Three Takeaways on Workplace Giving in an Upended Year

Garnering corporate support can seem daunting, but finding an employee foothold is a time-honored way to start. That’s particularly true now, as working remotely has left many employees looking for broader connections. The time is also right for nonprofits to begin building relationships with new donors attracted to their work amid a global pandemic and socioeconomic turmoil.

Individual relationships can yield big dividends. Over time, a single motivated corporate donor can generate cash resources through matching gifts and “dollars for doers” programs, and build access to in-kind assets like product donations and pro bono advisory services.

A workplace giving survey Deloitte conducted at the end of 2020 shows the importance of connecting those donors to purpose. Bringing them into the fold early in their careers is also vital—responses from more than 1,000 working professionals across the U.S. show young professionals giving at higher rates than other cohorts, and caring deeply about issues of social responsibility.

Though the full survey results are available through Deloitte, here are three top-line takeaways on how respondents reacted to a changing world.

1. Matching gifts were a popular response

Corporations responded generously to the trials of 2020. Candid puts the most recent totals at $8.4 billion for COVID-related causes, and $8.2 billion to advance racial equity — outlays that together account for nearly 67% of total funding.

Always a smart way to help employees connect with the brand, matching gifts programs featured prominently in corporate responses to COVID-19 and racial justice. Allstate, for example, added $1.4 million to its COVID matching funds, for a total of $2.8 million — and instituted a dollar-for-dollar match. Companies like Apple, AbbVie and General Mills upped their COVID match ratios to 2:1. And others raised limits. Google upped its cap to $20,000, while Blackbaud raised limits by 30%. Racial equity matches followed suit, with companies like Visa doubling June matches to organizations like the NAACP Legal Defense and Education Fund and the ACLU Foundation.

That amplification may have some bearing on the fact that personal giving remained flat, with 46% of respondents reporting sustained giving levels from the year before.

2. Giving by young professionals trended higher

Younger employees were the exception to that trend. Youth action on the social issues of 2020 carried into the cubicle. Deloitte’s survey showed that nearly 60% of employees between the ages of 18 and 34 donated through workplace programs, a 20% bump compared with older professionals. There was also a roughly 20% gap between racial and social equity giving from Gen Z and millennial professionals and giving from the 55+ cohort.

More than a third of young respondents reported increasing their donations due to the pandemic, and there was a 10% difference between the number of young professionals who contributed to COVID relief efforts versus employees overall.

That aligns with an employee engagement study showing that 64% of millennials consider corporate social responsibility work essential. Sixty-four percent factor it into choosing an employer, and 83% tie it to loyalty and retention.

3. Top causes and purposes

In 2020, mission mattered. Most of the 37% of the employees who accessed workplace giving programs reported being motivated by specific causes.

The top two reasons cited for donating both personally and at work were, first, to support a mission the donor considered important to “advancing their community and society” (57%); and second, to support a mission that the donor — or someone they know — is connected to personally (51%).

The top employee giving trends for workplace giving were hunger and homelessness at 47%, education at 23% and COVID-specific relief at 19%. Giving to these three causes was up double digits, while COVID-19 giving was captured for the first time.

Top giving in hunger and food security mirrors corporate giving priorities, and may have been boosted by specially created matching funds. More than half of financial services companies included food insecurity in their responses, with some establishing hunger-specific matches. Morgan Stanley alone raised $2 million from employees globally through its COVID-19 Hunger Relief Campaign, which made dollar-for-dollar matches up to $5,000 to four selected food insecurity partners. Others, like JPMorgan Chase, included food security organizations in their special response funds. Feeding America was one of four partners selected for a dollar-for-dollar match globally.

All three of these findings are positives for the nonprofit sector. Corporate matching gift programs helped deliver new individual donors . Alignment with purpose may lead to sustained giving. And the next generation of employees shows encouraging signs of engagement, both financially and culturally.

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