Welcome to 50 Key Messages from Giving Australia!
We are thrilled to bring you these short, sharp, easy-to-digest messages that delve into some of the fascinating data coming out of Giving Australia, our largest national analysis of giving and volunteering. We will bring you new messages each day in June/July 2018.
So strap yourself in; you might be surprised by some of the findings!
Workplace giving
As it’s Workplace Giving Month, we thought we would kick off the key messages with three messages about workplace giving.
As the ATO has consistently found, around 5% of all employees in workplace giving organisations participate in the program, and $35 million was donated in this was in 2015-16. Giving Australia found that women had a slightly higher participation rate in workplace giving than men. However, men made on average more than double the annual monetary donation ($1,385.46) than did women ($649.44).
Giving Australia also found that those aged 35–44 years had the greatest participation rate in workplace giving programs, as did those with a postgraduate qualification.
Convenience was a significant factor in survey respondents deciding to use workplace giving, but as with giving in general, the dominant reason was a match of cause and personal values. For those that don’t give by workplace giving, the most common reason was ‘not enough money’, followed by, ‘I prefer to do it myself’ and ‘I give in other ways’.
The business report found that 85% of large businesses allowed employees to make pre-tax regular donations to nonprofit organisations (NPOs) through their pay and of this group, 56% matched employee giving.
Given the size of most small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), establishing and managing opportunities for payroll giving by employees remained challenging. Less than one-third (28%) of SMEs offered payroll giving. Of this group, 26% of businesses matched employee donations (e.g. dollar for dollar). According to the individual giving and volunteering report, 8.5% of people use workplace giving because their organisation matches their gift.
Large businesses were seeking to increase payroll giving. The CEOs and senior managers of companies that managed payroll giving who were interviewed held strong views about giving in the workplace:
- provided employees with an employment benefit of being able to give from their pre-tax salary and wages, and provided documentation that was income tax statement ready
- strengthened the employee value proposition of the business in the labour market, especially among Millennial, Generation Y and Baby Boomer employees, and
- matched giving in businesses provided employees with the opportunity to, in most cases, double the contribution they made to a charity.
In terms of workplace volunteering, about one-third of mid-tier companies and 63% of corporations managed a formal volunteering program. Only 6% of SMES managed a formal volunteering program.
Half of all corporations managing a formal program sought to integrate workplace volunteering in their community partnerships. Almost 90% of large businesses reported allocating more resources to volunteering compared to 10 years ago and wanted to see more of their workforce participating in workplace volunteering (the average participation rate was 21%).
To read the full reports and factsheets, go to https://www.communitybusinesspartnership.gov.au/about/research-projects/giving-australia-2016/
