Anna Malaika Tubbs: On Celebrating Black Motherhood, and Creating a Social Justice-Driven Portfolio
At Groundswell, we are privileged to talk to a wide range of individuals about philanthropy in all its forms. That is why we are so grateful to have had the opportunity to speak with New York Times best-selling author of The Three Mothers, Anna Malaika Tubbs. The Three Mothers shines a light on mothers Alberta King, Louise Little, and Berdis Baldwin, who raised and shaped Martin Luther King Jr., Malcolm X., and James Baldwin. The book celebrates their legacy and Black motherhood which has shaped much of American history. Anna believes in supporting philanthropic organizations that recognize the importance of motherhood, particularly for black women in America.
Thanks for joining us, Anna. It’s an honor to speak with you. You begin your book by outlining your personal tie to three very incredible mothers — Alberta King, Louise Little, and Berdis Baldwin — and how their history spans over the past century. That’s incredible. What ultimately led you to exploring these three incredible women in particular?
It was done out of curiosity, and it was a sort of elimination process, in the sense that I knew I wanted to do a project like Hidden Figures, Margot Lee Shetterly’s book. I wanted to be a person who discovered other hidden figures; other black women whose tales we should have known all along but had been lost, erased, or hidden.
I had an amazing mother who was always talking about the significance of celebrating mothers and paying more attention to the crucial role that moms play in our society.
So I’ve always had this idea in my head that I’m going to do something about black mothers who should have been known.
I wanted to focus on the civil rights movement because it comes up so frequently in our policy debates and other discussions. I whittled it down to these three since they were born within six years of each other, and their famous kids were born within five years of each other. This brought them together over time without reducing their complexity and diversity, while celebrating their differences; each chapter covers ten years of their lives.
What I think is so great about your book is your approach to research, and how you were so honest about what information you could find and what you could not. The absence of history is equally as important. That said, you talk about the erasure of Black Women in history, especially through the eyes of Alberta, Louise, and Berdis. Even through your initial research it was hard to nail down exact details like birthdays, and you say Berdis’s name wasn’t even listed in the US. Census. For those who are unaware, can you outline why this Is so important to explore this history and how it better informs us today?
The research process was really difficult, and I’d like to point out that this was also the subject of my PhD dissertation, so this is completely original research.
I needed to dig for every single detail that I uncovered, and even if I found a small nugget of information, I needed to push further to understand the context behind it.
Also, I needed to remember that a lot of what I was finding had been filtered via men, typically white men, who recounted these stories quite differently from how I would.
So it was highly complicated, requiring a variety of procedures such as contacting local historians, searching census data, locating land deed, birth certificates, death certificates, and interviewing family members.
I’m doing my best to fill in the blanks with information from documents I discover. But it is a reminder to us, first and foremost, of how we value various lives in different ways.
I like to speak about each of our lives as if they are puzzles, and certain puzzles we put together, frame, and hang, either on a mantel or on a wall, to treasure, marvel at, celebrate, and honor.
Then there are the puzzles that we just leave on the ground; every time we move, we leave some pieces in one house, we may throw them away, or the dog may chew on them; no one is ensuring that we retain this information, notice it, or care about it. So I was there, putting the puzzle pieces together.
What I believe is important is that we do this for more people; each story does matter, especially when we see how black women have contributed everything they could to the progression of this nation.
Unfortunately, we continue to disregard their lives, saying, your history doesn’t matter, your contributions don’t matter. As a result, we’ve arrived at a point where we don’t understand what’s going on in our country. We believe that all of these instances of sexism and racism, the intersectionality of the two, as well as the many other isms with which it intersects, occur at random or independently of one another, rather than as a product of years and years of devaluing lives.
It’s done through systems, regulations, and extremely strategic tactics to eliminate people in order to keep those puzzle parts scattered and concealed. So I simply want more of us to take on that project. I don’t want this to be the only book about the three of them. I was declaring that they are worthy of study, worthy of celebration, and worthy of being on the cover of a book. Because what they deserve, in my opinion, was to be seen, celebrated, and honored.
Speaking especially of Alberta, Louise, and Berdis’ stories, what surprised you when writing your book, and what was left out of their history?
