The Western Union Foundation (WU Foundation) Employee Global Giving Campaign (“Giving Campaign”) is a signature program aimed to gather support from Western Union employees around the world to help fund the WU Foundation’s philanthropic activity. Additionally, the Giving Campaign educates employees on the Foundation’s impact and the issues which the Foundation has responded throughout the year. The Giving Campaign engages employees, builds pride in our shared accomplishments, inspires stakeholders to continue to champion the WU Foundation’s good work and enables The Western Union Company (“Company”) to communicate its support in social causes through the Western Union Foundation.
In 2015, the WU Foundation achieved 80 percent employee participation among Western Union employees, making it a top one percent among corporations for employee giving campaigns, according to CECP.
The WU Foundation is championed by the Western Union executives throughout the year. Western Union CEO Hikmet Ersek is a key advocate of the Giving Campaign. Ersek incorporates visits to NGOs supported by the WU Foundation during his travels, enabling him to speak personally of the needs of those the WU Foundation supports throughout the world.
The Giving Campaign channels multiple strategies to engage the more than 10,000 employees around the world. The 2015 WU Foundation Giving Campaign lead, Tifany Boyles, shares the following as pillars of the successful campaign:
- Create early buy-in among key stakeholders
- Establish momentum immediately to engender confidence
- Recruit highly engaged volunteers to champion the Giving Campaign at a local level
- Create and provide turnkey advocacy tools to exponentially maximize the message while controlling the quality of the key points
- Orchestrate a fun environment that is grassroots led but has vested support from leadership
- Set both clear and attainable goals and systems of accountability to measure progress to said goals
- Establish analytics driven communications while incorporating personal stories of impact
- Know your customer, the employee, to tailor outreach by demographics of the employee-base
- Inspire the audience with an enthusiastic and laser-like focus on the future with their support
- Keep the message fresh and authentic
These best practices to mobilizing large-scale support can be found in other effective initiatives such as a strong legislative campaign, a fundraising initiative, or any type of change management dependent upon public support. What makes it innovative is the ability to employ all ten of these qualities in a manner that is genuine and inspirational.
In order to create systems of accountability to measure progress during the Giving Campaign, Boyles utilizes a weekly report which features each department leader, the employee giving participation of the leader’s department, and a tracking graphic that illustrates the existing year’s progress compared to the previous year’s campaign. This report is issued weekly to the Company Global Leadership Team. The graph illustrating weekly progress is featured on the intranet homepage. Often, these reports are juxtaposed with a weekly story of a WU Foundation beneficiary to keep the focus on the impact of one’s gift. Additional reports capture each country’s employee giving participation and chart the top five employee locations and their progress. Bi-weekly stories highlighting a volunteer from a leading location and his/her reasons for championing the Giving Campaign are also included in the ongoing communications to inspire and record progress.
Ultimately, measuring and tracking progress is paramount to achieving the goal. Communicating progress is a balance between transparency of the data and keeping the message focused on how the employee’s support helps those in need.
In order to be successful, the need for collaboration across departments cannot be overstated. Any employee-based giving initiative needs resources from every team. The fundamental partnerships to a successful Giving Campaign lie with Internal Communications and the Global Leadership Team. Both teams offer crucial expertise and customer insight, not to mention are the portal to the Western Union employees across regions. Establishing a strategy in partnership with these teams that has value add to departments across the company.
A collaborative effort will ensure long-sustaining support and will diminish message fatigue if the value is clear for all involved. These benefits to a strong Giving Campaign include a more committed employee base with a stronger sense of pride in the Company’s values, an increase in employee morale, a healthier corporate-culture aware of the issues plaguing the communities where it operates and markets and a stronger position as a purpose-driven company matched by an employee-led philanthropic ethos.
To read more about the WU Foundation, please visit the website at
http://foundation.westernunion.com/
The Western Union Foundation, a separate §501(c)(3) recognized United States non-profit corporation supported by the Western Union Company, its employees, Agents, and business partners, works to support education and disaster relief efforts as pathways toward a better future. Donations to the Western Union Foundation from outside the United States do not represent a tax benefit.
