.

How to Set Up a Workplace Giving Program

If this is your first time setting up a workplace giving program, there are some important steps to consider. You want a program that reflects your company's mission and core philosophy, one that your employees will embrace and be proud to use. These are some key principles to keep in mind and some action steps to get you started.

Evaluate Your Company's Corporate Social Responsibility Policy. If You Don't Have One, This Is A Good Time To Brainstorm.

Create a vision for your CSR that balances your responsibilities to your shareholders/owners, your employees, the community, the planet, and any other stakeholders.
Evaluate your current activities in light of community service. Do you partner with local organizations? Host volunteer activities? Make donations to local charities? Any of these would fit under the umbrella of CSR.
Establish a corporate code of ethics detailing how your company will treat employees, customers, the environment, and competitors in all your dealings.
Get strategic with your giving program to ensure that it aligns with your company's values and ethics.

Set a Budget for Your Giving Program.

The amount you budget for corporate giving should be no more than you can afford to give without affecting the cash flow you need to operate your business.
Many large companies earmark 1% - 5% of their pre-tax earnings for charitable giving. Small companies often donate 6% or more to charity.
Consider designating profits from one particular product for giving.
Use the Sabsevitz Ante-Up Formula — multiply last year's pre-tax net income by 1.2% to come up with a donation budget.
Check out more suggestions for setting your budget in this blog post.

Set Up Guidelines for Your Program

Employees: will all employees be included in your benefits program? Will they all be level-funded, or will some positions qualify for a higher workplace giving benefit?
Moments That Matter: Can you make donations more meaningful by tying deposit amounts to specific events in the lives for your employees?
Decide which charities/causes your company will support. Will you restrict employee giving to designated nonprofits? How expansive will your list of eligible organizations be?

Establish A Process For Collecting, Matching, And Donating Contributions.

See the section on How Does Workplace Giving Work?
(Hint: Groundswell takes the stress out of this step.)

Publicize The Program.

The key to a successful workplace giving program is awareness. Your employees can't use a benefit they don't know about, and your company won't reap the benefits if your customers and employees don't know what you're doing. These are a few suggestions for raising awareness of your new employee giving program.

List it as a benefit in your recruitment materials.
Provide an easy — and very visible — way to access your program's front end on your employee website, Discord, or other communication software.
Highlight your program in the company newsletter.
Create and distribute flyers explaining the program, its benefits, and how to use it to your employees.
If you offer donation matches, make sure that local nonprofits are aware of it.
Partner with local nonprofits and community organizations when it makes sense.

Is Workplace Giving Tax Deductible?

The simple answer is yes, in most cases, workplace giving is tax deductible, and has been since 1935 when Congress passed a law allowing corporations to deduct up to 10% of their pretax income on their tax returns. That limit was raised to 25% to encourage more giving during the pandemic.

Maximizing Tax Benefits for Workplace Giving

It's important to understand how tax-deductible donations work in order to maximize the benefits of a workplace giving program.

Some types of corporate giving offer more benefits than others.

DAFs offer unique tax benefits, but until recently, they've been reserved for high-dollar donors. Briefly, a DAF allows your company to make a donation at the most advantageous time — before the end of the tax year, for example — and take the deduction immediately, and decide when and where that money should be donated to nonprofits. In addition, DAFs make it more efficient to donate non-cash assets, such as stock and real estate, to charity, without incurring an additional tax burden.

Workplace Giving with Groundswell

Groundswell's innovative Philanthropy as a Service model democratizes workplace giving by setting up a Personal Giving Account — an individual DAF — for each employee, effectively putting the power of a DAF in the palm of their hand.

The company can make donations into each Personal Giving Account as part of an overall corporate giving strategy, timing the donations to provide the most benefit. The employee then decides when and where to make donations to the causes that are most important to them.

If you're ready to increase the impact of your workplace giving programs, contact us to learn more about how Groundswell can empower you and your employees to do more good and make the changes they want to see in the world.

6 mins read

Blog Post

How To Improve Company Culture (and Why It Matters So Much): 5 of Our Expert Tips

Culture may not appear on the balance sheet alongside goodwill and brand recognition, but maybe it should. Many people talk about culture, yet few really understand what it is and how to shape it to the company’s advantage. Culture goes far beyond your reputation as a great place to work and free popcorn in the employee lounge. Rather, company culture is about the values, beliefs and practices that define how leadership and employees:

Support one another
Interact with the company managers and their colleagues
Relate to the business objectives and identity
Above all, get the work done

To understand how to improve company culture, you’ll need more than a list of activities. Begin by understanding the benefits of a strong culture and how important it is to your company’s long-term prosperity.

Why Culture Is So Important

There are some very compelling reasons for leadership to make an effort to improve the company culture. Culture is, after all, one of the main reasons companies like Netflix, Google and Zappos are desirable targets for those looking for a job. Yet, Netflix proudly proclaims in its culture manifesto that their version of the great workplace has nothing to do with sushi lunches and great gyms. They write, “ Our version of the great workplace is a dream team in pursuit of ambitious common goals.” In fact, there are many benefits to having a strong and positive culture. They include:

Enhanced productivity: A strong culture means that employees align to fulfill a common purpose. The goals and the direction are clear. When employees know what is expected, conflict is minimized and collaboration is facilitated.
Higher level of employee engagement: Culture provides a sense of identity that generates excitement. Employees are more interested in the work because they understand how it contributes to the company’s overall vision. According to Gallup, a highly engaged workforce can increase profitability by 21%.
Improved brand reputation: When it comes to consumer preferences, culture can help one company outperform another. Word of a toxic company culture travels fast via social media. This not only affects the company internally, but many customers will also turn away.
Better talent: Companies that have a positive culture also have a reputation for being great places to work. According to a recent Glassdoor survey, 77% of job seekers consider culture before applying for a job. In fact, culture is considered the number one driver of happiness — even more than money.