When I first came up with the idea, I merely wanted to recognize them as individuals with their own interesting lives. I knew they’d be not just intriguing, but also valuable to our society in the ways they were generating life beyond their children through activism and creativity. I wasn’t trying to argue that since Alberta [King] did this, Martin [Luther King] did this—I wasn’t trying to emphasize the sons in that way. But every piece of information madethe relationship and connections so evident, they’re undeniable.
Even if I didn’t tell you their names and only described the women based on their passions and approach to fighting for freedom, you’d be able to connect them with their sons. Even if you only know a little bit about the sons.Those are the instances where it’s surprising we didn’t already know their names.
Moms affect their children in a variety of ways, and you can’t dispute it in these three cases.
Because you almost had to work at separating them, it made the erasure even more infuriating. You must purposefully leave out the fact that they are linked. During the course of writing this book, I discovered that the sons did give credit to their mothers. So it’s not really their fault; rather, it’s those of us who have researched them and determined that they don’t fit our racist patriarchal view of who matters. Those who have said, we’ll leave that as a footnote but we’re not going to center it in the way you believe it should be centered in the record.
You talk about how the media played a role in the erasure of these women’s stories, which essentially shaped what the narratives would become. How does this affect those that are intentionally being erased?
This is a fantastic segue for me to speak about my TED talk, because it’s all about storytelling and how we follow the stories that we’re told and how our policy reflects that. In the TED talk, I address the way we talk about moms in the stories we share, not only on an interpersonal level, but in media and in literature. We thank moms for being selfless and putting everyone else’s needs ahead of their own.
Moms themselves then believe they should be individuals who don’t have their own needs and don’t have their own identities.
That can be excruciatingly painful, frustrating, and confusing. It also expands on the stories we’re telling in the media that don’t highlight the contributions of mothers. We as a society believe that mothers are exclusively important in the domestic sphere, or we take those contributions for granted, or employers will try to fire mothers because they believe they are distracted, even though there is no evidence to support this.
Then we see that when it comes to voting for policies that could actually help moms and provide them the support and resources they need for their important job, we can’t get them passed because people don’t seem to believe they’re required. So, if you don’t believe the role is important, or that it is easy, you’re not going to vote for things like parental leave.
We live in a country that does not value motherhood; we do not have affordable childcare, universal preschool, or even universal health care, all of which overlap with the role of motherhood. During the pandemic, we saw many women, particularly moms of color, leave their work because they had no other option. I do believe that a lot of that stems from our cultural understanding of motherhood; if more of us understood the essential nature of the job, stay-at-home moms, for example, what they do for all of us, not just for their children, but for all of us day in and day out, it would be easy for us to say, “Yeah, let’s vote for those things. We need that,” so I want us to see more stories that represent mothers accurately and their role more appropriately.
Out of curiosity, are you aware of any other cultures outside of America that properly values motherhood?
We’ve seen these rankings in terms of maternal health and motherhood happiness in the United States, which is really low when compared to other countries. We have a maternal health problem that is disproportionately affecting black women and women of color, but it also affects all women; women are dying at higher rates in this country. That is something that we should all be very concerned about.
Mothers are reporting higher levels of postpartum depression, they’re burning out, they’re exhausted.
They feel like there’s something wrong with them, because they’ve been told they’re supposed to take care of all of this, and then not be thanked for it. As if it’s okay to be invisible.
Sweden and other Scandinavian countries, for example, have models and policies that we may replicate in the United States. Scandinavia has a more homogeneous culture than the United States; we have a lot more diversity here. However, this does not preclude the adoption of universal parental leave or the distribution of baby boxes in the United States.
In Sweden, for example, parents receive a package including the fundamental necessities that they will require when raising a child. That is something we could do in the United States. We could create daycare centers in companies so that if parents do return to work outside the home, they may bring their children with them to the same location, which would increase production for the entire company.
There are many bits and pieces and policies from other countries that I believe we can still apply to the United States, despite the fact that our population is considerably more diverse than that of most other countries.
What organizations would you include now in your own giving portfolio for advocacy work, particularly around motherhood?
