Charity at Work: 5 Ways to Make Office Fundraising Easy

September 11, 2014
4 min read

Lisa Manfield

Looking for ways to bring charity into your workplace? An office fundraiser is a great opportunity to raise money for charity while encouraging team building, creating meaningful performance incentives, and inspiring one another for a good cause.

It’s also a chance to get a little creative. So if you’re looking for initiatives that bring fun and fundraising together at work, these five examples can be used as a starting point to spark your own plans to encourage charitable giving in your workplace.

Before you get started, keep these tips in mind:

  • Keep your fundraiser simple so everyone can get involved
  • Build on an event or activity your company already has in place
  • Look for ways to have fun with it

Plan an Event

kids-sqInviting employees to participate in an event can be an effective way to launch a workplace fundraising initiative. By dedicating company-sanctioned time for charitable giving, you can foster greater participation in and appreciation for your chosen cause.

And if you don’t have the resources to organize a special occasion, simply add a charitable component to an existing event, exercise or regular employee gathering.

In April 2014, Chimp hosted its first Bring Your Kids to Work Day to get employees and their children involved in corporate fundraising. The event included arts and crafts, hallway bowling, and a bake sale to raise funds for mental health charities. Employees contributed charitable dollars to a Giving Group in exchange for tokens they could swap for tasty treats.

Challenge Yourself and Others

hotdog-sqWhether it’s about developing new workplace skills, achieving personal goals, or simply vying for a chance to win bragging rights, a workplace challenge encourages participants to push themselves a little harder than they normally would in the name of a charitable cause.

Unbounce’s Athleticism vs. Gluttony – 30 Days of Running and Hot Dogs takes this concept even further. It’s both a personal well-being challenge and an eating contest wrapped into one. Two employees striving to raise money for poverty alleviation in Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside plan to eat a hot dog/run 3 km every day for 30 days in an effort to raise $500.

Crowdsource Creativity

mixtape-club-sqInviting creative ideas and feedback is often an integral part of a collaborative workplace, and with a charitable incentive, can become an even better reason to work together.

Chimp’s MixedTape Music Club, for example, invites employees to contribute $5 for a chance to choose a song for the company’s monthly office playlist.

Participants vote on their favourite song and the winner gets to donate the funds to their charity of choice.

Play a Guessing Game

Balloons-17-sqEveryone loves a chance to guess on an expected outcome, whether it’s quarterly sales results, newsletter open rates or something a little more personal like a baby pool. Why not put a charitable price on those guesses and let the winner donate the total amount raised to their charity of choice?

At Chimp, a trio of long-lasting helium balloons used as props in a photoshoot became the impetus for an off-the-cuff guessing game for charity. Long Live the Balloons invited employees to guess how long it would take the helium balloons to hit the ground for a $10 charitable contribution.

Incentivize Goal Achievement

cs-sqEvery corporate team has specific goals it’s working to achieve – whether those goals are formal or informal. Why not make goal achievement more engaging by incentivizing it with charitable dollars – or by enforcing donations to disincentivize undesirable behaviours?

Unbounce’s Client Success team started a Giving Group called The CS Otters to inject some fun into their daily efforts to serve their clients. For example, anytime a team member was caught “talking like a hipster,” they made a charitable contribution to the group.

Planning your work fundraiser doesn’t have to be just another task on your to-do list. By injecting some creativity into your corporate giving initiatives, fundraising at work can be a great way to build more fun and engagement into your workday.

Have a fun fundraising idea for your work team? We’re here to help you get started. 
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