This column very nearly didn't see the light of day. Shortly after I picked my topic, I turned on the penultimate episode of BBC2's The Office  watching through my fingers, as ever  and was appalled to see David Brent promoting Red Nose Day. The cause of charity fundraising was set back about 50 years.
Fortunately, there is a way of supporting charity, and getting all sorts of business benefits out of it, without resorting to sponsored kisses and emu costumes (although that kind of thing can have its uses). Payroll giving has huge potential in the UK, but it's still largely untapped. In the US, 25% of employees and 30% of companies take part in payroll-giving schemes; in the UK it's 2% of employees and just 1% of companies.
Payroll-giving, by which employees volunteer to have contributions to charity deducted from their pay packets and handed on by their employers, is being promoted by The Giving Campaign, an independent, national lobbying group supported by the voluntary sector and government. A new drive to raise awareness was launched just last month.
Simple to run
It is relatively painless to operate  80% of companies that run payroll-giving say that it's simple to set up and run, and only 8% have encountered problems. And it's good for business. Payroll-giving schemes offer an elegant way of demonstrating your commitment to corporate social responsibility to employees, customers, suppliers and the community at large. The advantage for charities, apart from the guaranteed monthly income, is that it's tax exempt: a 40% taxpayer only has to donate £6 in order to give £10 to charity. And for the third (and final) year running, the government will add another 10% to every donation, making that £6 worth £11. Many companies decide to match employees' donations with contributions of their own; the Royal Bank of Scotland group, which includes NatWest, gives £2 for every £1 donated by its staff, for example.
Schemes in place
A number of leading players in the grocery industry already have schemes in place: Diageo, Sainsbury and Tesco are among the top 25 payroll contributors in the UK, for example. Marks and Spencer was the driving force behind the Children's Promise campaign, which urged employees to donate their last hour's earnings of the old millenium; it raised £18.5m for children's charities such as ChildLine. Following the success of the Children's Promise, M&S decided to dust off its old payroll-giving scheme, which was poorly promoted and only had a few hundred participants. Now 6% of the workforce, or more than 3,400 employees, give regularly through the scheme.
However, there's still a long way to go. Payroll-giving schemes raised £72m for charity in the past year, out of total charity fundraising of £26.7bn. The Giving Campaign estimates that if we could get up to US levels of participation, another £1bn a year would be raised for the UK's charities. And there'd be no need for hideous dancing managers. Contact The Giving Campaign on 0207 930 3154.
A toolkit for employers thinking about setting up payroll-giving schemes can be downloaded free from the campaign's website (www.givingcampaign.
org.uk)
n Steve Crabb is editor of People Management
{{JOBS & CAREERS }}
Fortunately, there is a way of supporting charity, and getting all sorts of business benefits out of it, without resorting to sponsored kisses and emu costumes (although that kind of thing can have its uses). Payroll giving has huge potential in the UK, but it's still largely untapped. In the US, 25% of employees and 30% of companies take part in payroll-giving schemes; in the UK it's 2% of employees and just 1% of companies.
Payroll-giving, by which employees volunteer to have contributions to charity deducted from their pay packets and handed on by their employers, is being promoted by The Giving Campaign, an independent, national lobbying group supported by the voluntary sector and government. A new drive to raise awareness was launched just last month.
Simple to run
It is relatively painless to operate  80% of companies that run payroll-giving say that it's simple to set up and run, and only 8% have encountered problems. And it's good for business. Payroll-giving schemes offer an elegant way of demonstrating your commitment to corporate social responsibility to employees, customers, suppliers and the community at large. The advantage for charities, apart from the guaranteed monthly income, is that it's tax exempt: a 40% taxpayer only has to donate £6 in order to give £10 to charity. And for the third (and final) year running, the government will add another 10% to every donation, making that £6 worth £11. Many companies decide to match employees' donations with contributions of their own; the Royal Bank of Scotland group, which includes NatWest, gives £2 for every £1 donated by its staff, for example.
Schemes in place
A number of leading players in the grocery industry already have schemes in place: Diageo, Sainsbury and Tesco are among the top 25 payroll contributors in the UK, for example. Marks and Spencer was the driving force behind the Children's Promise campaign, which urged employees to donate their last hour's earnings of the old millenium; it raised £18.5m for children's charities such as ChildLine. Following the success of the Children's Promise, M&S decided to dust off its old payroll-giving scheme, which was poorly promoted and only had a few hundred participants. Now 6% of the workforce, or more than 3,400 employees, give regularly through the scheme.
However, there's still a long way to go. Payroll-giving schemes raised £72m for charity in the past year, out of total charity fundraising of £26.7bn. The Giving Campaign estimates that if we could get up to US levels of participation, another £1bn a year would be raised for the UK's charities. And there'd be no need for hideous dancing managers. Contact The Giving Campaign on 0207 930 3154.
A toolkit for employers thinking about setting up payroll-giving schemes can be downloaded free from the campaign's website (www.givingcampaign.
org.uk)
n Steve Crabb is editor of People Management
{{JOBS & CAREERS }}
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