More and more companies are involving their employees in their corporate citizenship strategies. One such strategy involves engaging employees in giving of their time through volunteering at community initiatives managed by the company or other agencies in the local community. Corporations often allow employees to volunteer during work hours and on company time. This not only promotes the company in the community and raise esteem but it enhances employee retention and it is the right thing to do.
A second corporate citizenship strategy involves fundraising activities in the workplace. For over 100 years, corporations have participated in United Way campaigns to raise money for local and national nonprofit organizations through employee payroll deductions. Other fundraising organizations such as Earth Share, Community Shares, and Global Impact, like United Way, are also raise moneys from corporate employees to fund agencies in the community.
Since 1988, Helix has been very involved with United Way organizations throughout America. We have developed a comprehensive software system that is used by over 50% of the largest United Way organizations to manage employee campaigns. This software, called Andar, is now being used by for-profit organizations to manage their volunteering initiatives and employee giving campaigns.
Online Campaign Software - Andar’s e-Pledge module is one of the most powerful web-based employee giving tool available on the market. It allows corporations to minimize the cost of campaigning by virtually eliminating paper pledge forms and replaces it with an easy-to-use web page. The web pages are highly customizable and can be branded with company logos, campaign information, and possibly information regarding corporate citizenship initiatives.
Employee Privacy - One of the hottest topics today is that of privacy. Corporations are increasingly concerned with employee information leaving their control. Andar is strategically installed and runs within the company’s network. The employee names, salary and other sensitive information never has to leave the company.
National Campaign - For most corporations with global locations, the costs and complexities of running employee giving campaigns can be unmanageable. With Andar and e-Pledge, employee pledge forms can be easily customized to reflect the needs within the employee’s local community. The list of agencies and community initiatives can also be customized by locations.
Agency Payout - Andar includes a very extensive donor designation system that allows an employee to designate or split their gift among different agencies or community initiatives. Andar’s payout engine allows companies to distribute the collected funds to the various agencies.
Federated Campaigns - Some companies run federated campaigns where employees can designate their gifts to the agencies associated with United Ways, Earth Share, Community Shares, or any other federations. With Andar all federations can be listed on equal footing.
Disaster Relief Campaigns - Andar allows corporations to very quickly setup an online giving campaign to support disaster relief efforts. A few minutes is all it takes to have employees give to fellow employees or other citizens in a disaster stricken area.
Volunteer Management - Corporations can use Andar to manage their own volunteering opportunity database and employees can use the Andar e-Volunteer website to search this database. Local community agencies can also be given access to the database to submit and manage their own opportunities. Andar allows corporations to manage employee participation in all aspect of their corporate citizenship strategies through one system and one database.
The U.S. Chamber of Commerce Center for Corporate Citizenship (CCC) is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization that serves as a resource and a voice for businesses and their social concerns.
The Center for Corporate Citizenship at Boston College is a membership based research organization. We work with global corporations to help them define, plan and operationalize their corporate citizenship. Our goal is to help business leverage its social, economic and human assets to ensure both its success and a more just and sustainable world.
The Corporate Citizenship Company offers research, consultancy and publications to help businesses succeed as good citizens of our changing global society. We have developed special strengths in: benchmarking; social and economic impact assessment; international issues management; community programme evaluation; reporting; and news briefing.
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