Promotions and Incentives

Promotions and incentives make a campaign exciting and fun which helps to increase participation and interest. It's important to have information about your workplace fundraising campaign accessible. Display posters given to you by Community Shares in prominent places. Place brochures in the lunchroom. We have also provided sample newsletters and e-mails (link to Newsletter/Email Announcement) to send out to all staff, and a great plan for a 10-minute meeting (Link to: 10-Minute Meeting) to talk about your workplace giving campaign!

Your co-workers may be interested in pledging because it gives them a good feeling, but giving them an incentive to participate will turn them from a maybe to a yes. Below are just a few tips on some incentives you can offer at your workplace. Remember to make sure you get authorization from management to give prizes. Incentives could either require returning a completed pledge form or you could hold one or more of the following events and charge a small participation fee that would be divided between all the organizations.

• Hold a raffle: Items could include baked goods, candy, or even a prime parking spot, a jeans day/week, services by senior management (lunch, car wash, etc), or donated prizes.
• Ice cream social: Set up an ice cream bar with a variety of toppings, charge by the scoop.
• Baby picture contest: Have employees provide baby pictures of themselves. Collect the photos and have them try to guess who each photo belongs to for a prize.
• Casual dress coupons: Sell coupons for dress-down days. Be sure to date the coupons when they are used so that they can't be used more than once.
• Jelly bean jar: Fill a large jar with jelly beans, M&Ms, Skittles, etc. Charge 25 cents for participants to guess the number of beans in the jar. The person who is closest to the real number wins the jar.
• Bake sale: A classic. Get a few people to bake cookies, brownies, cakes, breads, etc. Sell the goods as an independent fundraiser, or added to another event.
• Cola drive: See who can raise the most money by collecting soda cans.
• Survey your employees to find out what issues are most important to them and promote targeted messages surrounding those issues. For example, you could e-mail factoids about member charities, newsletters, voicemail, payroll stuffers, etc.
• Share content from the Community Shares Web site, showing the work of our various member charities and how they're making an impact on the community.
• Invite a representative from Community Shares and/or one of our member charities to address a group of employees.
• Hold a donation meeting within various departments. Meet with employees as individuals or in small groups so they can ask questions and learn more about workplace giving campaigns from Community Shares.