Hi!! My name is Jana Behe and I have been active with United Way of the Greater Capital Region since moving to Albany almost 6 years ago. Since that time I have been fortunate to be a part of United Way Young Leaders, become a member of the Leadership Team, participate in United in Action days, and to participate on the review panels for grant allocation of United Way funding. But my first and primary continued involvement with UWGCR is as an ECM for my company, NYSTEC, and that is what I am here to discuss with you today!
The motto of United Way – Give. Advocate. Volunteer. Live United – is a great starting point for any campaign, and I feel even more important for the smaller campaigns. In this blog entry I will talk about Giving first. Look forward to discussions on the rest of the United Way motto and how it can help in your campaign in later blogs!!
I want to let you know that giving to United Way is important, no matter the size of your company. Sometimes campaign suggestions seem to revolve around large scale full year ventures and some of you may be thinking – OK that is great. If we were a huge company I would totally start up some of those initiatives. But our company is so small, our donations are really going to get lost in the sea of the larger contributors, so why does it matter what our campaign does?
I am here to tell you that it does matter and I have some ideas just for you. Our company is very small, and although we might never be in a position to contribute as much cumulatively as some of the larger and equally wonderful companies in this area, every donation is important to United Way. As an ECM, your role is to help employees understand the impact of the individual donation.
A few years ago NYSTEC was first honored as a Gold Sponsor. This means that on a per capita basis, our giving was between $100-$199 per employee. To be honest we were so thrilled about this and spent weeks patting ourselves on the back….Then we realized: Hey what is better than gold?? PLATINUM!!!! Platinum Sponsors means that on a per capita basis, your corporate giving is in excess of $200 per employee. Since that light bulb went off, achieving Platinum Sponsor level has been a goal that I am happy to report we have consistently achieved. We know we will never be in a position due to our size to raise more money than other larger companies, but we do know that we can make a difference and distinguish our organization by the way we donate.
GIVE - The first thing I do when we kicking off our campaign is to remind people what their giving levels were last year (by providing them a copy of their form from last year) and what our corporate goal is for this year. For those of you that are not able to quite give at the Platinum level - yet– set a smaller goal to start off your year. If you need to start really small, set $50 as the average contribution – or reach higher and aim for Gold Sponsor status!! Achieving Gold Sponsor status equates to an average giving of $100-$199 per person per year.
Break that down on a poster for your employees. What that really means is that on average employees need to give an average of $8.33 per month (or $4.16-$4.17 per bi-weekly paycheck). For example, I am addicted to Starbucks Venti Skinny Vanilla Lattes – and $8.33 would not even be enough for two a month. Try to come up with other examples to show how this level of giving really is achievable. Here are some other examples to get you going to show how that amount is lower than other items we typically purchase in a month – A large pizza, one movie ticket, one CD or album on iTunes….
Hopefully I have given you a good starting point and some ideas! If you have any questions or discussion topics feel free to post here or contact me!