America’s Charities is Closed November 22-26 For Recharge Week

Please be advised that America’s Charities is closed Monday, November 22, through Friday, November 26, for all staff. This does not mean we are entirely unavailable! It simply means that our availability is limited and we may have to collaborate differently during that week.

What This Means For You

Specific changes in effect November 22-26 include:

• All offices are closed, including our Chantilly headquarters and all satellite and remote offices. 
• We will not have anyone attending our phones. You may leave a voicemail and staff will respond as soon as they are able.
• We have compiled answers to the questions we hear from donors, employers, and nonprofits here. Please check those for answers before contacting our Help Desk. You may also search our website at www.charities.org.
• America’s Charities’ Donor Services Team/Help Desk will be available solely by email and web between 1:00 – 3:00 pm EDT, each day from Monday-Wednesday, November 22-24, to assist with the most urgent issues. You may submit a help ticket at www.charities.org/support or by email at help@charities.org.
• Employee Assistance Fund (EAF) applicant support will be available on Monday and Tuesday, November 22 and 23, from 10:00 am – 12:00 pm EDT, to assist with urgent issues. You can reach America’s Charities’ EAF Support team by emailing eaf@charities.org.
• Live chat support will not be available that week for applicable All-in-One Giving and Simply Giving clients. However, you may submit your question via chat and our Donor Services Team/Help Desk will respond according to urgency and date submitted.
• All non-critical or urgent support tickets and emails will be responded to in the following week starting Monday, November 29.
• If you know in advance that you will require assistance that week, please connect with your coordinator prior to November 22, or wait until November 29 for help. In the meantime, expect to hear from our staff regarding meetings to be rescheduled, etc.

Why Recharge?

It’s been a rough couple of years. Collectively and individually we have faced so much. The global pandemic. An economic fallout. A grueling, divisive election cycle. The most active Atlantic hurricane season on record. Raging wildfires. A racial and social injustice reckoning. A worldwide shift from the physical to the digital.

By design or default, each of us has faced a new normal this year – yet, at America’s Charities, we haven’t let that get in the way of progress.

Last year we saw a ~9 percent increase across charitable giving for the workplace giving campaigns we manage, helping to strengthen the nonprofits which were, and are, supporting the most vulnerable among us – including people and communities devastated by the pandemic. We also brought on more than 100 new employee assistance fund (EAF) clients, resulting in more than $16 million in employee relief grants. Those dollars go directly to employees coping with unexpected hardships, particularly related to COVID-19. In all, since the pandemic first transpired, America’s Charities has managed more than $17 million in EAF grants.

We have not slowed our pace in 2021 either. Demand for our EAF services and interest in our Engage CSR solution (unveiled in June 2020) has soared, which is unsurprising given what happened since the pandemic hit: employers of all sizes and shapes stepped up, putting purpose and people at the center of their business practices.

This emphasis on corporate social responsibility (CSR) isn’t decreasing as time goes by, either. America’s Charities’ work at the nexus of employers, charities, and employee donor giving and engagement gives us a unique vantage point. What we’ve seen – what we continue to see today – are companies caring for their employees, engaging their communities, and creating meaningful change for society, even in the most challenging of times. We are incredibly proud to serve the nonprofit and CSR communities and remain committed to helping individuals and organizations support each other and the causes they care about.

We were also pleased to reach another significant milestone this year: we were named a Best Nonprofit to Work For by The NonProfit Times and Best Companies Group. The award was largely a result of an employee survey, and thus, affirmed the steps we take every day to care for our sector and each other. At America’s Charities, our everyday work is guided by our core values, and inherent to those values is our deep belief that the best cultures are intentional, that mental health is as important as physical health, and that we shouldn’t simply recommend best practices to our clients and stakeholders—we follow them ourselves. In other words, we walk the talk.

It is with our core values in mind that we are giving our talented and tenacious team a Recharge Week during the week of Thanksgiving. In acknowledging the challenges over the past two years, we recognize the need for America’s Charities to invest in our staff’s individual health and well-being. Beyond that, we know rest and relaxation stimulates creativity and innovation. We are taking this time away now to ensure that we give our best to you, our clients, members, and collaborators, later. 

We appreciate your support of our team and look forward to providing you with our high-quality support when we return to regular operations on November 29. We hope you are able to rest and recharge soon as well. We look forward to a productive and exciting year ahead!