The Key Elements of Company Culture

Few people agree on the essential elements of company culture. It’s helpful, however, to examine culture using some sort of framework. Elements, even if they differ from model to model, at least give us something to hold on to. When we understand the elements of culture, it’s easier to see the types of effort needed to bring about lasting change. While there is no agreed-upon framework for the discussion of culture, here are five elements that we feel are essential.

Values

These deeply embedded standards help determine what’s important and right. Although values tell us how we should behave, they don’t always reflect what happens in reality. To make them an essential part of the culture, values must be reinforced by the company’s systems and its leaders.

Leadership

Leaders are important in the establishment of policies, the setting of goals and the pursuit of new opportunities. Further, they develop the next generation of employees who will propel the company into the future. Their words and actions, good and bad, are often mimicked by others and reflected in how employees interact with colleagues and managers.

Vision

A simple and compelling vision is the foundation of a great corporate culture. It’s so much more than a placard adorning the hallways. Companies that have great vision are aligned behind a common purpose and moving with intent toward True North.

Beliefs

Beliefs are things employees hold to be true. They influence how people make decisions, interact with one another and what they conclude about how things work. Beliefs manifest in behaviors and dictate where leaders and employees invest their time and energy.

Artifacts

Artifacts can be physical objects and events that demonstrate what the company values, such as an open concept layout, an annual family picnic or even meaningful art on the walls. But artifacts also show up in other ways. Some nonphysical artifacts might include, for example, the benefits structure, an often-repeated company legend, loaner bikes on the corporate campus or a “no shoes” policy.The five elements above help explain why we have included the tips that follow. They will also help you create a personalized and comprehensive strategy to develop your own unique approach to improving company culture.

How To Improve Company Culture: 5 Tips

Many culture initiatives start with a kick-off meeting followed by the appearance of company slogans, some wallet cards and a few wall posters. But that’s not how real change happens. To improve company culture, begin with action. Embedded in these tips are a few ideas to get started. Of course, the caveat is that one size does not fit all. That’s where creativity comes in.

1. Focus on Communication

Leaders communicate as much through their actions as through what they say. They set the tone for how employees speak to one another, resolve conflicts, collaborate in teams and respond to requests from other employees. Their words and actions are mimicked and become ingrained in the culture. Many companies use 360-degree evaluations from bosses, colleagues and employees to create an action plan to ensure that leaders exemplify company values.

2. Provide Transparency

Transparency generates trust, increases engagement, and reduces job-related stress. When leadership communicates strategy, it motivates employees and helps them understand how they are contributing to the company’s success. Remember, however, that transparency invites feedback. In some cases, employees may weigh in on decisions without having sufficient information to give an informed opinion. Still, feedback deserves a transparent response.

3. Make It Fun With Gamification

Gamification is a fun way to use something that already exists, like key performance indicators (KPIs), and apply game elements to it. Ensure that your game strategy aligns with and supports the company vision. Include goals, metrics and rewards in the games that invite employees to take responsibility for their own success. Games also encourage fun in the workplace by setting up friendly competitions and providing a great excuse to visibly recognize and celebrate achievements.

4. Enhance the Employee Experience

The employee experience is the sum total of your employees’ interaction and experience with the company. It’s your internal brand. A positive employee experience is the result of beliefs that create a supportive work environment. One of the best ways to support employees is by spending meaningful time with them. Schedule frequent check-ins and one-on-one meetings and ask how you can help them be more successful.

5. Connect to a Purpose

Many employees want to work for companies that value what they value. If you already have a corporate giving program, ratchet it up. If you don’t, now is a great time to start. People, even those who will not show up at company parties, love to come together in support of a good cause. Your employees can select a favorite nonprofit to choose where corporate donations go and work toward charitable goals as a company. The company can sponsor community events and supply employees to help. Corporate giving programs offer a great opportunity to create artifacts, as well as connect to the broader community. In addition to facilitating employee giving through paycheck deductions, here are few other ideas to engage your workforce:

Offer a launch gift to employees who participate in the new corporate giving program
Celebrate employee birthdays by making a donation to a nonprofit in their name
Incorporate giving into your annual bonus by allowing employees to designate a portion that is matched
Create a holiday match program
Pair spontaneous spot rewards with a charitable gift to employees
Reward performance and achievements at all-hands meetings by awarding charitable dollars

Keep It Going

Once you understand the elements of culture, it really isn’t very difficult to influence it in a positive way. If you run out of ideas, generate enthusiasm by challenging your employees to help. However, no matter what actions you take, change is unlikely to stick without a concerted and consistent effort to keep your culture moving in a positive direction.A corporate giving program is one of the best ways to engage and inspire your employees. At Groundswell, we make it easy for you to turn your corporate giving program into an employee benefit. Contact us for more information.