The first one I think of is Black Mama’s Matter. In the United States, black women, particularly black moms, are still considered as less than human beings. Their effort to build this alliance of people with diverse knowledge, backgrounds, and experiences to address the core causes of black maternal health and the black mother’s experience in the United States is critical.
I wanted to write about black mothers because the dehumanization is evident when you look at the relationship between our country and black mothers in the United States – mothers being refused basic treatment, denied human respect, and being treated with a lack of basic decency.
I also really love the work of the Young Women’s Freedom Center. It’s in San Francisco, and it works with women who have been impacted by various systems, such as incarceration or juvie. All of these other things that have locked our young women of color away and then blamed them for their experiences, rather than the systems that have pushed them to the margins and forgotten about them and tried to ignore them. Through working with the center, they can reclaim their identity and use their voice.
Essie Justice Group is another. It is led by a friend of mine. We see that the cost of having a loved one in prison is quite high, and black women are spending a lot of their money paying into this mass incarceration system in the United States. Instead of addressing the various issues that lead to them being taken away and locked up, we continue to place that burden on the shoulders of black women. So anything that relieves that weight, anything that reminds us that this isn’t just a black woman’s problem to fix, but that it will affect our entire nation is work that I support and a message that I try to elevate.
If we can come together and really focus on the experience of black women, it will be beneficial to us all.
All of those organizations sound incredible. What is your process of finding which organizations to support around a cause?
I like to begin by asking why we want to talk about black women, and by discussing the legislation that has existed from the beginning of slavery and states that black women are the producers of property rather than the producers of life. It is important to understand that from the start, the idea that a black person’s life begins as property is key to understanding the ills of our nation.
That is what we want to examine, as well as how this concept about the life of a black person has permeated so many different systems. Then we’d want to know who the organizations are that are dealing with those various systems. So whether that’s through tackling mass incarceration – which continues to say that these people are objects and not people, and we can control their lives and their lives matter less than other people’s lives – or through thinking about the American gynecological system, and how it’s based on experimenting on the bodies of enslaved black women.
I’d ask: How is all that still playing out today? Who are the organizations that recognize black women as having been viewed as less than human? What are they doing now to fight for humanity? That’s how I’d organize a portfolio.
For our last question, what advice would you give to someone who wishes to be a true ally, especially after reading your book?
That’s a great question. When the topic of allyship comes up, I remember my mother, a white woman with black children.
She would approach me and say, “In this world, I have no idea what it’s like to be a black girl or a black woman. And I’m not going to pretend I know; I’m not going to claim to understand your experiences. But what I can say is that I believe you are worthy of the same respect and dignity that everyone else is, and I will walk with you, learn with you, and do my best to make this world a better place for you.”
I’m paraphrasing; these are not exact words; they are a compilation of lessons learned throughout the last 29 years of my life. But this was her general approach to things, and that’s exactly what we’re looking for in allies.
We’re not expecting somebody to say, “I know what it’s like to be a black woman,” because that’s not the correct thing to say. Don’t say anything like that. It’s fine to recognize that your and mine experiences will differ in this regard. You may say “I feel you are entitled to be regarded as a human being and to have access to the same resources as I do. And I will do my part to help with that. And I will walk beside you and learn alongside you. And it shouldn’t be much more complicated than that as a result of that mindset, there will be sacrifices. And I’m not going to pretend that I understand what it’s like to be you.” I believe it is an accurate summary. And perhaps, more individuals will feel at ease embracing that charge.
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Corporate Philanthropy
Why You Should Consider Providing a DAF in Your Financial Wellness Benefits
With 42% of employees in full-time work struggling to make ends meet, financial wellness benefits are no longer a bonus perk that Human Resources can offer. They are a business priority. Uncertain economic conditions, from the aftershocks of the pandemic to rising inflation, compel employees to make their money go further. Financial wellness benefits offer a framework for investing in the future, and no more so than with donor-advised funds (DAFs). Employees don’t have to compromise on their charitable giving because of financial health challenges. In fact, DAFs can unlock some attractive tax advantages.
What Are Financial Wellness Benefits?
