24 Charitable Ideas To Consider for Your Company
If your employees express an interest in doing community service, volunteering, or other kinds of charitable services, then it’s important to make sure that there is the possibility for them to do so, especially since so much of their time will be devoted to working and being in the office. Taking it further, it can also boost morale in the workplace.
Here are 30 ways that you can create opportunities for them to express their charitable passions and give back.
Donate office items
If you have extra office supplies or other items lying, you can ask everyone to collect their items and offer to donate them. It’s easiest if you organize transportation to drop them at a local drop box location or a local charity.
Center office gift-giving around charities
During the holidays, instead of doing a white elephant or another kind of gift-giving exchange you could also offer to donate funds to a well-known cause or charity instead. For instance, doing a group donation for Planned Parenthood or something that’s possibly related to your organization’s industry could unite people behind a singular cause around the holidays. Bonus: Try to coordinate it with Giving Tuesday for some extra donation.
Host an event for a cause
If your organization often puts on events or has regular in-office parties, you can host one where all proceeds go to a specific cause. Similar to gift-giving centered around a cause, you can pick a specific charity that’s related to your organization’s industry or something that it seems everyone is united behind.
Host an office-wide run or cycling event
If you haven’t seen The Office episode where they run for a charity (one that doesn’t happen to exist, but that’s beside the point), you can pull inspiration from that. You can find a cause that everyone is interested in and have everyone run or bike a specific distance and raise donations in the process.
Craft for charity
Another thing that can connect everyone in the office is a crafting contest where all items created are donated. It gets people feeling creative but is done for a great cause. Make sure you donate everything, though, because otherwise you’ll end up with too much clutter in your office.
Help for animals
Who doesn’t love animals? You can organize an outing to a local animal shelter where everyone can play with dogs, cat, and other rescued animals and help these furry friends.
Organize a clothes drive
Employees can bring their own clothes into the office and put them in a box to donate to others. You can then bring all the organized clothes to a nearby shelter or donation box.
Office blood drive
You can have someone from a local hospital or from the American Red Cross come by to organize a blood drive inside your office. It’s an easy enough way for people to give back to others without requiring a heavy lift on their part.
Organize a toy drive
Around the holidays, it’s easy enough to ask employees to bring their children’s old toys to the office and donate them to a local shelter or charity that is organizing toys to give to children in need.
Organize a canned food drive
Another drive you can organize in your office space is to have people bring in canned goods from home that they find themselves never using. It’s a great way to ensure that people are not wasting food and then giving them to those who are in need instead.
Gift matching from the employer
The employer can match employee donations and gift-giving during specific times of the year, like Giving Tuesday.
Donate tax refunds
Employers can encourage employees to donate tax refunds, however, that might be a bit controversial.
Donate credit card perks
Employers can encourage their employees to donate their credit card perks like rewards and frequent flyer miles. Again, this might be a controversial thing for employers to do, especially in a repeated way.
Volunteer at a soup kitchen
Another outing you can organize for employees is to have everyone go to a soup kitchen together and cook for those in need. This can be especially helpful during the Thanksgiving holiday season.
Hold a raffle for charity
You can hold a raffle in your workplace where the prizes are linked to various charities or causes. You can pool money as well to donate to a main cause.
Partnering with a charity
Employers can link their organization with a specific cause or charity to raise money around that charity’s goals.
Buy fairtrade office snacks
Talk to your HR person to ensure that they’re buying snacks, teas, and coffee for the office that are fairtrade and organic. It isn’t necessarily charity, but it’s giving back to the environment.
Donate with shopping
Again, as office managers and HR members buy snacks and office supplies for your business, you can organize it so that every purchase donates to a charity. For instance, Amazon makes it so you can donate to a specific cause with each purchase.
Promote causes through social media
You can link your social media channels to various causes to link your organization with them. Promote their mission and show your alignment with what they do.
Align through blog posts or articles
In a similar way, you can write articles about charities that align with your company’s goals and that your company stands behind.
Send a newsletter related to a cause
When you write these articles or any posts, you can send them in a newsletter blast to your audience to show what causes make sense for your business.
Donate to coworker causes
If a colleague has a GoFundMe or a charitable cause that they’re raising funds for, you can promote it throughout your office and get a pool of people to donate.
Coordinate with holidays
Find charities and causes that coordinate with various holidays. For instance, you can organize donations to environmental charities on Earth Day.
Make it an office-wide celebration
Find a way to connect everyone across the office to donate or give back to charities.
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