6 mins read

Blog Post

How To Improve Morale at Work: Groundswell Feature in Lifehack

When workplace morale is high, it affects employee engagement and productivity in positive ways. Yet as companies pursue increasingly remote and decentralized operating models, the happiness quotient can be difficult to maintain. That may leave many leaders wondering how to improve morale at work. According to the article “11 Ways To Boost Workplace Morale,” published on Lifehack, there are many ways to boost morale and help employees feel more connected to the organization and its core principles and values. For many employees, particularly millennials and Gen Z, it’s not just a matter of phoning it in and collecting a paycheck. They want to feel that what they do matters and that the companies they work for care about making the world a better place.That’s why corporate giving programs are so important. In fact, Groundswell was mentioned in the Lifehack article as a platform that allows companies to turn donor-advised funds (DAFs) into an employee benefit.Following, we’ve provided a brief rundown of some of the highlights from the article:

Measure

It’s important to gather feedback so that you understand what’s working and what’s not. Provide open-ended questions and allow anonymous responses to invite candid responses. Exit interviews are a good way to get constructive criticism.

Communication

With more people working from remote locations, it can be difficult to ensure that everyone is on the same page or that they feel connected. Take extra steps to ensure that employees are not isolated and lonely.

Empower

Trust employees to do things on their own to meet the deadlines and objectives established. Empowerment goes a step further, as well. Lift employee morale by inviting them to the table. Asking for input in brainstorming sessions helps employees feel included.

Recognition

Use praise generously and ensure that it is, at least most of the time, unconditional. This means that it comes without counterpoints or corrections. Everyone has something you can praise. Praise does not always have to be verbal; it can come through other forms of recognition like a promotion.

Transparency

Although leaders must be prudent about sensitive information, it never hurts to give employees the information they need to know. In fact, this will help them feel like valuable members of the team.

Team Building

Bond through team building activities that allow employees to get to know each other beyond water cooler chitchat. These activities needn’t be elaborate or expensive. Meeting icebreakers and trivia questions can work as well as an escape room outing. There are also virtual team building activities for teams that are not co-located.

Community Projects

Bring teams together outside of work to help the community. Platforms such as Groundswell, which can turn corporate giving into an employee benefit, can be used to facilitate employees working together toward charitable goals.

No Micromanaging

Trust teams to get the work done. Leaders who can do this without excessive input or monitoring will find that morale increases.

Incentives

Motivate employees using small incentives. Praise works well, as does a premium parking space or small spot bonus.

Breaks

Oftentimes, workers feel that they can never stop working. As a leader, encourage employees to take sufficient breaks. Even short periods of time, like 30 seconds, can boost productivity by 13%.

Development

The competitive environment, particularly technology, is changing rapidly. Offer ongoing training to let employees know that you are willing to invest in them for the long haul.Clearly, there are many ways to bolster morale. Start by measuring, then determine the steps needed to keep your employees engaged and productive. To read the full article, visit Lifehack. Need help with boosting morale and increasing employee engagement? Groundswell can help you reimagine your approach to employee benefits. It’s easy to add Groundswell to your existing benefits package and create a program that employees can be passionate about. Contact us for more information.

6 mins read

Blog Post

How To Become a Philanthropist: 7 Steps To Change the World

What Is Philanthropy?

What Philanthropy Looks Like

Benefits of Changing the World With Philanthropy

It may seem to be a cliche, but the benefits of philanthropy are immeasurable for those donating time, money or other resources:

Lends perspective: Philanthropy heightens your sense of connectivity to the world and the things that really matter.
Better health: Your mental health and physical wellbeing both improve when you give back.
Lower stress levels: Volunteering has been proven to lower stress and enhance feelings of well-being by releasing dopamine.
Tax reductions: Donations may be written off on personal taxes.
Social interaction: Volunteering can offer opportunities to network and meet others who are committed to similar causes, and connections can be formed among a group of donors providing financial support.
Improved skill set: As a volunteer or a donor who has researched the causes that nonprofits are working on, you will learn new skills, both hard and soft, and improve your leadership acumen.

How To Become a Philanthropist

As with any good strategy, you’ll need a road map to get to your final destination. Follow these seven steps to become a philanthropist:

1. Clarify Your Goals

2. Determine Your Commitment

3. Choose Your Organization

4. Check With Your Company

Before you completely nail down a target nonprofit, check out the support your company may offer – whether that be a match or volunteer opportunities.

5. Establish a Plan

6. Stay Engaged and Curious

7. Trumpet the Cause

Now that you’re a practicing philanthropist, tell others about the organizations you support and why. They may be inspired to help or to find a cause of their own.

Have Fun With It!

6 mins read

Blog Post

8 Powerful Ways To Elevate Your Corporate Philanthropy Efforts

In today's business world, corporate philanthropy is more than a buzzword. Engaged consumers want to do business with brands that give back — and they're not the only ones. An effective, modern employee giving program is fast becoming a key benefit to attract and maintain top talent. Corporate giving isn't a new concept, but it is one that's evolved — and continues to evolve — over time.

