Microsoft’s Six Recommendations to Increase Employee Engagement in Your Next Workplace Giving Campaign
Register Now! April 3-4, 2014 for the Charities@Work 13th Annual Best Practices Summit on Employee Engagement in Corporate Citizenship.
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By Chris Jarvis, Partner and Co-founder of Realized Worth
The real question:
October has become the month of corporate giving in North America. If you’re one of those companies looking to break the giving record you set last year you know exactly what you have to do – increase the number of employees who give and the enthusiasm with which they participate.
Simple, right?
Sure, until you ask yourself the question, “How exactly do I increase employee engagement in my annual giving campaign?”
The answer?
To find the answer to that very question, we traveled to the Microsoft campus in Seattle for a behind the scenes peek at one of the largest workplace giving campaigns in North America. (For more information about how these funds are invested in the community, read this article by Brad Smith, Executive Vice President & General Counsel, Microsoft).
Microsoft uses a strategy that we’ve seen successfully employed by other companies looking to create widespread participation in workplace giving campaigns. The strategy is to issue the role of “Executive Sponsor” to a senior executive who is willing to step up as a champion for the giving campaign.
We sat down with S. Somasegar (who goes by Soma), the corporate vice president of the Developer Division at Microsoft, to talk about his insights as the Giving Campaign Executive Lead in this year’s campaign. Soma has been with Microsoft since 1989 and is an avid supporter of the Campaign.
We asked Soma how he champions the campaign at all levels of the organization. Without hesitation, he outlined six action points that blew me away. I think these action points are brilliant and may prove helpful in your campaign.
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Join us this spring, April 3-4, 2014 for the Charities@Work 13th Annual Best Practices Summit on Employee Engagement in Corporate Citizenship.
The Annual Charities@Work Summit is one of the country’s leading conferences on employee engagement and corporate social responsibility. Attendees include Fortune 500 companies across all sectors of business, each with philanthropic and employee engagement programs of varying sophistication and a desire to collaborate on best practices for practical improvements.
2014 Summit Theme: Collaborating for Impact
Incorporating various formats, including key note presentations, panel discussions, workshops, and peer-to-peer breakout sessions, topics from this year’s summit will include:
- Building successful cross-sector collaboration initiatives
- Engaging employees in the non-traditional workforces
- How digital culture is transforming philanthropy
- The evolution from workplace giving to employee engagement
