Here are 10 ways to 2X your employee engagement and social impact during the year-end rush—and how Deed can help!

Giving Season 2024 is almost here! For social impact leaders at purpose-driven companies, that means it’s time to ramp up workplace giving and volunteering activities to close the year out strong. 

Between planning for 2025 and meeting time-sensitive deadlines, you may feel like there’s no time left in the day to plan for GivingTuesday or the longer Giving Season—and we don’t blame you!

That’s why we’ve put together a list of last-minute Giving Season ideas, including tips for GivingTuesday employee engagement, workplace giving and volunteering, and more. 

Employee Engagement Spotlight: How Zuora reached 67% employee engagement during Giving Season 2023

For a recent GivingTuesday success story, consider Zuora. Zuora is an enterprise software company that helps today’s innovative companies build, run and grow modern businesses. The company’s GivingTuesday campaign featured 37 fundraisers created by “ZEOs”—what Zuora calls their employees—from around the world for causes that they’re passionate about and are close to their hearts. Every ZEO received a $25 donation credit to donate to one of the fundraisers or any organization of their choice. Zuora also offered 2:1 matching on all donations ZEOs made with their own funds. The campaign started when the sun rose in Australia on November 28 and lasted for 48 hours. Read more about Zuora’s GivingTuesday campaign. 

Rachael Claudio, Zuora’s Senior Director of Social Impact and Environmental, Social, and Corporate Governance (ESG), reports that “67 percent of ZEOs participated in our GivingTuesday campaign, raising over $108,000 for 129 charitable organizations around the world.”

Zuora leverages Deed’s engaging and scalable workplace giving and volunteering platform to engage its global workforce in social impact. Learn how Deed can help your organization drive employee engagement this Giving Season.

Last-minute Giving Season ideas for 2024

1. Double (or triple) the impact with matching

Amplify your employees' generosity through flexible donation matching programs. Whether you choose a 1:1, 2:1,  3:1 match ratio, or even more, these programs demonstrate your company's commitment to supporting causes your employees care about. Consider increasing match ratios for GivingTuesday or other special giving days to drive higher participation. 

Deed’s analysis shows that companies that offer donation matching see an almost 2X greater percentage of employees donating. Learn more about donation matching on Deed.

2. Incentivize workplace giving with donation credits

Donation credits—or money you offer to your employees so that they can donate to nonprofits they care about—are a great way to incentivize workplace giving. If employee engagement is a metric you watch closely, then offering donation credits through an employee-focused workplace giving platform can help you see incredible engagement. Consider allocating year-end budget surpluses to donation credits, turning corporate savings into meaningful community impact. 

Deed’s analysis shows that companies that seed donation credits see an almost 3X higher percentage of employees who donate. Learn more about donation credits on Deed.

3. Cover your employees’ donation fees

Consider covering donations fees for your employees. Deed’s analysis shows companies that cover fees see higher participation (up to 2X), larger average donation size (nearly 2X), and more money ultimately reaching their nonprofit partners. 

With Deed’s flexible workplace giving platform, you can choose to cover your employees’ donation fees during Giving Season and throughout the year. You can also temporarily change what fees the company covers to make a greater impact on important days like GivingTuesday, or any time throughout the year to align with your programs. Learn more about Deed’s wide and growing range of workplace giving solutions. 

4. Reward volunteering with Dollars for Doers

A Dollars for Doers program is a great option for companies like yours to recognize employees who give their time as well as their money. The idea is simple: convert your employees’ volunteer hours into charitable dollars by offering a certain amount of donation credits for every hour they volunteer. This type of program creates an additional incentive for employees to engage with their communities. As the year ends, consider setting up special rewards for employees who have demonstrated exceptional commitment to volunteering. 

Deed’s analysis shows that companies that offer Dollars for Doers see a 2X greater percentage of engaged employees. Learn more about how covering fees with Deed can help you make the most of your employees’ donation dollars.  

5. Drive collective impact with a Universal Campaign

Sometimes your employees may be so excited to give that they donate directly to a nonprofit and skip right over your company’s campaign. This excitement is great, but how can you attribute their generosity to your campaign’s success? With a universal campaign, you can count all donations (including payroll donations and pledge donations) made during your campaign period to one central campaign (unless the donations were made directly to another active campaign).

Social impact leaders need innovative solutions to ensure that their global teams’ donation dollars and volunteer hours are all counted toward broader organizational goals. Learn more about how Deed helps enterprise companies meet their impact goals. 