The Evolution of Corporate Philanthropy

In the early days, the owners of companies did good things out of a combination of noblesse oblige and enlightened self-interest. In most cases, they gave to charities that aligned with their interests and pet projects, which may or may not have had anything to do with the purpose of their business. Steel magnate Andrew Carnegie, for example, famously championed public libraries because he believed that the key to betterment was education. Henry Ford founded the Edison Institute (now the Henry Ford Museum and Greenfield Village) to share his enthusiasm for American inventions and industry. And Lane Bryant, who founded the first company to sell maternity clothing for women to wear in public, offered free clothing to any woman who lost her wardrobe in a disaster, and donated generously to Jewish charities.It wasn't until the middle of the 20th century, in the post-World War II era, that philanthropy became institutionalized. Large corporations, such as Ford, AT&T, Phillip Morris and Chase Manhattan Bank established foundations and corporate giving programs that were an integral part of their business. They were motivated by a sense of social responsibility, similar to the business magnates that came before them. The giving programs were often focused on the communities where they did business, and they often made grants with little consideration of publicity or benefit to the business.In the 1980s, corporate philanthropy underwent a seismic shift with the rise of strategic philanthropy, which ties corporate giving to the strategic marketing and business goals of a company. It's the genesis of the popular phrase "doing well by doing good," which suggests that businesses can benefit their bottom line by giving back to the community in public ways. Corporate philanthropy, done "right" could boost brand recognition, generate goodwill and assure customer loyalty. Many companies aligned themselves with well-known public charities, such as the United Way, and created giving programs for employees within their companies.

Strategic Philanthropy

Strategic philanthropy also took on another meaning with the rise of corporate social responsibility (CSR). Rather than thinking solely of how a corporate giving strategy could benefit the company, corporate boards began thinking strategically about how to tackle big societal problems, like climate change, poverty and social inequalities. While the goals are commendable, the approach had significant shortcomings. As Katherine Fulton notes in an article on the Center for Effective Philanthropy’s website, making strategy is not the same as making change.One of the major shortcomings of the typical top-down giving program lies in the question: Who decides what we fund and based on what knowledge? Fulton suggests that the people making those decisions are often those furthest removed from the problem, and thus, least aware of what's actually needed to effect change in a community. It also often means that a company is funding charities that are not aligned with the charities and causes that are important to its employees.A second shortcoming — often directly related to the first — is friction. While Fulton focuses on the meticulous record-keeping and inflexibility that grantmakers often require, the same need for documentation and paperwork can also hamper much simpler corporate giving programs, such as programs that match employee donations. Not surprisingly, the harder you make it for employees to access a donation matching program, the fewer employees will take advantage of it.

Modernizing Corporate Philanthropy

Technology has brought some significant changes to the workplace, to society and to philanthropy. Social media, for example, makes it much easier to publicize initiatives, crowdsource solutions and connect with consumers and other stakeholders.On the employee side, modern HR technology takes much of the record-keeping burden off the HR department while providing employees with more transparency in managing their own benefits. This extends to businesses who want a better way to provide an employee corporate giving benefit. A modern workplace giving portal makes it easier for employees to engage in charitable giving by removing friction while providing the company with the ability to track trends in corporate giving and evaluate the effectiveness of their corporate philanthropy. By empowering employees to make donations when they want and to whom they want while providing them with particular tax benefits, a corporation can increase employee engagement and retention, improve company morale and attract top talent.

8 Ways To Take Your Corporate Philanthropy to the Next Level

Deciding to engage in charitable giving as a business is always the right move. Whether you're trying to upgrade an existing program or start fresh with a new community giving policy, these tips go beyond common "best practices" to help you create an effective, engaging program that's truly next level.

1. Make It Personal

Include all of your employees in the decision-making process when choosing charities to support. Better yet, let each of them decide which charities and causes are most important to them. Employees will be more engaged in your philanthropic efforts when they're giving to causes that mean a lot to them personally.

2. Support Volunteerism

Giving money is only one way to give back to the community. Volunteering with community organizations offers far-reaching benefits for your employees and your company. Companies that have volunteer days build deeper connections with the community and foster a team spirit among employees. You can support volunteerism in different ways:

Give paid time off for volunteering in the community.
Donate a specific dollar amount to a donation matching fund for each volunteer hour worked.
Have team-building volunteer opportunities, like building a playground or painting classrooms in a school.

3. Make It Easier for Employees To Give

If you already use a donation matching program, upgrade it to make it easier for your employees to access it. If you don't, consider starting one. According to Double the Donation, 84% of employees say they're more likely to give to charity if their company offers a donation matching program.

4. Give Them More Reason To Give

Donor-advised funds (DAFs) offer key tax benefits for donors but have traditionally been reserved for those who have tax accountants. The Groundswell platform allows you to extend those tax benefits to your employees, giving them even more incentive to participate.

5. Shine a Light on Giving

The best programs will fail if no one knows about them. Make updates on corporate giving goals and strategies part of your regular internal communications. Highlight volunteers who give back. Be transparent about corporate giving goals and report back to employees on your progress to them. Create a giving corner in your employee newsletter and highlight all the ways that employees can engage in giving back.

6. Put Your Employees in Charge

In addition to making it easier for your employees to make individual donations to the causes they support, get them on the team for decisions about company-wide efforts. No one knows the community better than they do. Not only will you be giving them a bigger role in your company, you'll also know that your business is doing work that's truly needed in the community.

7. Celebrate Your Team Publicly

Use those social media accounts to highlight team members who are giving back to the community. Share photos of volunteer days or host fundraising appeals. The publicity will burnish your business reputation in the community and the public recognition will make your employees feel valued and appreciated.

