Many organizations do internal fund raising campaigns encouraging their employees to make payroll deduction charitable causes. We do one each year. Employees are encouraged to contribute to our charitable contribution program which channels funds to one of three charitable organizations: United Way, Community Health Charities, or our local food shelf – PROP.
We don’t twist anyone’s arm to contribute, but we do encourage it. I think it’s the right thing to do. We usually try to come up with some kind of promotion to spur employee interest in contributing. This year our Human Resources Division (good work Karen Kurt & staff) came up with a new idea for our program. They divided our employees into work teams and then set up a contest that would reward the work team with the greatest increase in employee participation in the program. The reward would be a waffle breakfast prepared by me and the Department Directors.
Today was reward day. The winners: the Police Investigative/Office of the Police Chief team. That’s a few of the lucky winners in the photo on the left. The photo on the right is the Waffle Chefs. Left to right: Janet Jeremiah, George Esbensen, Gene Dietz, me, and Dan Carlson.
As an organization, our employees increased their annual charitable giving this year by 39.6% and the number of employees participating in the program by 76.7%. It was a good year to the right thing.
And the waffles were delicious, so I’m told.
