How To Do An Internal Corporate Fundraising Campaign

It can be a challenge to get company employees fired up about an internal fundraising campaign - especially at the corporate level. How do you engage employees and get them excited to join in to help the cause? At Block Real Estate Services, (BRES), we have an annual fundraising effort we do for MS Society around March Madness. Here are some tactics we found that lend success to a corporate fundraising campaign:




Pick a cause that is important to your employees 
The MS Society has a very active Midwest chapter in Kansas City. It is an organization that Block Real Estate Service's employees have strong connections to and puts on many popular fundraising events in the KC area. Because this was a recognizable cause with strong local ties, employees were more willing to get involved.

Tie your campaign into something topical 
If your employees are already hyped up about a sporting event, holiday, etc., that's the perfect opportunity to showcase your cause alongside. For instance, our team got behind the March Basketball Madness and made our MS Society fundraising bracket and basketball themed. The theme made the campaign more fun and also made it easier for employees to jump on board because they were already excited about the March basketball games.

Offer quality incentives 
Offering quality incentives to participate will increase employee engagement with the campaign and draw in those employees who may otherwise not join the fun. However, make sure that your prizes and incentives are compelling. These don't necessarily need to be expensive. At BRES, we offered Jean Day passes in exchange for donations.

Create eye-catching marketing material 
Approach your fundraising campaign like a marketer would. Take the time to create visually appealing marketing materials for flyers, emails, raffle tickets, social media posts, etc. This will be more likely to catch employees' eyes.


Keep everyone informed
Keep your employee base informed of the fundraising event well before the event kicks off, continue to give them constant updates during the campaign and share results of the campaign after it has ended. You don't want there to be any confusion in what your campaign entails and what you're asking of employees.

                                                                                   
Show the community your pride 
Showing your pride around your fundraising event via social media, news outlets, etc., helps employees take more pride in the campaign themselves. At BRES, we shared tweets throughout the campaign to keep the community updated on our efforts and show off the great work of our employees.

After a month of "March Madness" fundraising fun BRES wrapped up our campaign for the MS Society with a grand event where we announced our winners-of course this helps over food!  We announced winners of the NCAA Basketball and winners of our 50/50 Raffle.

The grand event was our 50/50 raffle where the pot was split, half went to the MS Society and the other half went to the winner Ken Steen, who is pictured on the right with BRES' principal Stephen Block.

Overall we engaged our employees in having a great time over a month and raised over $1200 for the MS Society.

Click here for BRES giving back to the Kansas City Community or Click here to learn more about Corporate Responsibility.


Contributor:

Paige Salveter
Director of Marketing & Communications
Block Real Estate Services
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