8. Take Advantage of Analytics

A key benefit of the Groundswell app is the ability to set funding goals and track progress toward them. Track key metrics to analyze and adjust your corporate giving strategy, and communicate your progress to help employees recognize their role in the bigger corporate picture.

Elevate Your Corporate Philanthropy

Corporate philanthropy is an essential part of any business strategy today. By investing in modern technology and innovative giving strategies, you can increase employee engagement, improve community relations and improve your bottom line. For more information on how Groundswell can work with you to create a customized corporate philanthropy program, get in touch with us today.

6 mins read

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Donor-Advised Fund vs. Private Foundation: What's the Difference?

Donor-Advised Fund vs. Private Foundation

What Is a Donor-Advised Fund?

What Is a Private Foundation?

Key Differences Between Donor-Advised Fund vs. Private Foundation

There are a few important distinctions to note between the two, particularly when it comes to the overarching mission and vision.

Longevity

Control

Profile

Establishment

Tax Matters

We’re Here To Support Your Giving Efforts

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Determining Your Corporate Donation Budget: How Much Should You Donate To Charity?

When a company donates to charitable causes, they benefit in several different ways beyond doing good for the community. Charitable donations pay off in goodwill and reputation, deeper community connections, better customer relations and increased employee engagement and retention. That's in addition to any tax benefits your business might accrue through charitable donations. But how do you determine how much you should donate to charity? Let's walk through the benefits and calculations that can help you make that decision for your company.

5 Benefits of Corporate Philanthropy

When you understand the varied ways that giving back to the community can benefit your business, it gets a whole lot easier to assign a value to it. This isn't an exhaustive list of the pros, but it can be helpful framing when you're deciding how much to budget for charitable donations.1. Giving Back to the Community Improves Your Company's ReputationToday more than ever, customers want to do business with companies that put giving back at the core of their business operation. In fact, 85% of consumers say they have a more positive view of businesses that support causes they care about.2. A Strong Employee Giving Program Increases Employee Engagement and CohesivenessDonation matching and other corporate giving programs are valuable benefits. In a recent survey, nearly half the companies who responded said that their corporate giving program helped increase employee engagement.3. Offering a Corporate Giving Program Helps Attract and Retain Top TalentIn the same survey, nearly 60% said that their giving program is important in attracting and retaining top talent. In addition, corporate social responsibility (CSR) programs help develop strong leadership skills in your employees. 4. Giving Back to the Community Deepens and Broadens Community ConnectionsWhen your company and employees support local charities and causes, you increase your opportunities for networking in the community. Companies that follow the lead of their employees in choosing causes are more likely to engage with important organizations within the community.5. Companies With an Authentic CSR Policy and Giving Program Build a Loyal Customer BaseYour company's commitment to making a difference matters to your customers, especially millennials, Gen X and Gen Z. Today's consumers expect businesses to be good corporate citizens — and they vote with their wallets. They also vote with their social media accounts — 82% of millennials interact with their favorite brands online, and will publicly support companies they admire.

How Much Should I Donate to Charity as a Corporation?

The key factor in deciding how much your company should donate to charity is your balance sheet — in other words, the amount you budget for philanthropy should be what you can afford to give without affecting the cash flow you need to do business. That said, there are some industry standards and best practices. Many large corporations — and smaller businesses — earmark 1% of their pre-tax profit for charitable giving. This isn't a hard-and-fast rule. Some companies give considerably more. Whole Foods, for example, donates 5% of its after-tax profit to charity each year, and small businesses — those with fewer than 100 employees — contribute an average of 6% of their pre-tax profits to charity. Some small retail or service businesses choose to donate a percentage of each sale rather than calculate an annualized figure. A local brewery, for example, might funnel all profits from the sale of a particular brew into its corporate giving account. A realtor might designate a percentage of each completed sale as a donation to their corporate giving fund. Using a percentage of your profit as a giving guideline makes it easier to scale your donations as your business grows, but it can make it difficult to budget for the year ahead. Author Curt Weeden, one of the most influential voices in the area of social philanthropy, proposed a simple formula to help businesses set their corporate philanthropy budget, which he calls the Sabsevitz Ante-Up Formula: Multiply last year's pre-tax net income by 1.2%.Once you've established a target amount for your giving, you should do three things to increase the impact of your donation:

Make it part of your operating budget.
Keep your employees informed and engaged with frequent updates.
Make your corporate giving philosophy part of your marketing and outreach strategy.

Choosing a Charity for Your Donations

There are two main ways to choose which causes and charities your company will support.

Top-down decision where your board or leadership team identifies one or more causes the company will support with donations, matching donations and other forms of corporate giving.

Inclusive decision making where employees choose and/or recommend the causes and charities that matter the most to them.

More and more businesses are opting for more inclusive ways of determining the causes their company will support. There are a number of benefits to this approach.

Employees who participate in decision-making are more engaged and likely to feel valued and make a difference. Engaged employees are good for your business.
Your employees live in the community, which gives them unique insights into the organizations and people who do good work in the areas that matter to them. Employee decision-making is good for the community.
The more involved people are in choosing where to direct donations, the more invested they are in the program. This results in more charity donations, which benefits the nonprofits involved.