Employees are increasingly looking at the financial wellness benefits a company offers with the same interest they pay to the starting salary, health and well-being perks, and flexible working options. That’s because financial stress is on the rise. When workers are preoccupied with their personal finances, they’re not only less productive. They’re also likely to seek a more attractive offer from an alternative employer. Workers want the most sought-after financial wellness benefits:
Retirement planning ranks as the #1 priority. Employees want to feel secure about their future after work.
Insurance is another must-have. Health, life and disability coverage provides a safety net should circumstances change.
Financial education can help employees save, limit their tax liability, and build a budget that supports personal growth.
Investing opportunities allow employees to put their money to work so that they’re earning even when they’re away from the office.
Why It’s Important
Personal and professional lives are never completely separate and that’s why employee benefits are so important. Bearing in mind that one in four employees claim that financial worries negatively impact their professional performance, companies who take the initiative with financial wellness packages should look forward to:
Better employee retention
Higher engagement and morale
Greater opportunities to attract top talent
Salary isn’t everything, particularly to Gen Z. One of the issues that the Great Resignation highlighted is that workers are fleeing roles that don’t align with their personal goals, but they will invest their skills in a company culture built around strong values.
Corporate giving is one of those values that still register high on the wishlist. There’s a sense that a company’s obligations don’t stop at its internal gender equality, diversity and inclusion goals. The impact a business makes on the local and wider community is just as important, and philanthropy is a key measure for supporting that vision.
Why You Should Include Donor-Advised Funds
The benefit that a DAF brings to corporate giving is that it balances philanthropy with financial benefits for the employee. By donating through a DAF to a public nonprofit sponsor organization, employees can gift cash, stock, real estate or other assets. Donations of the latter (real estate and assets) tend to happen at the corporate level, but individual employees can unlock immediate tax advantages by gifting cash or stock through a DAF. The advantages of giving through a DAF include:
Reduce Tax Liability
Individuals can claim a tax deduction of up to 60% of their adjusted gross income if they give through donor-advised funds — and there’s no need to submit piles of extra paperwork to the IRS.
Avoid Capital Gains on Stocks and Securities
That’s particularly attractive for workers at tech firms or startups, where stock options and signing bonuses are a key employee retention strategy. Employees at Amazon, for example, receive restricted stock units (RSUs) that yield big dividends in years three and four.
The only restriction on giving through DAFs is that the threshold is usually high. Although the minimum donation with some brokerages is as little as $5,000, these are the exceptions. Morgan Stanley and Vanguard, for example, start at $25,000, making them more suitable for giving at a corporate rather than individual employee level.
That’s why Groundswell is so innovative within the corporate giving space. Employees can have their own DAF and get started with as little as $1, meaning that any employee can access a personal giving account and enjoy the tax benefits immediately. Find out more about corporate giving as an employee benefit by contacting us today.
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General
Support Hurricane Fiona Efforts
Nearly 5 years after Hurricane Maria devastated Puerto Rico, Hurricane Fiona has swamped the island with as much as 30 inches of rain leading to catastrophic flooding.
What’s happening?
People are without power and some lack access to drinking water while filtration systems are down.
Severe mudslides have also impacted access to remote communities and the ability for disaster response organizations to help and provide life-saving relief.
Disaster relief organizations are working to quickly mobilize and support those most in need – from the immediate life-saving relief to longer term recovery and rebuilding.
Where can you support?
Groundswell has compiled a list of organizations providing relief efforts you can support directly within the app.
Corporate Philanthropy
General
Workplace Trends
Recession Recovery: How To Show Local Community Support
During the recession recovery, it’s important for businesses to support local communities. It’s a role that businesses have historically played and one that allows communities to bounce back as quickly as possible. Certainly, it helps that many businesses remained open or reopened quickly during the crisis, providing products, services and jobs when they were most needed. However, there are many other ways that your business can help your community recover as we look forward to more prosperous times.
Why It’s Important To Support the Community
As mentioned, communities benefit from the products, services and jobs each business offers. Businesses, in turn, must be surrounded by strong communities, without which they cannot survive. So it’s in the best interest of your business to provide as much support as possible to stimulate the local economy and fulfill your corporate social responsibility (CSR).
