4 Giving Tuesday Ideas To Transform Your Company’s Culture

Giving Tuesday — the annual campaign occurring on the first Tuesday after Thanksgiving — can be as important to your company’s culture as Black Friday and Cyber Monday are for your bottom line. Established in 2012 by the 92nd Street Y and the United Nations Foundation, this global day of giving back is a chance to engage your company’s communities and build a year-round culture of giving.

Increasingly, companies are answering the call: This year’s Giving Tuesday is predicted to be the biggest yet, with some projecting that donors will make $3.4 billion in donations to charities around the globe on December 3rd. 

Here are four Giving Tuesday ideas to engage your community and inspire an ethos of generosity every day: 

Incentivize Employee Giving and Volunteering

Employees want to make a difference, so make it easier for them. This might look like simply raising awareness for Giving Tuesday among employees while showcasing your company’s philanthropic commitments, or could go further with robust campaigns that incentivize employee giving and volunteering.

Companies with existing donation matching and volunteering programs can accelerate their impact with campaigns that further incentivize participation around Giving Tuesday:  

Offer Increased Donation Matching Rates on Giving Tuesday: Roughly two-thirds of Fortune 500 companies offer donation matching incentives for employees, and platforms like Benevity and Deed can help make implementing these programs easy and engaging. Giving Tuesday presents a perfect opportunity to incentivize donation matching, with many companies increasing their matching percentage for donations made during the campaign.  

Provide Donation Credits: Another increasingly common approach is to give employees donation credits that they can direct to the organizations or causes of their choice on Giving Tuesday. This approach reduces the barriers to participating and, often, can be used to introduce employees to your company’s matching program and platforms and increase engagement.  

Encourage Volunteering with Time Off or Matching Incentives: Recently, some companies have started encouraging their employees to volunteer during the Giving Tuesday season and are providing a variety of incentives to those who do. Some companies encourage volunteering by providing paid time off to volunteer during the season or by committing to donate alongside each hour of volunteer time employees dedicate to an organization.   

Combining multiple of these approaches can be used to great effect. In 2023, Tides partner Zuora launched a Giving Tuesday campaign powered by the passion of its employees. The campaign featured 37 fundraisers created by employees to champion causes they were passionate about. Zuora gave employees a donation credit and matched donations 200%. The Zuora team raised over $108,000 for 120 organizations across the globe, with more than 1,000 employees rallying to make an impact.  

Engage and Empower Your ERGs

Employee resource groups (ERGs) can be incredibly effective allies when launching a Giving Tuesday campaign. They can encourage campaign participation with employee groups, help identify organizations and causes that your company should support, and even champion causes that other employees should consider supporting. Here are a few ways you might consider working with your company’s ERGs during Giving Tuesday: 

Give ERGs Grantmaking Budgets: Consider giving ERGs discretion to direct part of your company’s philanthropic budget to organizations and causes ERG members select. Tides partner Braze recognizes that working with ERGs to direct its giving can “ensure that [its] charitable contributions directly serve and resonate with the communities [its] employees care about.” This year, Braze made $300,000 in grants to 36 organizations selected by their 10 ERGs.  

Ask ERGs What Causes to Highlight: ERGs have a wealth of collective knowledge on what causes and organizations are most important to their community and can recommend organizations that their colleagues should support during Giving Tuesday. A veterans ERG might be encouraged to share a few veterans-serving organizations they think their colleagues should consider supporting. This approach can further reduce the burden for employees who are new to your company’s donation matching programs, giving them impactful recommendations they can choose between and minimizing the amount of research they need to do themselves.   

Encourage Consumer Giving and Awareness

Giving Tuesday is also a time when consumers are thinking about their giving and therefore can play a critical role in your Giving Tuesday strategy. To bring consumers along on your Giving Tuesday plans, consider the following: 

Share What Your Company is Doing: Consumers are excited to hear about what you’re doing in this space – a 2023 report showed that purpose driven consumers now make up the largest global consumer segment. As we approach Giving Tuesday, share with your community what your company is doing to give back as a way to engage your consumers while also raising awareness for the campaign. 

Activate Consumers: Go beyond simply sharing how you’re giving back by encouraging consumers to join the cause. You can inspire Giving Tuesday participation through marketing campaigns and in-store signage. Consumers can donate to the cause that you’re supporting through roll-ups upon check out, or your company can offer to contribute a portion of proceeds to charitable causes through a commercial co-venture. With these approaches, customers can learn more about your social impact work and even contribute themselves.   

Lean Into Local Networks  

Companies with a national reach have a unique opportunity to contribute to the Giving Tuesday movement on both a national and a local scale. When done right, companies can leverage their local employee and grantee networks to invest in causes that are important to individual communities in authentic ways. Consider the following approaches:   

Ask Employees to Elevate Local Priorities: Whether your company has one corporate headquarters or thousands of individual retail locations, your employees are certain to have organizations and causes that they care about in their communities. This Giving Tuesday, consider setting aside funding that local offices can direct towards organizations nominated by employees. 

Support your Local Nonprofit Partners’ Campaigns: Your company’s nonprofit partners are probably using Giving Tuesday to raise donations themselves. Giving Tuesday serves as a great opportunity to amplify their fundraising campaigns for local audiences or to even surprise them with an additional contribution. 

Increase Your Impact This Giving Tuesday

However your company defines community, we hope that you’re able to engage them in meaningful ways this Giving Tuesday. Whether that’s being bolder about communicating your social impact strategy externally or providing suggestions to employees for their personal giving, trying something new can help you build a culture of giving that continues every day of the year.