Ways Your Company Can Donate to Charity

Your company can give back to the community in many ways, including several models for making monetary donations. Some of the most common include:Volunteering for a CauseServing dinner at a soup kitchen, building playgrounds for schools, or helping build houses for Habitat for Humanity all help build team spirit and cooperation. While many companies volunteer as a team, some businesses choose a different way to encourage volunteerism — they use volunteer hours as a metric to determine the amount of money to add to their corporate giving account. Sponsor Local EventsFrom softball teams to parades and awards dinners, there are always opportunities for your business to sponsor local events and activities. The payoff is goodwill and name recognition for your business.Set Up a Donation Match ProgramDonation match programs allow your employees to double their donations to causes that matter to them. Donate With GroundswellGroundswell makes it easy for your employees to support the causes they care about by removing friction from the donation matching model. Learn more about our philanthropy-as-a-service model and find out how your company can provide your employees with a cutting-edge benefit that will add value to your business, their lives and the community. Get in touch with us to get started.

6 mins read

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Donation Match Programs for Charitable Giving: How It Works and How To Set One Up

Donation matching is a form of corporate giving that effectively doubles employees' contributions to causes that matter to them. The premise is simple: When an employee makes a financial donation to a charity, the company contributes a matching amount, effectively doubling the donation amount.

What Are the Benefits of Donation Matching?

The benefit of match programs for nonprofits and charities is obvious — they get double the donations for the amount of fundraising work they do. But there are also benefits for the employees and for the company. For corporations, donation matching is an effective, efficient way of engaging in corporate philanthropy. The company can establish guidelines for the type of organizations it will support but otherwise allow their giving to be led by employees. This type of employee-centered giving:

Engages workers
Makes them feel more empowered
Improves employee morale
Increases employee loyalty and "team spirit"

In addition, there are benefits for the wider community, as noted in a recent research paper on corporate giving: Because employees are often closer to the community, they have a deeper view of organizations that are doing the most effective and beneficial work within that community. Finally, donation matching is an easy, structured way for a corporation to engage in corporate social responsibility (CSR). Match programs allow companies to build relationships with local organizations that are important to their employees, reaping the goodwill benefit that goes along with supporting good works in the community.

How Traditional Donation Match Programs Work

While there are slight variations, most traditional donation matching programs follow these basic steps:

The employee makes a donation to an eligible organization (more on that later).
They fill out a form, either on paper or electronically, that includes the details of their donation and requests that the company match their donation.
The company reviews the request.
If the request is approved, the company sends a check for a matching amount.

As you can see, this involves a lot of work — and control — on the part of the employer and their HR office. It also creates a number of barriers to giving:

Employees can only donate to organizations chosen by the employer.
They must fill out forms and submit them. Each year, as much as $7 billion in matching donation funds go unused, largely because employees forget to ask for the match.
Charities must wait for the second part of the donation, which also effectively doubles their bookkeeping burden.
Finally, some employees choose not to submit their donations for a match because they don't want to reveal the causes they support to their employers.

Groundswell Has Reimagined Donation Matching

Groundswell has totally reimagined the way that donation matching programs work. In the Groundswell model, employees have complete control over their own giving and the causes they support. Plus, the charitable organization gets the full amount of the donation all at once, and the HR department is freed up to focus on supporting staff in other important ways.

Here's how donation matching works the Groundswell way:

Groundswell creates a Donor Advised Fund for each employee.
The company can include tax-free contributions to the employee's DAF as part of their total compensation package.
The employee can allocate a portion of their pay to their DAF, with rules-based matching opportunities for the company.
Employees distribute the funds in their DAF to the causes that matter to them, when and how they see fit.
Charities receive the funds when and how the employee decides to make donations.
Employees can track their funds, make investments, and access all the tools they need to receive the most benefit from their philanthropy.

That's it. By removing the friction from the process, Groundswell empowers employees to give more to the causes they truly care about in a way that provides maximum benefit for themselves, their employers and the causes they support.

How To Start a Donation Matching Program

These are the key steps for starting a donation matching program at your company.

Identify your purpose and set reasonable goals. This step is often overlooked but is vital to creating a program that aligns with your company's overall CSR strategy.
Set a budget for your corporate giving.
Define the guidelines for your program.
Establish the process for submitting, approving and distributing matching gifts.
Publicize the program to employees, charities and the community.

Typical Donation Match GuidelinesA traditional donation match program requires a lot of groundwork in advance of deploying. Groundswell simplifies the entire process, and our team will be there to help you establish sensible rules for eligibility and donation funding.

Managing It All

Managing a matching gift program can be time-consuming for the HR office, but there are ways to make it easier and more transparent for both HR and the employees. Our mobile-first app puts all the information and tools for donor-advised giving into the hands of each employee, allowing them to manage and track the benefits of their giving. Reach out to our team to learn how Groundswell can help you build and deploy an effective, engaging donation match program for your company.

6 mins read

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Why Are Employee Benefits So Important? Here’s What You Should Know

No one disputes the importance of employee benefits. Employee benefits matter because they demonstrate how much the company cares about and appreciates its employees. Benefits support an employee’s health and well-being, their loved ones and even their financial literacy. Although health care benefits top the list of the most desired, there are other perks that companies can offer that employees really want. Why are employee benefits important? They increasingly reflect changing employee priorities and the things that are most important in their lives. According to Deloitte, salary is less important to Gen Z than to other generations. However, researchers found that just 20% of Gen Z would work for a company that did not share their values. That may be a tall order for many companies. But it doesn’t have to be so complicated.

