Submittable reposted this
At Submittable we tried something different this year with our annual grants program. We gave our entire budget to employees and let them donate the dollars to their favorite nonprofits. I don't often post about my own company because I don't want you to feel like I'm selling. That's not my job. But I am super proud to work at a place that centers employees -- so today, I'm bragging on Submittable. Employee giving is changing. It's becoming more inclusive and participatory. More authentic. More impactful. More engaging. I'm excited to be at a company that honors this vision, with its people and its products. 🧡 #CSR #philanthropy #nonprofits #socialimpact
A question of values for any employee giving campaign: Does your campaign exist for employees to support the company's philanthropy, or for the company to support employees' philanthropy? Any company that doesn't answer this clearly is bound to have internal confusion and discord. While both approaches are valid, I lean toward employee-directed. 👍
Love this. This is also the way companies use charitable gift cards, like those from DonorsChoose, Kiva, and GlobalGiving. The company makes a grant, and the employees (or customers or suppliers or prospects) allocate the grant!
Now this is an equitable concept, including more voices in the decision making. Keep us updated on how you/the company are thinking about capturing the impact of this approach.
What a thoughtful process. More companies should think this way. Employees being heard. Charities benefiting. A total win-win. ❤️
FYI Tom Kin
Thanks for posting this Sam. Such a great way to engage your employees. I would be interested in hearing how your employees allocated the funding. Was there alignment across your employees on critical issues to support?
Love this
Such tremendous value in a participatory approach, love this from Submittable!
This is fantastic! Participatory Budgeting, or in this case, grantmaking at work! Kudos to Submittable for doing this and I hope more orgs take note of that
Vice President of Social Impact at Submittable
1wCarrie Reeder, thanks for the question! We used our own platform, Bright Funds, to manage the employee giving program. We took our grants budget and divided it equally among all employees, and then seeded their Bright Funds account with a 'credit grant' that they could donate to any nonprofit(s) they wanted. Bright Funds has 8 million nonprofits in the database, making it simple for our staff to research and donate to nonprofits in their local communities (including India!). We also asked employees to identify local nonprofits they loved, and we showcased several of those in Bright Funds so our staff could see who their coworkers were supporting. The idea was to make it simple, empowering, and fun. Early indication is that our employees really loved this program. Next year I'll look to make it even better by integrating it with Slack/Teams and making it more social. In terms of the employee allocations, the top areas were hunger relief, women and girls health equity, climate, and youth and family.