On the surface an employee giving campaign seems like a no brainer. As an organization, we tap into our employees’ desire to give back to the community. We provide a corporate match and as a result, we raise a bunch of money for people and charities that need it most. Sounds great, but unfortunately due to the set-up process, bandwidth or distracted employees, these campaigns often fall short.

Driving success in your employee giving or workplace giving campaigns comes down to (1) making it easy and compelling for a team member to engage, and (2) providing the right process that’s efficient on the back-end. You may be able to make it easy for the employee to give, but if the process to track the donation and provide the corporate match is tedious – results will still fall flat.

How do you do both?

Employee giving and workplace giving initiatives are great ways for organizations, both small and large, to strengthen ties to the communities they serve. Hiring an outside partner to assist with your program can help immensely, providing needed support to employees who don’t have the bandwidth to manage the initiative, while ensuring that the campaign is engaging team members and achieving results.

Unfortunately, if you hire the wrong partner, you may find yourself with more work than if you handled the campaign internally. We’ve all been there, haven’t we? Here are three things to consider before you hire a partner to help your initiative.

When you’re launching an employee giving initiative or a workplace giving program, it’s important you have a process in place to drive success. Employee giving campaigns are unique in that they’re often an “extra” initiative key employees are taking on in addition to their typical day to day jobs.

This “extra work,” albeit for a good cause or causes, demands an easy, seamless process that engages employees in the campaign and drives success. Here are three key things to consider before you launch your employee giving initiative.

One-time employee giving campaigns and longer workplace giving initiatives are a great way for organizations to:

If you’re in charge of your organization’s workplace or employee giving program, you know it can be a chore to get people engaged throughout the year, much less one time a year. When team members are slammed with work all day, it can be tough to capture their attention. Employees also bring their own bias to any giving program. They may have been forced to give in other organizations or they may reject the idea of you identifying the cause they should care about. Here are four ways to get your employees engaged in a one-time employee giving initiative or a year-long giving program  your company’s workplace giving program.

Organizing a charity event is hard work. It takes a team effort to coordinate logistics, participants, and presentations all while ensuring that the important fundraising goals are met. With all the moving parts, it’s important to also focus on the donor experience at the event. Not only making sure donors have a good time but that it is easy for them to support and promote your cause before, during and after the event.

Mobile is becoming the mainstay for communication and commerce. As a nonprofit, your ability to tap into mobile channels will soon be vital for your fundraising and donor communication strategy. Consider the numbers:

Gathering and providing tax receipts is one of the most tedious components of providing a charitable donation.

If a donor is giving $10,000 to an organization, it’s not hard to remember those donations. However, keeping up with the smaller donations is more difficult. Your donors may give $20 here, $20 there. At tax time, all of those donations add up. However, if your donors are like some of us, the hunt for every little letter and receipt can be tedious. Electronic receipts can help but you’re still left combing your inbox if you haven’t set up a good filing system. If you’ve given relatively small donations, you simply may not have taken the time to organize.

As charity organizations, we’re used to making appeals for money. So much so, that our appeals become routine. It’s important these requests don’t turn mundane – you need the funds and you need to your donors to feel compelled to give.

If you think your fundraising events and possibly your strategy have become stale and predictable, it’s time to shake it up for 2016. Here are some unique ways to raise money: