The Challenge of Engaging Teams in Employee Giving Programs

For many healthcare organizations, engaging employees in giving programs is a persistent challenge. It’s a lot of people to manage—and to convince that donating to the institution they work for actually matters. Connecting with that many individuals can feel overwhelming for development teams, often leading them to question whether the effort is really worth it compared to the return in donations.

And if you’ve ever felt that way, I get you. Even when everything is done right, most healthcare organizations struggle to get past 10% participation in their employee giving programs. And when employees do join, few become truly engaged donors. Many don’t feel personally connected to the causes being supported, which turns giving into a passive experience—just another payroll deduction with little emotional meaning or visibility into impact.

The problem is that without a sense of ownership or a real connection to the outcomes, these programs can’t build a meaningful culture of giving—and miss the opportunity to unlock more consistent, long-term contributions.

The Sabin Case

Sabin Group—one of the largest diagnostic medicine networks in Brazil—recently faced this challenge. The company already had strong social and environmental responsibility initiatives, positively impacting over 1.6 million people’s lives. The next step was to deeply engage their employees in these efforts, addressing urgent needs in the communities where Sabin operates and expanding the team’s awareness around these issues.

To achieve this, the company launched the Gincana do Bem (“Good Deeds Challenge”), a program that mobilized teams across 15 states through volunteering and donation activities. Each team earned points based on their contributions and initiatives, encouraging a spirit of collaboration, solidarity, and teamwork.

Ribon was used as a tool to ensure high engagement with donations—making it possible for everyone to take the first step and participate before giving their own money, while also allowing them to see the real-time impact of every donation they directed.

The Result

In just six weeks, the program engaged the team in 25 different social projects, with employees donating an average of 7 times per month, and donor retention stabilized at 70%.

Even when compared to the most successful traditional employee giving programs, this represents a completely new level of engagement—a remarkably high participation rate that leads to a more conscious and connected giving experience, where employees feel genuinely connected to the purpose behind the program.

How Ribon Makes It Happen

The donated resources were pre-allocated by Sabin and converted into tickets. These tickets were gradually released to participants through the Ribon app, where they had the power to choose which projects they wanted to support with the tickets they collected.

The key to this high level of engagement lies in the gamification of the experience, built around the impact of each ticket donated. Take a look at this example:

With just 1 ticket, a Sabin employee could provide the equivalent of one day of menstrual health for a school-age girl. As they collected tickets, donated them, and saw the impact registered on their profile, they could clearly track their progress as a donor. Even more, they could share and compare this journey with their colleagues—fueling a dynamic where everyone was motivated to keep donating more.

Where Engagement Turns into Fundraising

Here’s where the magic happens: in order to donate more, employees need more tickets. That’s what drives the most engaged team members to spontaneously purchase ticket packages—bringing in new funds to support the causes they care about and boosting their personal impact in comparison to their peers.

Most of these purchases happen through monthly subscriptions, and thanks to the app’s gamified experience, paying users on Ribon show much higher retention rates than donors in traditional employee giving programs.

But to keep this entire cycle of engagement, fundraising, and retention running, three specific elements of the Ribon experience are essential:

  • Power of choice: Employees must understand that they get to decide how the resources represented by each ticket are used. More important than owning the resource is owning the decision.

  • Impact feedback: Each ticket represents a tangible social impact, measured in partnership with the supported projects. All donations come with clear, objective information about the outcomes achieved.

  • Continuous activation: Messages and notifications integrated into the team’s daily workflow are automatically sent through the Ribon platform, keeping everyone engaged in a seamless and natural way.

A Culture That Changes the World

In addition to driving internal culture change—bringing social impact initiatives into employees’ daily routines—Sabin’s donations also generated real-world benefits that extended far beyond the company. Just take a look at the numbers:

This level of visibility, engagement, and measurable impact solves some of the biggest challenges healthcare systems face with employee giving: low participation, disconnected donors, and programs that are hard to maintain over time. It also streamlines strategic processes like impact data reporting, which is becoming increasingly important across the healthcare sector.

If you’re interested in bringing these same results to your employee giving program, we’d love to talk.