Business:  Cargill, Inc.
Contact:    Ms. Susan Tolbert
E-mail:      susan_tolbert@cargill.com
Phone:      937-497-4821

1. We are very lucky at Cargill to have great corporate support.  For every dollar donated, the Cargill triples the donation.  We emphasize this point to our employees and show them for every $1 donated United Way receives $3.

2. In the past we have hosted many different activities during campaign week to generate donations.  What we concluded was these activities take a lot of time to plan and although fun, don’t really generate a lot of donations.  These activities do boost our overall participation percentage so we didn’t want to do away with them all together.  We have scaled back our activities and now just do a couple raffles outside of campaign week.  By holding the raffles outside of the campaign we keep United Way on people’s minds.

3. Starting in 2007 we started sending monthly emails highlighting a local Shelby County United Way Agency.  We also shared a story about how that Agency helped someone with in Shelby County.  We used these stories to show our employees their donation dollars at work.  This also keeps United Way on their mind and is talked about more than just during our Campaign.

4. In 2007 we are sending mailers to employees homes asking them if they or a family member have been helped by a United Way Agency.  With their consent, these stories will be broadcast to all employees during the campaign. If the employee is willing we will ask them to talk about their story during our campaign meetings.

5. Before our campaign begins we have a short meeting in which all employees attend.  During this meeting we educate them on United Way and explain our campaign.  All employees receive a pledge card at the meeting and a few hand- outs about United Way. 

6. Our Campaign runs for a 2-week period.  In 2006 we ran an ‘Early Giver’ campaign 1 week before our kickoff.  Early Givers are entered into a department drawing for $50.  During our 2006 ‘Early Giver’ campaign we had reached our donation goal before our actual 2-week campaign even began.

7. We hold a Participation competition between our 5 on site departments.  The department with the highest percentage of participation wins: Bragging rights for 1 yr and our ‘Bucket of Generosity’ Trophy.  We post results daily to spur the competition.

8. We offer 3 All-you-can-eat meals during the campaign: breakfast burrito, loaded fries and lasagna dinner.  These are quite popular, every employee who pledges at least $2/pay period eats all the meals for free.

9. Generous Leader Lottery:  We solicit local businesses and Cargill Suppliers to donate items to put into a raffle for all Generous and Leadership Givers.  Stereo, DVD player, Night stay at hotel, Cargill shirts & jackets, Bengals football tickets, Gift Certificates to Outback, Applebee’s, Culver’s, Wal-Mart, Kroger, Staples, Lowes, $100 and $50 cash donations and many other items.

10. We concentrate our campaign on pledges.  We have 3 levels of pledges

Givers:  donate $2/pay period or $48/month
Generous Givers:  donate 1 hr of pay/month
Leadership Givers:  donation of $500 or more

Each level has different prizes and raffles for givers in those groups.

Givers: (donators $2/pay period or $48/month)

• Entered into a $50 department drawing
• All-you-can-eat meals for free

Generous Givers: (donators of 1 hr of pay/month)

• Entered into a $50 department drawing
• All-you-can-eat meals for fee
• 1 week vacation raffle
• 5- 1 day vacation raffle
• Generous Leader Lottery
• Thank you letter from Site Leadership

Leadership Givers: (donors of $500 or more)

• Entered into a $50 department drawing
• All-you-can-eat meals for free
• 1 week vacation raffle
• 1 day vacation raffle
• Generous Leader Lottery
• $500 Leadership Raffle
• Free car wash by Site Leadership team member
• Master Chef dinner drawing.
• Thank you letter from BU/Platform Leader

 

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Business:  Copeland Corporation, Sidney
Contact:    Ms. Gwen Wilker
E-mail:      Gwen.Wilker@Copeland-Corp.com
Phone:      937-498-3471

1.  Competition - we broke all of Corporate into nine teams, trying to keep departments together.  Our top three team prizes were a breakfast buffet, pizza buffet, and dessert buffet.  The formula to win was based on % of 1-hr givers and % of people giving anything.