Benefits That Actually Matter

Gen Z and millennials are looking for companies that go beyond the absolute minimum. That doesn’t mean beer-and-pizza Fridays, however. So what does it mean? For companies that want to attract the best and brightest, it means you may need to look at benefits through an entirely different lens.Companies aren’t limited to a small selection of benefits. In addition to the ubiquitous health insurance, there are several categories of perks that will enhance your benefits package. Most of all, it’s about making responsible choices that keep in mind the communities you serve.

5 Advantages of a Great Employee Benefits Package

But first, what are the advantages of a great employee benefits package? We know that benefits matter to employees. Benefits flow to the company as well. For example, you will be better positioned to:1. Attract and Retain Top TalentWhen you value your employees, it shows in how you treat them. It’s not simply about the number of benefits, but the values that these benefits reflect. 2. Support Holistic WellnessEmployees that are mentally, physically and financially sound are better able to perform at top levels. They bring their whole selves to work each day.3. Increase ProductivityWhen employees are treated well, they want to be more productive in their roles. They find ways to do more with less and they put in more time during the day.4. Boost Engagement and MoraleOf course, employees want to be paid a fair wage. But they also want recognition and appreciation. A good benefits package signals that they are respected and that what matters to them matters to the company.5. Improve Your ImageGood corporate citizenry along with happy employees is a combination that is unbeatable when it comes to building brand equity. Further, research says that when you treat people well, it’s reflected in how they treat customers.

Different Types of Employee Benefits

When you want to enhance your benefits package, there are many options. The benefits described below are not mandatory. Some, however, are considered standard and without them it would be difficult to attract the best employees. Here are some of the most popular categories of benefits:

Health Care

In addition to routine medical care, health care benefits may also include dental, vision, and hospitalization. Many companies offer accounts that allow employees to put aside money for healthcare expenses that are not covered elsewhere. These include flexible spending accounts (FSA), health savings accounts (HSA), and health reimbursement accounts (HSA). The main differences between them are who contributes — employees, employers, or both — and whether or not the funds roll over from year to year.

Wellness

A subset of health care, wellness benefits include everything from on-site workout facilities and yoga classes to gym memberships and smoking cessation clinics. In addition, there are paid fitness apps and other wellness tools available online.

Work-Life

Work-life is a broad category that may overlap with some of the other groupings listed here. This benefit includes the types of perks that make it easier for working people to take paid time off to enjoy sufficient rest or tend to personal responsibilities. They include such things as vacation days, maternity and paternity leave, time off for caregiver responsibilities, and, in more recent years, flexible scheduling and work-from-home opportunities.

Paid Sick Leave

While there isn’t a sick leave policy for short-term illnesses on a federal level, some states — California and New York are two — mandate paid leave for employees. Employees who lack sick leave are more likely to go to work, a major factor in the spread of infectious diseases like COVID-19, according to public health officials. Another benefit that has become increasingly popular are “mental health days.” This may be included as part of sick days or may be separate.

Financial Wellness

According to a recent study, employees spend 25% of their workweek dealing with financial issues. These types of benefits have also experienced a surge in popularity. Bank of America reported that in 2021, 46% of employers included some form of financial wellness benefit in their employee offerings. The types of programs are wide and varied and may include retirement planning, insurance, investing, financial literacy, budgeting, and tax planning.

Retirement Plans

For most Gen Zers and millennials, the defined benefit retirement plan does not exist. Of course, employers don’t have to be involved. But when employees don’t plan properly it contributes significantly to stress levels. Employers can help with 401K plans even if they don’t offer matching contributions. In addition to the aforementioned, there are planning tools, workshops, and education. They can also support retirement transitions, for example, with flexible scheduling or reduced hours.

Professional Development

Well-trained employees are able to contribute to the company in significant ways. In addition to learning new skills, they are versed in recent trends and emerging opportunities in the industry. Training is easier than ever before with the latest publications and options for online learning and podcasts right at your fingertips. Employers can offer tuition reimbursement, company-sponsored workshops and classes, and time off to pursue continuing education classes at a university or trade school.

Commuter Stipends

Companies who care about the environment may offer an incentive to employees to take public transportation, carpool, ride bikes or walk to work. This incentive can reduce the cost of a bus ticket or provide a little extra padding in the budget each month.

Charitable Giving and Volunteerism

This is a benefit that appeals directly to employees who are looking for companies that are good corporate citizens. The benefits include, for example, matching all or a portion of charitable donations and providing time off for volunteering. Some companies sponsor a school, a local nonprofit or other charitable organization and may offer employees the opportunity to volunteer — or even manage a project — with pay.Offering Charitable Giving and Volunteerism programs are excellent methods of getting employees involved in philanthropy and shifting workplace cultures toward generosity.Learn how to maximize employee impact.

Offer Benefits That Engage and Retain

Companies are becoming increasingly creative in the benefits they offer. The above list is not all-inclusive. However, these benefits are among the top contenders when it comes to engaging and retaining your workforce. Why consider a charitable giving program? It allows you to be a good corporate citizen while at the same time giving employees something that’s important to them. Not everyone is interested in yoga classes or budgeting apps. But most employees have a favorite charity and the desire to do their part. If you’re interested in a charitable giving program as part of your benefits package, contact Groundswell today. Benefits don’t have to be complicated or expensive. Employees appreciate companies that value the things that are most important to them.

