Giving back has been an integral part of Total Quality Logistics (TQL),
the second largest freight
TQL Cares — the company’s workplace giving program — was established in 2006 to deepen employee engagement, while making a positive impact in the community. For 10 years, this program took a fairly traditional approach, with an annual giving campaign that lasted two weeks, small matching programs and volunteer endorsements, but only for Cincinnati-area employees.
As the company experienced major growth, expanding to 58 satellite locations across North America, their workforce also shifted toward a younger demographic now comprised of 90% Millennials.
These changes created several new challenges for the TQL Cares program.
With the TQL expansion, most employees were new and it was important to help them connect with each other, the company and their local communities.
Finding local giving and volunteering opportunities across locations was a challenge, and administrators discovered that what was meaningful for people in Cincinnati didn’t necessarily resonate with those in Orlando or Knoxville.
TQL’s traditional approach to annual giving, informal matching and volunteering programs was all managed manually, by various administrators, with spreadsheets and forms. With no central place for people to connect with TQL Cares, the programs were under-promoted, they were under-utilized and they underperformed.
“We realized our people weren’t as engaged as we’d like,” says Corey Drushal, Corporate Giving Specialist at TQL. “Many had nonprofits and causes they were supporting for personal reasons and were more focused on those than on the company's strategic giving pillars.”
With a largely Millennial workforce, TQL was finding that their traditional approach wasn’t resonating with their people.
Employees were expressing interest in donating to charities outside of the charitable options provided to them, and the existing system made it difficult to support their personal passions.
The program administrators for TQL Cares started by talking to their people. Through employee surveys and conversations, they discovered that their people were as passionate as their leaders about giving back — they were just doing it outside of the company program, with organizations close to their hearts.
It became clear that TQL needed to rethink their program, but making the decision to shift their focus from a limited, annual campaign fundraiser to one that included personal choice wasn’t easy.
The executive team understood it was important to do what was best for the broader team, so Drushal started looking for a new platform that could meet the desires of their people to give to the charities of their choice.
Ability to provide open-choice, year-round giving with a large number of charities.
A fully integrated solution that was easy to use and could support giving, volunteering, matching and team competitions under one TQL-branded umbrella.
Automated processes that reduced administration for manually distributing funds, matching donations and tracking hours to allow more time to focus on strategy.
A scalable solution with the flexibility to support existing programs and campaigns that could grow with the company.
TQL chose Spark, Benevity’s integrated, cloud-based solution to evolve their program. They launched it with their fall giving campaign, allowing employees to donate to charities of their choice as well as their traditional campaign for the first time ever — and they saw great results.
On top of realizing a record 75% participation in the fall campaign, TQL also saw a 33% increase in total donation dollars.