Not only will the community recover more quickly, but your business will also have fostered deeper relationships, enhanced your brand awareness and reputation, and generated lasting goodwill. Further, it’s an opportunity to foster a positive culture internally that attracts and retains the best people. It’s true: People like companies that support the community. This applies to employees, as well. It’s a win-win for everyone.
How Your Business Can Help
The most effective community recovery plan will be those that are a part of your business disaster preparedness and continuity planning process. You may have such a plan in place but found that it fell short during these unprecedented times.
You may have anticipated many types of scenarios. Handing out bottled water after a devastating storm. Providing emergency shelter. Sponsoring a local food bank. But who could have predicted a worldwide pandemic? Apparently, not very many.
Still, there are things that your business can do right now to aid in the economic recovery of the communities you serve. If you were fortunate enough to make it through the financial ups and downs with your own business intact, you are one of the fortunate companies that are uniquely positioned to help.
What To Do
It doesn’t take a Herculean effort, just a few purposeful steps.
Hire Local Businesses
As you know, not every business made it through the darkest days of COVID-19. But the restaurant industry was especially hard hit. Although the number is exceptionally difficult to pin down, according to the Washington Post, an estimated 70,000 restaurants closed due to the pandemic. For those that survived, why not hire them to cater your next employee event or luncheon? Or, rather than sourcing your paper and packaging needs online or from a big corporation, find your local supplier. Buy gift cards from nearby businesses to use as rewards and incentives.
You may have to get creative about how you spend your purchasing dollars, but every company can find ways to channel more money into local businesses that don’t have the deep pockets needed to survive such harsh times.
Donate to Local Organizations
Establish a fund to collect money from employees, customers, suppliers, partners and anyone you do business with. You can facilitate donations via your website. You can also contribute a portion of your sales revenues to the fund or organize an employee-run event.
Engage your employees by allowing them to decide both how to raise money and how to donate it. When employees are involved in decision-making, they feel more empowered and invested in the outcome. Plus, it removes the burden from company leaders to make all the choices.
According to Groundswell founder and CEO Jake Wood, “It can feel overwhelming as a company leader to know where to support. We know our employees have a wide range of causes they care deeply about, so why not directly support them? We want to democratize that decision and give it back to our employees. It’s a model we feel extremely passionate about.”
Groundswell took the idea a step further. “We’re gifting $150 per quarter to our employees into their own personal giving account to donate to whichever charity they want to support.”
Provide Resources
Think beyond dollars. Your communities may have other needs. For example, perhaps the children from the local area need laptops, Wi-Fi services or school supplies. If you have a robust website, think about providing an online resource center to help community members find or exchange the things they need. The resource center is also a good way to determine which needs are going unmet.
If you don’t already do so, subscribe both online and off to your local newspapers. Make them available in your place of business for both employees and customers. Place a stack outside your entrance as a free service to the public. You can fight the trend toward misinformation and support your local news as well.
Provide Paid Time Off for Volunteering
Your company can provide human resource support to nonprofit companies by allowing employees to volunteer during the workday. The employees get paid and the nonprofit receives much-needed services. Since many volunteer activities take place during the workday, employees can volunteer without giving up their personal time off or sacrificing pay.
Sometimes companies determine which activities they will allow employees to do. But in many cases, the only requirement is to do good in the community. Whichever option you choose, it’s only a benefit if employees use it. Inform employees and support them when they take time to volunteer.
Combine Forces
Demonstrate leadership by taking the initiative and forming alliances with other businesses. Together you can make a greater impact when you combine funds and resources. Such alliances allow you to accomplish more without taking on too great a burden. It’s a good business opportunity, as well, to network and find synergies and best practices with complementary companies. It pays to nurture relationships with other businesses.
Support Community Events
Make an extra effort to support community activities, from outdoor concerts to farmer’s markets to art gallery openings. Use your social media accounts to share word-of-mouth. Provide sponsorship with money, resources and facilities. This is an opportunity to attach your company’s name to the great things that are happening in your area. Even better, it’s a way to support local artisans and venues, stimulate the economy and generate community cohesion.