2.  Upper management support - each of the teams had a team leader from management.  They were responsible for cheering their teams on and providing their own incentives, getting people to come to meetings, etc. 

3.  Make meetings fun.  Each year we have a theme and the teams do something fun in the meetings to encourage employees to come to hear the United Way message.  Last year we did an Olympic theme and ran Olympic games during the meetings.  We also give away an attendance prize at each meeting. 

4.  Raise the 1-hour bar.  Last year, we tied in the Olympic theme and had a Gold-level giver spot on the pledge card.  A gold-level giver was an hour and a half per month.  We had so many people switch to gold-level givers that we had our biggest dollar increase of pledges ever.

5.  Have a few theme-based bigger giveaways rather than giving away a lot of little token gifts.

6.  Encourage employee testimonies for meetings.  We had a few employees give a testimony of a family member or friend that was helped by United Way.  We've had many first-time givers and people raise their gift based off of employee testimonies.

7.  We have a United Way agency rep come in during each meeting to tell about their agency.  We try to match agencies to the group of employees we're meeting.  For example, an older group of employees may want to hear about what United Way is doing for seniors.

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Business:  US BankCorp, Sidney
Contact:    Mr. Andy Counts,
E-mail:      andy.counts@usbank.com

1.  What works for us is that I personally lead the campaign. We ask for a copy of the UW Video and each office views it with their staff. I make a visit each office (10 total), thanking our employees for their past donations and asking them to help in the coming year. We discuss our previous year’s contributions and our bank matching gift program. We usually give each employee a gift, T-shirts, beverage cups, coffee mug etc and hand out the UW campaign information from the local UW office. We also have an individual letter from me and their UW form in their personal information packet. We do not tell our employees they have to give. However, I do ask each employee to consider giving and I also ask the managers, assistant managers, admin team and commercial lenders to consider being a leadership giver. I believe the video helps make our case for the reason to give.

2.  We strongly believe in incentives for our campaign. We have three categories: 1 - Whoever is a leadership giver ($500 or more) receives one extra day of vacation. 2 - Whoever is a generous giver (1 hour pay per month) gets their name in a drawing to win a number of prizes from Reds tickets, Dragons Tickets or 5 one day vacations. 3 - We also have a prize drawing for anyone who gives at least $3.00 per pay period…..This drawing has Reds tickets, Bank merchandise, Visa gift cards, and two one day vacations. 4 - Last, we have a reward for any branch with 100% participation that they may have up to 5 blue jean-tennis shoes dress down days during the year. (View USBcampaign.pdf)

We have also had a parking space raffle in the past to raffle off special parking for those who participate. (View USBraffle.pdf)

3.  Finally we believe a key for our campaign is to show our employees what is given in each of their communities…..We have to show the branches in the other communities outside of Sidney that the UW helps those in their communities and the handout from the UW that shows the dollars given by community is key.

If anyone would have any questions about our campaign or why we do what we do, please feel free to send me an email at andy.counts@usbank.com . Our campaigns are successful because of our employees and their willingness to support a campaign that is important to their community.

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Business:  Mechanical Galv Plating, Sidney
Contact:    Mr. T.J. Baker
E-mail:      tjbaker@mechanicalgalv-plating.com
Phone:     937-492-3143

1.  A company raffle of a television or DVD player.

2.  "Digging the Pit"  - Setting a goal and if the goal is met the administration/upper office workers agree to do the dirtiest job in the plant. This was, by far, our most successful idea.

3.  Our company matches dollar for dollar donation equal to the total amount raised by the employees.

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These are but a few of the many, many ideas local campaign managers have come up with to get their employees involved in our United Way campaign. If you would like to share your company's ideas on this page, please e-mail your comments to iandrews@shelbycounitedway.org. 

Please stop back and visit this page periodically, as we intend to add new Campaign Tips as we receive them!