Many factors make a company loved by its employees. The first ones that come to mind are: how much it pays, its working conditions, and its culture. But in the end, PURPOSE is the hardest value for a company to deliver—and the one that truly makes employees love what it stands for.
Oh, that elusive word!
And if there’s something that ties purpose to a company’s brand, it’s social responsibility. You will never hear someone say, “My company is garbage; last month, they helped about 1,000 families affected by natural disasters.”
Sometimes a social responsibility initiative can indeed be misinterpreted and cause some kind of backlash if it appears opportunistic or raises questions about transparency.
That’s why the best way to ensure your social responsibility actions have a positive impact on your company’s image is to make them consistent, transparent, and most importantly: inclusive.
For your team to be interested in your company’s social responsibility programs, they need to participate. It’s very unlikely that João, who works as a designer at Apple, knows how much or where his company donated last year, for example. But if he somehow participated in that donation, I bet he would know more about it and be proud of the impact it created.
However, Apple doesn’t yet have a corporate donation program focused on increasing employee participation. And because of that, they are likely facing the market’s sad participation rates, which are around 7% to 10% for matching gift donation programs (the most popular model).
For companies with strong internal communication, the rate rises to 20%. In the tech sector, it goes up to 25%. And if the company offers incentives for participating in the programs, the rate can reach 30%.
I believe Apple has good internal communication, is a tech company, and must offer incentives to its employees…
If, even in the best-case scenario, less than a third of employees participate in corporate social responsibility programs, I think it’s clear why no one cares about the donations these companies are making: because no one is participating!
If you go to Google or ChatGPT now and search “companies that donated the most last year,” you will see they are all donations made in the name of the company’s owners. If that’s how donations are being made, how is João, Apple’s designer, supposed to connect with the company’s purpose through these donations, which he doesn’t even know where they came from or where they went?
He won’t connect.
But if you’re with me up to this point, it’s because you’re interested in finding a different corporate giving model that includes employees in the process and gives them a purpose that makes them genuinely love your company.
Ribon was designed to deliver just that, and I’ll explain how it does this:
Imagine a 12-year-old at a family lunch. Her mother stands up and raises an important topic at the table. She says she wants to help more people this year, especially those who are hungry. She found a reliable project and invites the whole family to donate to it.
An aunt approaches the child and says, “Why don’t you break your piggy bank and donate some coins to help those who are hungry too?”
The child thinks for a moment. It would be nice to help, but she’s never been in the habit of doing this with her own money—especially the money she’s been saving patiently in her piggy bank.
Soon after, another aunt comes along, puts some coins in the child’s hand, and says, “Go ahead and donate this money to provide food for those in need!”
The child takes the coins, goes with her mother to make the donation, and is overjoyed to see that the project is indeed preparing food to help people. The next day, she goes to school and tells her friends how great it was to make her first donation. The feeling was amazing; she couldn’t hold it back! Her friends are impressed with this gesture from her family and think about how cool it would be if their families did the same.
This is a story about fostering a culture of giving. And in most cases, this is what companies want to do with their employees through corporate giving programs. It’s not about how much money the employees will donate, but rather how many employees were encouraged to take the first step and participate in the donation.
In our story, the coins the second aunt put in the child’s hand were exactly what she needed to decide to participate in the family’s donation. And this is what Ribon does with corporate donations: it converts the money into thousands of tickets that are distributed to employees so they can donate to projects chosen in the program. It’s basically like putting the coin in the child’s hand instead of asking her to break her piggy bank.
Alright, we understand how to increase employee participation in giving. But to reach the point where your company is loved for what it does, we need to take two more steps: deliver a memorable donation experience and create sharing triggers.
In our story, what made the child love the experience of donating was seeing that her donation was really being used to provide food for people. This is no coincidence.
A study by the Stanford Social Innovation Review showed that 74% of donors find it important to have objective metrics about the impact of their donations. Seeing how the resource is being used is not just nice—it’s necessary for the experience to create a connection between the donor and the cause.
Therefore, each donation on Ribon instantly provides information about what that ticket—or those tickets—generated in someone’s life. Whether it’s food, water, or medicine—it depends on the project being supported.
But that’s not all. The impact of all donations is documented on the donor’s profile screen. It’s like a history that shows how much that person has accomplished through their donations.
These features were designed to deliver a memorable donation experience, the second step on our journey to making our company loved.
If you can already include your employees in the donations and deliver a memorable experience for them, then you’re ahead of the vast majority of companies implementing corporate giving programs. But there’s still one step left to reach our goal of making our company admired in the market: sharing triggers.
Returning once more to our story, do you remember what happened the day after the child made the donation?
She wanted to tell her friends how amazing that experience was. This happens because the feeling of doing good overflows. People who connect with a cause want to bring more people in, show what they’ve done, and show that they can do the same. And this is the factor that most corporate giving programs neglect—but not Ribon.
Our interface is filled with sharing triggers like this one, which is displayed whenever a donor enters the app to collect their tickets or when they complete their donation: “Invite your friends to do good with you.”
Another even cooler example is our Wrapped. It’s a summary of the impact generated by the company, published at the end of each donation season. It works like that annual Spotify wrap-up that everyone shares on Instagram.
In our Wrapped, we put the impact of donations into easier-to-understand contexts, such as: “the company donated enough to feed three packed Maracanã stadiums.”
Additionally, we highlight the employees who donated the most to each cause, generating important recognition to keep the team motivated to continue donating in future seasons.
Just imagine your employees receiving this information, with your company’s logo and a little share button on social media…
That’s what I’m talking about! Sharing triggers that will put your company in the spotlight, along with the impact of the donations it is enabling.
Returning one last time to our story, this is the moment when the school friends are impressed by what the child’s family did.
Your company is that family. But notice that for that admiration to be genuine, the child had to talk about the donation. The weight of an employee talking about the impact they are generating within your company is much greater than the weight of a company talking about the same thing.
That’s why Ribon was designed to increase employee participation in donations, deliver a memorable donation experience, and create sharing triggers.
The three steps that will ensure your corporate giving program has the visibility needed for your company to be admired for the impact it generates inside and outside of it.
I only talked about visibility, but a solid social responsibility program can deliver much more than that. If you want to dive deeper into the topic, check out other contents
Thank you for sticking with me this far. Take care ✌️