Hire Locally
Despite the press generated around the Great Resignation, there are still plenty of families reeling from job loss and rising inflation. The good news is, that many are right there in your neighborhood. If you have positions to fill, don’t miss the opportunity to help. Seek out the underserved and overlooked populations (e.g., hourly workers) who are most affected by a return to the office amidst soaring gas prices.
Businesses Doing More
These are some of the most important ways that your business can support the community during the recession recovery. Of course, you’ll want to keep sponsoring the local baseball team and keep your active membership in the Chamber of Commerce during trying times. But to join the ranks of the most respected businesses in your community, the place where employees are proud to work, you’ll want to do more.
A corporate giving program is one of the best ways to support your community, demonstrate corporate philanthropy and foster a positive work culture. The Groundswell platform makes it easy to provide this coveted employee benefit. Contact us for more information.
Corporate Philanthropy
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Workplace Trends
10 Charitable Giving Ideas Based on Moments That Matter for Employees
If the business of HR is to manage — and enhance — the employee experience, an understanding of Moments That Matter (MTM) may be one of the most critical tools the HR professional can add to their repertoire. The HR world adopted the term from the customer relations department, which refers to the moments in a customer’s life when they are likely to make the decision to buy a product or service. In HR, it refers to the moments in an employee’s life, both professional and private, that can most influence their feelings about their job and their employer. There are many ways to employ a Moments That Matter approach to employee management, but there’s one that’s often overlooked — incorporating it into the company’s corporate giving strategy. Here’s why you should, and some ideas of how your company can do it.
Moments That Matter — What It Is and Why It Matters
The idea behind the MTM management philosophy is that there are certain moments in your employees’ lives that have an outsize impact on their work satisfaction and attitude toward the company. Some of them are fairly generic — the job interview, their first weeks on the job and promotions, for example. Others are more personal: an expectant parent, for instance, is likely to be influenced by how well — or poorly — HR helps them navigate the changes surrounding that milestone. Each of these experiences contributes to the overall employee experience with your company, and managing them well can play a big role in improving employee morale, job satisfaction, productivity and retention.
Which Moments Matter?
As suggested, the answer to that question can vary from employee to employee. There is, however, some agreement on the most common moments, and there are some suggestions for how to determine which moments actually matter the most to your employees. Gartner, Inc., an internationally respected HR consulting firm, lays out five types of moments that are likely to have the highest impact on employees in a recently published paper. They include moments that are:
Emotion-generating: like personal anniversaries and life milestones.
Scalable: have the potential to influence many employees.
Frequent: happen many times over the course of a day, week or month.
Business-aligned: moments that align with corporate strategy or culture.
Critical talent-aligned: impact a specific population with critical talents in the organization.
Understanding which moments matter to your employees can help you create policies and procedures that acknowledge those moments and respond to them in the most positive and beneficial ways. In order to do this, it’s vital that you equip your HR department with the tools to identify important moments and respond to them with empathy and clear guidance.
Corporate Philanthropy and Moments That Matter
More and more research shows that employees care about working for a company that aligns with their values. They want to work for a company that makes them proud, one that takes corporate responsibility seriously (CSR) and that supports — or empowers them to support — the causes that matter to them. Many employees are motivated by a company’s commitment to give back and are engaged by corporate giving strategies like donation matching, group volunteer efforts and community giveback days. When you incorporate MTM into your corporate giving strategy, you can exponentially increase the impact on both your employees and the causes they support.
10 Moments That Matter-Inspired Charitable Giving Ideas
If all of that explanation left you buzzing but still unsure how to combine it with your corporate giving strategy, here are 10 ways that you can use Moments That Matter to inspire, motivate and engage your employees.
1. Make Corporate Giving Part of Your Employee Benefits Package
The job interview is one of the first times your employee will have contact with the HR department. Use that moment to explain that corporate giving is part of your standard employee benefits package, and show them how you make it easier for them to support the causes that matter to them.
2. Celebrate Work Milestones With Charitable Donations
Instead of — or in addition to — recognizing work anniversaries or achievements with swag, offer a bonus donation to be made to the charity of their choice. If you’re using the Groundswell platform, it’s easy to simply add the appropriate amount to the employee’s giving account. You can even set it up as part of the policies that administer the program.
