Corporate Social Responsibility: Improving Tenders For
Charity of the Year Status

Having recently had some interesting conversations with charities about their pitches for “Charity of the Year”, we thought we’d do some digging as to what companies think.

Tenders are getting increasingly expensive to mount as, for example, charities employ outside consultants to help them prepare their pitches. Charities therefore need to guarantee that successful pitches yield a high return on investment.

We quizzed Heads of Corporate Social Responsibility, and found:

• Heads of CSR are expecting more from their charities. They approach it increasingly as a professional business partnership. For fundraising that means more and better support for example providing fundraising advice and management amongst company employees.
• Companies say that they are more likely to select a charity whose mission aligns with their business needs.  For example an employer with a large workforce may select a disabilities charity who can support the company in their quest to give genuine equal opportunities and to improve their management of people with disabilities.
• CSR managers think that there is a trend to putting a shortlist out to employees for final selection. Although this can prolong the tender process and involve more cost, it gives the successful charity a head start when it comes to getting employee involvement and support.

Because "Charity of the Year" is expensive to win charities have got to make the most of the opportunity. Making it as easy as possible for the company and their employees to organise their fundraising is essential.
 
Two simple steps are: jointly branded event publicity and jointly branded online fundraising pages. And if charities let employers share their full on line event administration and fundraising page suite, then they really start to cook with gas.

Helping employers stimulate activity on Intranets, their Facebook pages, via Twitter and other social media is exactly what they are looking for.