Transitioning with the times

More choice, more personal, more impact

Kayla Norman, Manager of Corporate Social Responsibility, leads Cambia’s small, but mighty team of three CSR professionals. She says that while the company has always kept up with best practices in the field to inform their program, their goal is to be “better than the best.” They recognized the ways people gave — and what motivated them — were changing. They took three big steps — supported by Benevity, their corporate purpose provider since 2013 — to better engage and connect their people, increase participation and create the social and business impact to help them do even more good.

Aligning giving with people’s passions

The first step was moving from a closed giving program where, according to Norman, “community investment and employee engagement were closely aligned with the business,” to an open one, where employees can give to any nonprofit of their choice aligned with their own personal passions — any 501(c)(3) registered nonprofit in the U.S. is eligible.

“We realized we didn’t want to be an obstacle to how people give,” said Norman.

From one-time campaign to year-long engagement

The second step was evolving from a popular one-time annual campaign to one that was year-round and less formal.

Following in lockstep with other companies, and with best practices of the time, Cambia used to plan a big, annual campaign. It was expected and convenient, and it provided a certain degree of budget certainty.

“Over the years, it’s become obvious that this was just not the way people give anymore,” said Norman.

“And while the big campaign did bring our company together, and was a big part of who we were, we realized that it was going against the ethos of giving. We needed to do better by our nonprofit partners than being just a one-time giver, and we needed to respect that people wanted to give when they wanted to give.”

They also already had a strong base of employees who were enrolled in payroll giving from their annual campaign, so when they opened up their program it was even easier for employees to give directly from their paychecks.

Creating connection with Peer Matching

The final — and boldest — step emerged from the COVID-19 pandemic: how to create connection amongst their employees even as they were working remotely. In tandem, Cambia was looking for a new way to activate those employees who were still hesitant to engage

Benevity’s Peer Matching feature provided them the solution they needed to both engage the unengaged and connect their people. Through Peer Matching, employees can set up their own giving opportunity for a cause they care about and then put up their own funds to match donations made by their colleagues. It’s a powerful way to not just support a cause individually, but to rally together with colleagues to create a movement. As employees spotlighted the causes they cared about personally, this elevation of people’s stories created connection, inspired greater giving from non-traditional givers, and showed how work and life can mix to the benefit of both.

The company initially worried about donor fatigue with so much giving already going on to support the pandemic response, but that worry turned out to be unfounded.