We have an active Community Partnership Team and we used GivingTuesday as a platform to promote our mission and the impact that we have made over the past 10 years.

For GivingTuesday we had 2 specific objectives: 1) raise $1,000 from employees by December 16, and 2) encourage each employee to volunteer their time and perform at least 1 act of giving in the month of December.

GivingTuesday Strategy and Activation

On GivingTuesday, we had a kick-off meeting with the entire firm during which our goals were announced. The charity for which we would be raising funds was revealed (employees were asked to vote ahead of time), and ideas of how each employee could give back during the Giving Season were shared. We ended the kick-off by decorating our Giving Tree.

We had an Executive Sponsor for our campaign. This was important as it gave the initiative credibility (and he also offered to buy breakfast for the team if we exceeded our fundraising goal by 100%!). We kept employees updated on progress via email, corporate intranet, and on a big poster in our main kitchen. Each time an employee made a donation or volunteered their time, they were given a GivingTuesday badge to display at their workspace. This created a bit of a friendly challenge – and everyone still has their badges displayed several months after the campaign!

Giving season poster in main kitchen

Results

Our 2016 GivingTuesday results FAR exceeded our expectations.

Overall, 19 Giving Stories were shared, including donating 200 pairs of socks for the Red Door Family Shelter (our goal had been 100 pairs) and a blood donation drive. And, in addition to personal donations, our various Giving Tree fundraisers (raffles for Raptors tickets and a 5lb chocolate bar, 50/50 draw, ‘guess the number of M&Ms in the jar’ contest and regular ‘Beverage Cart Fridays’ over the course of the year) raised $2235. This was matched by our parent company, bringing us to $4470… which was then matched by the CAMH Gifts of Light program. So, in total – $8,940 was donated to CAMH.

In and of itself, this was amazing. But, even more amazing were those colleagues who emerged as fundraisers! Each Community Partnership Team member was an ambassador for the planned events throughout our Giving Season however several other people offered to lead other initiatives as well. So, not only did we exceed our fundraising goal, we definitely also extended our reach across the organization, getting more staff involved than usual. Many colleagues have commented how much fun they had achieving (and exceeding) our goals compared to years’ past.

Now we are all looking forward to our breakfast with our Executive Sponsor! And we certainly plan to participate again for GivingTuesday 2017!

Decorating our Giving Tree on GivingTuesday

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