Down With Thresholds!
Why Traditional Dollars for Doers Threshold Levels May be Hazardous to Your Program’s Impact
Benevity Blog: Down With Thresholds!
The Way We Were: The Threshold Tradition
Thresholds in Dollars for Doers programs are standard and traditional. The idea that employees reach a threshold limit of hours before the company kicks in a reward seems intuitive, since employees earn the company’s contribution, and worked well for many years mainly because it was manageable for corporations to implement. In an era where tracking and reporting on volunteer hours, administering the associated rewards and distributing the funds to the charitable organizations was largely manual and fell to employees and program administrators to undertake, thresholds made sense. (But hey, let’s not forget this was also an era that started when large shoulder pads, leg warmers and hair scrunchies shined as well). It’s also important to remember that employee engagement didn’t figure as largely in the goals and outcomes for most corporate social good programs.
