Your Workplace Campaign: Planning

Getting employees energized for your campaign, we usually give incentives for participation, and we do a company-wide raffle. Because of the economic difficulties of the past year, the company's campaign budget has been cut entirely, and any raffle prizes must come from in-kind donations.

As a result of staffing changes earlier in the year, most employees have experienced either an increase in their workload or a complete shift in their responsibilities.

There are a variety of creative, low-budget ways you can build the case for giving and boost enthusiasm among employees.

• When planning your campaign, remember to…
• Give Yourself Enough Lead Time
• Utilize Both Kinds of Leadership
• Establish a Theme
• Set Goals and Foster Friendly Competition
• Consider All Giving Opportunities
• Inform the Participants

Give Yourself Enough Lead Time
When running a workplace campaign, ample lead time is important. The earlier you begin planning, the more opportunities you will have to customize materials, organize a team, schedule events, and make the most efficient use of everyone's time.

United Way encourages year-round engagement. You may only run your workplace campaign for two weeks, but if you think of your relationship with United Way as ongoing, you are in a better position to keep employees invested in that relationship and willing to participate in—and even help lead—the campaign when it rolls around.

Utilize Both Kinds of Leadership
Good campaigns involve people from across the organization at a variety of levels.
As you approach assembling your campaign team, do so with both inspiration and perspiration in mind.

The inspiration should come from your senior leadership. If possible, hold a
'leaders first' campaign prior to the main campaign. You will need your senior leaders to motivate others to participate, and one of the best ways they can do this is by being able to say, “I've already given.”

The perspiration will come from you and the team you assemble to help you out.
Recruit team members early on to brainstorm ideas, coordinate events, disseminate information, and act as cheerleaders among their coworkers. Once you start laying out all the tasks that go into running your campaign, you may be surprised at how much work it can be.

Adopting an 'all hands on deck' philosophy will also help you ensure that perspectives from across the organization are valued and that everyone feels they have a stake in the campaign.

Establish a Theme
Developing a theme is a great way to merge your United Way campaign and its goals with your company's brand, mission and assets. NBC's "Be a Hero" campaign capitalized on the company's hit series Heroes, thereby connecting a key company brand with the campaign while emphasizing the importance of giving.

Sometimes themes can serve double-duty. After a significant company-wide reorganization, Macy's launched its “Macy's United” campaign, which simultaneously served as an introduction to the new organization and promoted United Way's “LIVE UNITED” call to action.

Themes can also focus on a specific social issue. Many companies organize employee giving and volunteerism around a specific issue, like education, income or health.

Set Goals and Foster Friendly Competition
Goal-setting for your campaign is very important as it reminds employees that giving to the community is valued by your company. It also gives employees something to strive for and a way to interact with colleagues across the company.

It is helpful to set goals based on increases above the previous year's participation or totals. For example, if your company reached 90% participation last year, try to hit 95% this year. You could also set a goal to increase overall giving by a certain percentage.

Be sure to develop goals that are realistic and take into consideration the various capacities for giving held by those across the organization. If your company's business units are very diverse, it wouldn't make sense to compare dollars raised among different business units, when income levels are also likely to be disparate. You can also measure participation and set goals based on numbers of attendees to campaign events and volunteer projects.

Many companies boost participation by encouraging some friendly competition among different departments or units or branches. This is a great way to foster teambuilding, and inject some fun into the campaign.

Consider All Giving Opportunities
Consider all the options your colleagues have to participate in the campaign. If you are a part of a large, diverse organization, some of your colleagues may not have access to a computer. So, while online giving through may be a cost-effective, environmentally friendly way to give for the vast majority of your employees, make sure to have printed pledge forms on hand as well.

Remember, too, that depending upon varying work schedules, some departments within your organization may not be able to attend certain campaign events.
Consider that in your planning, so you can accommodate them with alternate activities. And acknowledge in your campaign communications that you recognize these differences among departments. Ask for feedback, too; you may hear from people you who can assist you in making the campaign relevant to everyone in your organization.

Inform the Participants
Make sure that you keep your colleagues up to speed before, during and after your campaign. They'll need to know about the logistics of giving (including information about ePledge, payroll deductions, deadlines, etc.), the time and location of events and volunteer opportunities, and—most importantly—information about the important work in the community that campaign dollars go toward. Modes of preferred communication vary; make sure that you're able to reach everyone.

Email is good for regular communications, but you'll also want to have materials spread throughout the workplace as key visual reminders—think posters, brochures and table tents. And never underestimate the power of talking—invite colleagues to tell their personal stories about why they choose to give and volunteer.

As part of your company's year-round commitment to corporate social responsibility, it is important to communicate to employees the impact that your campaign has had on the community. In conjunction with your United Way account manager, you can develop a plan for disseminating information about your campaign's impact on the community. And always remind your colleagues that they can sign up for quarterly updates at unitedwaynyc.org.