3. Use Data From Your Employee Donation Programs To Help Identify Moments That Matter
Many employee benefits management companies provide data and feedback to your company that can give you insight into what matters to your employees. Use that data to help identify giving trends and refine your program to make it more appealing.
4. Reward Team Milestones with a Giving Stipend
Sure, go ahead and have that pizza party for the team when QA checks off on their work, but why not give them something even more meaningful — add a little something to their charitable giving stipend. By giving them the power to support the causes they care about, you’re being doubly rewarding.
5. Recognize the Employee of the Month with the Opportunity to Make a Difference
It’s nice to get your picture in a place of honor when you’re voted Employee of the Month, but you can do better by giving your EOTM the chance to do more good. It’s easy to set up one-time additions to an employee’s giving fund based on their designation as a valued employee.
6. Give the Gift of Giving for Birthdays
Birthdays are a classic personal moment that matters — and many people celebrate by making a donation to charity. Even Facebook recognizes that — their Birthday Fundraiser feature is one of the platform’s most popular. Empower your employees to be more charitable on their birthdays by making a birthday donation part of their benefits package.
7. Mark Work Transitions with More Donating Power
Take the opportunity to recognize work transitions — the end of a probation period, a promotion to team leader, or moving to a new department — with a contribution to their giving fund. If the transition is a promotion or other permanent rise in the company structure, you can even make it a permanent increase in the company’s charitable giving program.
8. Celebrate Personal Milestones With a Contribution
There’s no better way to make employees feel valued than demonstrating that you notice — and care about — what’s happening in their lives. In addition to standard milestones, such as weddings or a new addition to the family, you can also celebrate their achievement of a new degree or certification, closing on a new house, or being recognized by a community organization.
9. Share the Celebration of Company Milestones
It’s common for businesses to mark milestones by making a donation to charity. Whether your company is celebrating Founder’s Day, recognizing their 1 millionth sale, or marking the awarding of a big contract, let your employees share in the festivities by making a contribution to their donor funds to distribute as they see fit.
10. Extend Your Annual Holiday Bonus
Add a little something extra to your holiday bonus program — an extra contribution to their employee giving fund. Many employees celebrate holidays with a donation to their favorite charities anyway. Why not empower them to give a little more?
How Groundswell Helps You Meet Moments That Matter to All of Your Employees
The right software program can make it easy for you to match moments that matter to the unique interests and needs of all of your employees. Designing a corporate giving program can be challenging, with many factors to consider and incorporate. Groundswell is designed to be inclusive, private, and empowering. By putting the power to give into the hands of each employee, the platform eliminates many barriers to giving that are inherent in traditional corporate match programs.
Employees can donate on their own timeline, rather than during a specified giving period.
There are no complicated forms to fill out and have approved.
Charities get their donations all at once rather than having to wait for the matching part of the donation.
Employees can give to the causes they support without worrying that their donations will expose parts of their private lives they’d rather not reveal. You can read more about how the Groundswell platform helps make employee giving more accessible and welcoming to everyone in the blog Is Your Donation Matching Program Inclusive and Equitable? Probably Not.
The simple interface makes it easy for your company to respond quickly to current events that have a wide cultural impact and provides a way for your company to be supportive to diverse groups among your employees.
Of course, your company can — and should — support your employees’ charitable efforts in other ways, as well. You can create moments that matter for your employees by, for example, sponsoring weekly, monthly, or annual team volunteer opportunities. The time spent building out playgrounds, repairing homes for seniors, and serving meals at a local food kitchen all have the potential to be part of the reason your employees feel that they matter, not only to your company, but to the community at large.
Final Thoughts
Moments That Matter is more than just a current HR trend. It reflects a long tradition in the HR field — one of philanthropy and benefit focused on employees and their needs. When your company recognizes the most impactful moments in the lives of its employees — and provides them with a way to recognize, celebrate and navigate them — you are strengthening the relationship between your employee, your company and the community. In short, everyone benefits. Learn how at Groundswell.