Your Workplace Campaign: Engagement

To strengthen engagement, expand your thinking about how to best encourage campaign participation among your colleagues. Incentives may have worked in the past, but there are other ways to get everyone energized. Consider your campaign as a part of your year-round engagement with United Way. Work with your account manager to arrange volunteer opportunities and special events throughout the year—this will keep employees engaged and serve as a reminder that the issues United Way works on—like dropout prevention—don't go away when the campaign ends.

Your business benefits as well from teambuilding and opportunities for skills development and serves as a great way to increase involvement by senior management within your company. In a challenging economic climate, engaging employees in this way provides a low-budget way to service both your strategic philanthropy goals as well as your bottom line.

When developing an engagement plan for your staff, remember to…

• Foster Teambuilding
• Encourage Volunteerism
• Plan Some Special Events
• Remember Affinity Groups: Yours and Ours

Foster Teambuilding
Connecting a group of employees around a common goal is a great way to promote teambuilding and engage participation around your campaign. Consider volunteer projects that bring together workplace units.

You can foster some friendly competition among different employee groups by pitting them against each other in a fact-finding scavenger hunt, which incorporates information about the issues United Way works on. Incorporate a New York City statistic—like 2 out of 5 high school students in New York City public schools do not graduate——with each item that's being hunted. At the end of the hunt, bring all teams back together for a quick briefing on what United Way is doing in support of dropout prevention.

Encourage Volunteerism
Organizing volunteer opportunities around your campaign is a wonderful way to make the whole experience come alive for your coworkers. Work with your United Way account manager to customize events for your employees. Volunteer opportunities can be traditional and short-term, like working a shift unloading trucks at a food pantry, or skills-based and long-term, like serving on a nonprofit board of directors.

Plan Some Special Events
Special events can simultaneously educate your colleagues about an issue relevant to your campaign and treat them to a quick break from work. Try to reward employees for participation in an informational way. You could bring in people from community-based organizations to speak directly to their work at an employees appreciation breakfast or lunch. Alternatively, your company could participate in one of United Way's signature events, like the Women's Leadership Council Annual Awards Luncheon or the Gridiron Gala.

Remember Groups: Yours and Ours
United Way of New York City's leadership groups comprise some of the most committed and philanthropic professionals in the City. Groups like the Women's Leadership Council and the Young Leaders Council unite individuals working toward a common goal—making the community a better place to live and work—and offer great opportunities for year—round engagement via volunteering, networking, and serving on committees.

Your company's affinity groups could also provide a gateway to engagement for likeminded coworkers. Partner with the groups around activities that are especially relevant to their members in the group while increasing participation in your campaign, for instance, your company's African-American affinity group may want to co-host a forum that explores educational issues faced by students of color.