Charitable giving that works for everyone:
How Work for Good are tackling the barriers to business-to-charity giving
This year the Global Good Awards announced its first Charity of the Year: The Royal Marsden Cancer Charity. We are delighted to be able to support their vital work, so were keen to work out how we could best manage donations… In that process, we discovered that giving to charity is not as straight-forward as you might expect!
Fortunately, we have been able to team up with the excellent Work for Good, a platform designed to make business-to-charity giving as simple as possible.
We spoke to Work for Good CEO, Danny Witter, to find out a little bit more about how they are tackling the barriers that make it difficult for both businesses and charities to work together. Who knows, they might just be the solution that you have been looking for…
What inspired you to set up Work for Good?
“Work for Good is the brainchild of Rupert Pick. He was looking for a way to support the Evelina London Children’s Hospital, which cares for his daughter, Ottie. When Rupert decided to donate the fees from his next workshop to the hospital, it inspired him to think about all the wonderful things that could happen if only more businesses were able to give through their work.
We set up Work for Good to offer businesses a smarter way to give – one that builds it into their day-to-day work, making it easy and compelling for businesses to give to charity.
What are the challenges for any business seeking to donate to charity?
“There are several factors that combine to make it hard for both businesses and charities to work together.
For a start there are legal and tax barriers that can make it disproportionately costly for businesses to give, and for charities to accept! It’s particularly complicated when you have SMEs wishing to make multiple smaller donations to a variety of causes… One big question for both parties is: will it be worth it for both the business and the charities to go through the cost of overcoming legal and tax related hurdles when SMEs often cannot guarantee how much they will be able to give?
SMEs might struggle to coordinate their giving, because unlike bigger businesses, they often don’t have an internal CSR department. And if their giving is hard to publicise internally and externally, it can become hard to justify.
Meanwhile, few charities have the time or resources to reach out to many of the different companies that might be interested in supporting them.
Work for Good helps to address all of these challenges.
So how do you make this process easier?
Our online platform makes it easy for businesses to give, in whatever way suits them best: a day of their time, a percentage of their fee or sales, or even a figure that’s tied to their targets.
Examples of Work for Good businesses include a consultancy that gives 5% of every invoice, a restaurant that gives all profits from a ‘charity table’ to whichever causes their diners choose, and a design agency that makes a fixed donation for every new project they win.
It’s easy, tax efficient and because we make giving visible, it’s good for business too. It enables businesses to tell their clients and staff about the great things they are doing, and even allows customers to choose what charities they will be donating to. For example, if Global Good Awards participants have a preferred charity, or legal issues preventing them supporting the Royal Marsden, they can select which charity will receive the donation related to their tickets / application, it only takes two clicks on the Work for Good site.
And Work for Good businesses can wear our mark – both digitally and physically – to display their values, stand out from the crowd, and inspire others to follow suit. We help businesses to shout about the good that they do. It’s a great way to connect with their clients, inspire people and build a stronger brand.
For charities, Work for Good not only connects them with businesses who want to give to their cause, but also provides an important legal solution to commercial participation rules. This means that charities that may have previously been unable accept such donations from businesses, now can.
What are the Commercial Participation rules?
Linking donations to sales, just as the Global Good Awards are generously doing, is a great engagement approach. The downside is that the Charities Act dictates that you need to sign a commercial participation agreement with every charity to which you might give. This is not only time-consuming, but many charities have thresholds often as high as £100k before they’ll engage on this basis.
We’ve solved this via our terms and conditions – which businesses and charities agree to upon registering. These jointly form the Commercial Participation agreement between a business and any charity they support. No legal hassle or lengthy negotiation required… So our members can give to one or several charities effortlessly, in any amount, and in a way that’s fully compliant!
Excellent! So, finally, what are your ambitions for Work for Good?
Currently business giving represents a meagre 2% of UK charity income. We want to make giving a core part of business, and open up a major new channel of philanthropic funding.
We aim to raise over £45 million for charity within five years.
Karen Sutton, founder and CEO of the Global Good Awards is delighted to have Work for Good on board:
“I was delighted to discover Work for Good and hear about the benefits of being able to give to charity without having to worry about the ‘red tape’. I wasn’t aware of the Commercial Participation rules before meeting Danny, and I’m sure there are many other smaller organisations that wouldn’t know either; putting both business and charity at risk of a tax issue, so I hope more businesses get on board!”
Find out more about Work for Good by watching their video here
Entries for the GGA open on the 1st December 2017 and close 2nd February 2018. You can find out more here.
Anyone wishing to be part of the Global Good revolution and the unique awards programme can contact Commercial Director, Richard Roe on 07776 206077 or email richard@GlobalGoodAwards.co.uk.
For entries and other enquiries, contact Founder, Karen Sutton: karen@GlobalGoodAwards.co.uk
