Key takeaways:
- Giving season is a highly visible opportunity for corporate social responsibility (CSR) and environmental, social and governance (ESG) leaders to demonstrate clear purpose and measurable impact.
- Effective campaigns require clear, data-driven plans that align with core CSR and ESG goals.
- Successful campaigns inspire action by making the experience personal, easy to join and balancing corporate themes with individual employee choice.
- Authentic storytelling and nonprofit partner spotlights help employees see the real-world change their contributions create.
- Sustained campaign momentum is achieved through multi-channel communication that maximizes visibility and leverages leaders as key champions for broader engagement.
For CSR and ESG leaders, these final months of the year present an opportunity to transform end-of-year giving campaigns into something bigger: a proof point of purpose that resonates across the organization and turns short-term, collective goodwill into lasting impact.
To make that happen, every leader should:
- Recognize that end-of-year giving is their most visible CSR moment and strategically leverage it to prove ROI and purpose.
- Design campaigns that prioritize measurable impact, authentic storytelling and ease of participation.
- Choose an Enterprise Impact Platform that embeds purpose, scales measurable impact and drives inclusive, sustainable change to turn seasonal campaigns into a long-term culture shift.
In this guide, we’ll break down the top 5 strategies that leading companies use to engage employees, boost participation and maximize impact during Giving Season and beyond.
1. Start with strategic planning and data
Behind every standout end-of-year campaign is a clear, data-informed plan rooted in the organization’s core goals. Success starts with aligning your campaign to CSR and ESG priorities, while also leveraging existing insights to understand what drives participation and where your program can make its biggest leap forward.
How CSR and ESG leaders can put this into action:
- Align with CSR and ESG goals
- Tie campaign themes to your organization’s social impact priorities: Work to link each initiative to your corporate purpose (e.g. climate action, DEI or community support).
- Connect campaign contributions to annual impact metrics: Show how donation matching or volunteering opportunities directly support long-term impact goals.
- Use CSR analytics to benchmark impact
- Highlight key metrics: Analyze data like average donation size and volunteer hours to identify trends and areas for growth or efficiency.
- Compare participation across teams or regions: Set realistic and motivating targets by benchmarking against previous participation.
- Leverage your CSR reporting dashboard: Pull data from your Enterprise Impact Platform to gain a foundational view of past performance.
2. Design a campaign that inspires action
Great campaigns don’t just ask people to give, they inspire action by making the experience personal, energizing and easy to join. A well-designed campaign should focus on clarity and emotion, balances corporate themes with personal choice and clearly communicates the “why” and “how” so employees understand the impact of their role.
How CSR and ESG leaders can put this into action:
- Drive urgency and competition
- Create matching moments that drive urgency: Offer 48-hour double match periods or themed days to incentivize immediate giving.
- Promote friendly competition: Use leaderboards or set team based challenges to encourage collaboration across departments or regions.
- Maximize choice and ownership
- Empower employees to choose their cause: Enable employees to support charities they nominate directly through your corporate giving platform.
- Promote ERG-led campaigns: Partner with Employee Resource Groups (ERGs) to champion specific causes. ERG-backed initiatives often strengthen community and increase both participation and representation across the organization.
- Make it easy to give or volunteer
- Ensure a mobile-friendly experience: Verify that your giving and volunteering platforms are optimized for mobile devices, enabling employees to participate easily on the go.
3. Tell stories that show real impact
Facts build trust, but stories build connection. Bringing your impact to life through storytelling helps employees see the real-world change their generosity creates and provides a powerful, emotional anchor for the campaign.
How CSR and ESG leaders can put this into action:
- Share last year’s results
- Turn CSR report data into human stories: Your data is more than just numbers, it’s a representation of your impact. Translate them into relatable outcomes (e.g. “5,000 hours = 100 students mentored”).
- Use visual recaps or videos: Showcase your previous success through compelling visuals. Visual content like videos and infographics are 40x more likely to get shared and can convey emotion and excitement that text alone can’t.
- Spotlight nonprofit partners
- Highlight impact stories: Feature authentic narratives directly from your nonprofit partners, showing the people, places and communities they serve.
Publish mid-campaign updates: Post specific progress milestones throughout your campaign to keep energy high and reinforce the connection between employee actions and tangible results.
4. Engage across every channel
To reach every employee, you need to meet them where they already are. A multi-channel communication approach ensures that your message stays visible, your momentum never stalls and your campaign remains top-of-mind.
How CSR and ESG leaders can put this into action:
- Build a multi-touch communication plan
- Involve leadership and peers: Start the campaign with a high-impact message from leadership and follow up with peer-led reminders to keep engagement strong.
- Create visibility everywhere: Use a mix of tools like QR codes, prominent intranet banners and in-person volunteer events to ensure your campaign message is consistently seen.
- Empower managers as campaign champions
- Equip your managers: Provide comprehensive toolkits that include talking points and team challenges to help managers rally their teams.
- Recognize participation drivers: Publicly celebrate managers or teams that achieve high engagement to reinforce positive momentum.
5. Measure and share results
What gets measured, gets amplified. Tracking and communicating outcomes reinforces that participation leads to real impact.
How CSR and ESG leaders can put this into action:
- Identify what to track
- Quantitative metrics: Focus on key performance indicators (KPIs) like donation volume, corporate match utilization, total volunteer hours and overall employee participation rates.
- Story-based impact metrics: Track metrics that translate directly into narratives like people helped, meals provided or trees planted.
- Communicate results clearly
- Use visual formats: Share results in engaging ways like an impact report or during a high-visibility all-hands meeting.
- Leverage internal channels: Post campaign highlights and progress updates across your internal communication platforms to keep the success visible and celebrate collective impact.
BONUS: 30-day action plan
Turning these 5 strategies into action starts now. Here’s how to prioritize the right steps to make your upcoming Giving Season campaign stronger, simpler and more impactful:
Week 1: Conduct a campaign audit
Dive into your previous year’s Giving Season campaign. Review data like participation rates, donation amounts and employee feedback. Understand your strengths and areas for improvement to help you lay a solid foundation for future success.
Week 2: Select two key themes or nonprofits to spotlight
Rather than promoting all available causes, choose one or two focus areas or nonprofit partnerships that align with your organization’s values, current events or causes that may be relevant to your employee base.
Week 3: Build a multi-channel content calendar
Develop a comprehensive content plan that maps campaign messages across multiple touchpoints including launch emails, manager toolkits, intranet posts and follow-up stories.
Week 4: Configure matching settings and impact tracking in your CSR platform
Define and communicate your organization’s matching policy clearly. Set up tracking within your CSR platform to monitor donations, volunteer hours and overall campaign progress.
After the 30 days: Plan for post-campaign success
Before your campaign ends, plan your post-campaign reporting progress. Prepare an impact report that celebrates your employees’ contributions, highlights results and shares stories across your organization.
From year-end giving to year-round Goodness
Strong end-of-year campaigns blend heart and strategy. They connect employee purpose with organizational impact and build momentum that carries into the new year. To achieve and sustain that energy, CSR and ESG leaders need to plan with data, communicate with authenticity and celebrate results openly to keep their people engaged, inspired and excited for what comes next.
Ready to turn your next campaign into lasting impact?
See how the Benevity Enterprise Impact Platform helps companies build and sustain year-round CSR programs.
