Do This One Thing to Become a Top Singaporean Company
May 3, 2022
Boost Employee Engagement & Retention with CSR
July 18, 20225 Tips for Meaningful Corporate Giving in Singapore in 2022
It seems like the topic of corporate giving is on everyone’s lips. Singapore has a vision to be the City of Good where people are valued, resources are shared and Singapore becomes a city that truly cares about supporting the wider community.
Businesses have a central role to play in fulfilling this vision for Singapore. While interest in corporate giving has no doubt ramped up in recent times thanks to the national Singapore Cares movement, Singaporean companies have a long history of demonstrating a philanthropic spirit.
Despite this, corporate giving is not always viewed in a positive light by employees and customers. When it’s perceived that a company is only engaged in corporate giving as a PR exercise, rather than as a powerful way to give back to the community, it takes away from the valuable work being done.
For this reason, it’s crucial for companies to engage in corporate giving in meaningful ways. If you’re after guidance on how your company can do so, keep reading. This guide will highlight five of the most powerful ways your company can make a genuine social impact this year.
1. Set Up a Corporate Giving Program
One of the best ways to ensure your company is meaningfully engaging in corporate giving is to set up a well-designed corporate giving program.
If you’re wondering why, the fact of the matter is that even if your company has the best of intentions to give back, your efforts will quickly fall flat if your approach is disorganised and inconsistent.
This often happens when companies try to run ad hoc philanthropic activities without the aid of a dedicated giving platform. Employees end up losing motivation to participate—if they were even aware of the activities in the first place. What’s more, admin and communication tasks start piling up, making it all but impossible for program coordinators to stay on top of everything while keeping the momentum up.
Fortunately, the solution to this is simple: Introduce a purpose-built digital giving program to your workplace. Digital giving platforms can offer numerous benefits, but they’re not all created the same.
The Catalyser giving platform gives you full control over your entire corporate social responsibility program, so your company can achieve the greatest social impact possible. It’s also one of the simplest and most cost-effective ways to get your corporate program up and running.
With Catalyser, your workplace can easily participate in all major types of corporate giving, including volunteering, fundraising, peer sponsorship, employee rewards, skilled volunteering, or matched payroll giving.
As Catalyser is an all-in-one platform, you’ll find everything you need to establish a meaningful corporate giving program. Along with an intuitive user interface for both employees and program coordinators, Catalyser streamlines the accountability process by providing accurate and comprehensive data about your program. You’ll even gain access to insightful dashboards and reports, so you can track just how big of a social impact your workplace is making.
To learn more about how Catalyser can help elevate your company’s corporate giving program, get in touch with our Customer Support Team today.
2. Be Thoughtful in Your Approach
In order to make your corporate giving efforts more meaningful, it’s also a good idea to refine the focus of your giving program. Providing employees with too much choice over the charities they can support through your workplace giving program is likely to lead to high levels of disengagement. Additionally, having an abundance of charity partners can dilute the social impact return you make as a company.
If you want to prevent this from happening, narrow your company’s corporate giving focus to a handful of carefully selected charities. The charities should ideally align with your company’s ethos or values. At the very least, you should be able to clearly explain to your employees and customers why your company has chosen those specific charities or causes to support
For example, let’s say your company is striving to become more environmentally conscious. Supporting Singaporean environmental charities is a fantastic way to exemplify your company’s commitment to the cause.
Once you start taking this more thoughtful approach, you’ll likely see a marked shift in employee participation levels in your corporate giving program, as well as greater support from your customer base.
3. Support Your Employees to Give Back (and Make Sure to Get Involved Too)
The great thing about corporate giving is that it can take shape in many forms. As previously mentioned, the main ways to engage in corporate giving are:
- Volunteering
- Fundraising
- Peer sponsorship
- Employee rewards
- Skilled volunteering
- Matched payroll giving
If you’re eager for your corporate giving program to take off, it can be tempting to put a bit of pressure on employees to participate in one or more ways. After all, it’s all for the greater good, right?
Well, you can trust that your employees won’t see it that way if your approach misses the mark. Most employees will happily engage in corporate giving if they can recognise the value in doing so. As extensive research has found, employees want their companies to make genuine efforts to give back to the community.
However, if you fail to clearly communicate to them why their participation in your corporate giving program is important, you’ll find it difficult to secure buy-in from them. That’s why making your ‘why’ clear should be a top priority.
It’s equally critical to support program participation in the first place. Think about it. If all of your corporate giving campaigns require employees to give up their spare time to participate, you’ll make the barriers to participation too high.
Instead, work on providing them with the tools, support, and structures they need to willingly participate in it. This could involve offering dedicated volunteering leave, donation matching, or encouraging pro bono work during work hours.
Similarly, if you expect your employees to spend time volunteering or making donations, but no higher-ups do the same, it doesn't send a very convincing message that your company genuinely cares about giving back. To this end, it’s vital for all executives—including the CEO—to show support for the company’s corporate giving efforts not only in their words, but also in their actions.
4. Make Use of Internal Resources
Another way Singaporean companies can meaningfully engage in corporate giving in 2022 is to make use of their company’s existing internal resources.
As Channel News Asia’s article on corporate giving in the era of Covid-19 points out, Singaporean companies should consider adding value to society by using resources that they already own. The article notes that:
“...Every company exists to create value in society and if well-managed, many can play their part when crises strike. The purpose of companies is to find profitable solutions to solve problems faced by society. Intelligent businesses are also optimising how they contribute to society, even in lean and disrupted times like these.”
If you’re wondering how this looks in practice, consider the examples of Grab Singapore and Fullerton Health highlighted in the article. During the height of the Covid-19 pandemic, Grab Singapore launched a new ride service called ‘GrabCare’ to support healthcare workers who were being shunned on public transport. Meanwhile, Fullerton Health created a free Covid-19 symptom checker app that now operates in multiple languages and territories.
Figuring out how your company can use its internal resources to give back to the community may take some time. But if you’re able to, you’ll be able to easily demonstrate real value in your corporate giving program.
5. Leverage Expert Resources
Thanks to the growing emphasis on corporate giving in Singapore, there have never been so many great expert resources for companies to lean on.
If you’re new to the world of corporate giving, expert resources will help to point you in the right direction and give you useful tips for effectively running your program. Even if your company has navigated the space for years, you can always benefit from further developing your knowledge of corporate giving best practices.
So which expert resources can help your company to meaningfully engage in corporate giving in 2022?
Catalyser’s comprehensive Resource Library is packed with free expert guides and articles to help you finetune your giving program and make the most out of it. If you’re after some inspiration for your program, we encourage you to take a read of our Client Success Stories. They showcase how leading companies are using Catalyser to propel their corporate giving programs.
In terms of useful organisations to turn to, we recommend following The National Volunteer & Philanthropy Centre (NVPC). The NVPC describes itself as, “the steward of the City of Good vision for Singapore, where individuals, organisations, and leaders come together to give their best for others.” The organisation’s website houses many useful resources for Singaporean companies looking to engage in corporate giving, so it’s well worth checking out.
Final Thoughts
As this guide has covered, there are several ways your company can make corporate giving more meaningful. Doing so is not only crucial for ensuring your efforts result in the largest social impact possible, but also in encouraging optimal employee engagement and participation rates. You’ll also help to banish any suspicions about your corporate giving program merely being a PR exercise.
If you’re still unsure what steps to take next, we’re here to help. Reach out to the Catalyser team today and learn how Catalyser can support your company to meaningfully engage in corporate giving.