6 mins read

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Building Stellar Workplace Leaders: 7 Tips To Be a Good Manager

The best companies have one thing in common: good leadership. Leadership can make or break a company. All leaders aren’t managers. There are, for example, informal leaders who may have no official title or claim to direct others. So while all leaders aren’t managers, in the most exceptional companies, all managers are leaders.The traditional view of management is confined to the basic functions of planning, organizing, directing, staffing, and controlling. That may fit neatly into the comfort zone for some people, but it doesn’t fit the way businesses operate today. As the competitive environment changes and the old work rules are discarded, the role of manager is becoming a lot more flexible.When you’re managing people in a rapidly changing and fluid world, you need more skills than ever. It’s no longer sufficient, if it ever was, to simply be the smartest person in the room. As mentioned, the best managers are great leaders. This means they have both the hard and the soft skills to get the best from their people. Much has been written about leadership styles. But perhaps more important than any particular style are the things that great managers do every day.

What Does Good Management Look Like in Practice?

If you want to know how to be a good manager, follow these seven essential tips every day:

Manage Up

New paradigms for leadership largely turn the top-down model on its head. Good managers aren’t simply following instructions received from on high. When you cultivate good relationships with your own managers, you’ll better understand the pressures and motivations behind their decisions. When the relationship is good, managers can even offer respectful feedback. In turn, your managers can learn how to best advocate for your success.

Invest in the Next-Generation Leaders

As a manager in the current environment, you don’t have time to micromanage. You must manage to meet goals and objectives. This allows others to learn valuable skills and flex their problem-solving and leadership muscle. More importantly, you have the responsibility of creating new leaders. As a strong manager, you can rely on the people around you because you have taught them well and delegated tasks to them.

Favor Innovation Over Rinse-and-Repeat

A few decades ago, managers were focused on efficiency and productivity. This meant processes that were reliable and repeatable. Make no mistake, businesses still need a high level of efficiency. However, the companies with the most sustainable business models for the future are those that take risks. They aren’t afraid to try something new. It’s not strictly about technology. Rather, it’s about empowering people to discover the possibilities. If you aren’t innovating, you can be assured that some scrappy new startup is finding a way to do what you do, only better.

Manage From the Inside Out

You can’t manage from outside the team. The best managers aren’t afraid to get their hands dirty. This isn’t simply an improved version of managing by walking around. It’s managing by getting involved. Managers who master this skill have the opportunity to identify strengths and weaknesses in their team and to better understand their pain points. In order to do it most effectively, however, you must walk a fine line between being a team player and taking over. As a manager, it’s your job to provide the “what,” for example, the deliverables. To the extent possible, avoid telling people “how” to do their jobs.

Share Knowledge

The rapidly changing business environment means that yesterday’s education and skills quickly become obsolete. You don’t have to be an expert in every new technology or management philosophy that crops up. But you do need to understand the extent of change. When you are busy with job responsibilities and home life, it can seem impossible. Fortunately, you never need to step into a bookstore, library or classroom to learn something new. Take time out of your busy schedule to read, take an online course, follow a blog, or have lunch with a colleague in your industry or another. Then share the information you collect and teach others what you know.

Encourage Team Problem-Solving

Encourage problem-solving among your employees. It removes the pressure from you to always be the fixer. Further, it builds a critical skill that will make your company more profitable in the long run. Solicit ideas, ask for input and encourage team members to share. This has the additional benefit of helping employees think more holistically about where the business is headed and what the future challenges might be. Remember that if your team isn’t making any mistakes, they may be playing it too safe.

Pursue the Greater Good

Good managers are selfless. Certainly, they want what is best for their employees, customers, partners, and the company. But the concept of the greater good extends even further. Good managers understand that their actions have consequences for the community and the world. They work to ensure that they do no harm.

What Are the Benefits of Strong Management?

When a company has strong managers, it benefits in many ways.

Attracts and Retains Better Talent

Word gets around when a company is well-managed. Managers that invest in their professional growth mentor others around them and have no trouble attracting good employee candidates, while also being able to retain current employees.

Sustains Growth Into the Future

Employees are more engaged with good management. They’re better able to ensure that the company is positioned for long-term growth and able to outperform the competition.

Builds Credibility for the Brand

A strong managerial base provides stability for the company. It fortifies the values and builds products and services that promote the brand and enhance the company’s reputation.

Becomes a Better Corporate Citizen

Managers create an environment where all employees think beyond the walls of the company toward the partnerships they have created, the customers they serve and the broader business community. Corporate giving programs, for example, are one of the ways to practice good corporate citizenship.One way to include charitable giving as a corporate value is with a charitable giving program. You can match employee contributions or support employee volunteer efforts. Groundswell automates charitable giving and makes it an easily administered part of your employee benefits package.

Good Management Means Change

Management has evolved. The requirements for how to be a good manager have less to do with control and more to do with how well managers can inspire others to perform at the highest levels. These managers are adept at handling a diversity of ideas, opinions and approaches to getting the work done. They freely share their knowledge and help others to be the best version of themselves. These are the managers that will sustain the best companies in the future.If you’re interested in a corporate giving program that will capture the hearts of your employees, Groundswell is the way to go. We make corporate giving easy. Find out how you can get a leg up on the Talent War. Contact us for more information.