Workplace Giving and Payroll Deduction: One of the Best-kept Secrets to Creating Social Impact

It’s no secret: businesses and their employees want to support the communities in which they live and work. With numerous donation methods, including paper and electronic checks, debit and credit cards, bank account, and PayPal; the emergence of digital fundraising platforms over the past decade like Facebook, GoFundMe, Apple Pay, and text-to-give; not to mention the very newest options, like cryptocurrency; there’s no shortage of methods for giving back. 

However, so many options can be overwhelming and confusing – to employee donors as well as to the leaders tasked with coordinating their company’s employee giving and corporate philanthropy initiatives. How can a business help its staff most effectively raise money for causes they care about, create social change, and improve the world around us? Through workplace giving, one of the best-kept secrets to creating individual and collective social impact. 

I say “best-kept” secret simply because those who do, know. However, many still haven’t had the opportunity to try recurring payroll giving. Although workplace giving giving has been around for decades (upon decades), many still don’t understand how powerful recurring giving is for employers, staff, and the causes they support.

While America’s Charities continues to incorporate a variety of recurring donation approaches and methods into our suite of employee giving technology plus customer support options, recurring giving by payroll deduction (aka workplace/ employee/recurring/payroll giving) remains the most cost-efficient way to support nonprofits. In fact, it’s the driving force behind the success of the companies whose workplace giving campaigns we manage. Check out any of our free guides for examples and case studies of the collective impact made possible by workplace giving. 

But, and this is the crucial part, I hear you asking me: why? What makes payroll deduction giving more beneficial to charities, employee donors, and employers – especially compared to other donation payment methods? Beyond that, what would happen if we stopped payroll giving? Or, conversely, if there were even more recurring donations?

We’ve answered those questions when we’ve written about why workplace giving is the ‘unsung hero’ of charitable giving, why workplace giving supports tangible change, why employee volunteering makes good business sense, how the workplace was crucial in the face of COVID-19, and more – but don’t just take our word for it. 

America’s Charities seeks to unveil the secrets of workplace giving and specifically explain why recurring employee giving is so cost-effective in a series of conversations we titled Saving the World, One Paycheck at a Time. Listen to these on-demand webinars to hear from industry experts with whom we discussed the reality of payroll giving. We asked the tough questions so you don’t have to — and to their immense credit, these fearless guests didn’t hesitate to answer.

You’ll hear from Junelle Kroontje, Manager, King County Employee Giving Program (KCEGP), Seattle, Washington; Candi Maciel, Corporate Engagement Manager, Best Friends Animal Society; Willemijn Keizer, Director of Institutional Giving, Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC); Susan O’Brien, Manager of the New Jersey Employees Charitable Campaign (NJECC); and more. 

Go at your own pace as you browse the video series and presentation PDFs, then please, tell us what’s missing! What other questions need to be asked? What would help make the case for you and your organization? What information convinced you to give workplace giving a try? Just email us here to let us know.

Together, let’s make recurring payroll giving one of the worst-kept secrets to individual and collective social impact. 

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