6. Open up your nonprofit network

Some organizations only allow their employees to donate to certain nonprofits. Others give their employees access to thousands, or even millions, of nonprofits through a workplace giving platform. This flexibility is particularly valuable during the giving season when employees might have personal connections to various causes or nonprofit organizations. Deed’s analysis shows that on average, companies with an open nonprofit environment see over 2X the total amount donated per employee. By removing restrictions, you can increase participation rates and create more meaningful giving experiences!

On the Deed platform, you can open up your nonprofit network, while still filtering out certain organizations or focus areas. Learn more about how your employees can explore Deed’s network of over 2 million vetted nonprofits to donate to and volunteer for a cause they care about. 

7. Gamify social impact

Doing good should also feel good. One way to celebrate your employees’ good deeds is by giving them digital badges for donating and volunteering. Badges can be used to celebrate your employees' philanthropic milestones, whether it's their first donation, their tenth donation, or reaching specific contribution thresholds. By adding an element of friendly competition and recognition, badges can boost participation rates and create a culture of sustained giving. 

Kyndryl, a global leader in IT infrastructure services, pairs badges with certifications to incentivize and celebrate employees who do good deeds. Here’s how Pam Hacker, VP of Social Impact at Kyndryl, described their initiative in a recent article in Forbes: 

The [Deed] platform also underpins the employee volunteering certification program, highlighting the crucial role of technology and data in achieving social impact goals. Hacker highlighted, “We used the Deed platform to recognize and acknowledge the contributions of Kyndryl volunteers. Deed data have been the foundation of the employee volunteering certification program and we could not have accomplished this much without such an innovative partner.”

Learn more about how Deed can help your organization drive engagement by gamifying social impact.  

8. Leverage your ERGs 

Employee resource groups (ERGs) are powerful drivers of workplace giving - and of engagement overall! These groups give employees the opportunity to come together and celebrate topics they are passionate about. It can be exciting - and insightful - as an impact leader to see how your employees organize and create an impact, whether through launching fundraisers, organizing volunteer activities, or hosting events. 

Rather than shoehorning ERG efforts into a platform that wasn’t built for their unique needs, consider using a tech platform that is designed for collective social impact. Deed Communities is a place for your ERGs to coordinate giving campaigns, share impact stories, and mobilize members around causes they care about. During Giving Season 2024 and beyond, your Communities can serve as launching pads for targeted fundraising initiatives that resonate with specific employee groups. Learn more about Deed Communities.

9. Give employees bite-sized opportunities to make an impact

Donating isn’t the only way to make a difference, and an inclusive impact program will offer additional ways that employees can get involved during Giving Season. By encouraging your employees to make small lifestyle changes, like remembering to unplug electronics, or to complete certain impact-driven activities, like joining a webinar on inclusivity in the workplace, you can broaden your team’s perspective on what it means to do good. 

Deed's Actions feature suggests simple yet meaningful activities employees can incorporate into their daily routines. From reducing energy consumption to making sustainable purchasing decisions, these bite-sized activities can create substantial collective impact when embraced company-wide. Learn more about Actions.

10. Ensure your tech partners can scale on GivingTuesday

Your social impact technology must be able to scale to handle increased traffic and transaction volumes—it’s the only way to ensure your employees can participate in your great campaigns without technical hiccups. 

Learn how Deed’s user-forward workplace giving technology can help your organization drive employee engagement this Giving Season.

How to engage employees on GivingTuesday and throughout Giving Season 

Social impact leaders always have to do more with less. To maximize your company’s impact this Giving Season, consider implementing a multi-pronged approach:

• Create a communication calendar to internally promote different Giving Season opportunities
• Set company-wide giving goals and track progress visually through dashboards and reports
• Highlight employee impact stories through your internal channels
• Consider department or team challenges to drive engagement
• Use matching funds strategically on high-impact days (such as GivingTuesday, or throughout December!)

Remember, successful giving programs aren't just about the dollars raised—they're about creating a culture of generosity and impact. Deed's all-in-one workplace giving platform helps you build this culture, while making it easy for employees to participate in ways that matter to them.

Deed is an enterprise social impact platform that makes it fun and easy for millions of employees to share their time, money, and talent with causes they care about. We started as a viral volunteering app, and today our platform gives the world’s most inspiring brands—from Airbnb to lululemon—one exceptionally-designed home for all of their purpose-driven activities. Corporate grantmaking, employee donations/matching, diversity & inclusion, and employee resource groups (ERGs) are only the beginning. 

Over the past three to five years, expectations for Fortune 500 corporate social responsibility have radically changed. But with Deed’s trusted integration partners like Workday and PayPal, hand-in-hand customer service, and a collaborative product team, Deed’s platform moves at the speed of work. 

Ready to supercharge your year-end giving? Book a demo today to learn how we can help you make the most of these features and run successful Giving Season campaigns year after year.