The holiday season is the perfect time to connect with your employees by giving back. For Employee Experience (EX) and CSR leaders, creating a holiday giving campaign can significantly boost engagement, morale, and even retention. But how do you make sure your campaign truly resonates and drives participation?
By leveraging behavioral science—specifically the Fogg Behavior Model—you can turn your holiday giving campaign into a powerful tool. The model focuses on three key factors: motivation, ability, and prompts. When employees are motivated, find it easy to participate, and receive timely reminders, they are far more likely to engage.
Let’s break it down into three simple steps to help you launch a successful holiday giving campaign:
Step 1: Align your campaign with employees’ favorite causes
In the Fogg Model, motivation refers to how much someone wants to take action. The more relevant and personal the cause, the higher their motivation to participate in your campaign.
The holiday season is naturally motivating—people want to give back during this time. The key is to align your campaign with causes your employees care about.
Here’s how, and how Percent Pledge can help:
Leverage employees’ existing desire to give back during the holidays
During the holidays, many are drawn to causes like fighting hunger, supporting economic opportunity, or improving health. Percent Pledge connects you with top-rated nonprofit partners working on these critical issues, allowing you to easily build a campaign around causes that resonate with your team.
Find out what your employees are passionate about
If you’re not sure what causes resonate most with your workforce, Percent Pledge offers a Passion Assessment. This tool helps you gather insights on what matters to your team, making it easier to align your giving campaign with their passions and understand employee motivation.
Customer success story: DRW annual giving challenge
DRW, the Chicago-based financial services company, ran a highly successful holiday giving challenge that used Percent Pledge’s unrestricted Campaign feature. This allowed employees to donate to any charity they wanted, which was something they hadn’t been able to do before. The result was a 200% increase in participation company-wide compared to the previous year, with their campaign goal surpassed by 3000%. DRW used Percent Pledge’s User Groups and Competitions features to have real-time competitions between their 12+ global offices. These offices competed to donate the most and were sharing real-time leaderboard results across the company throughout the campaign.
Step 2: Make it easy for employees to give back
In the Fogg Model, ability refers to how easy it is for someone to take action.
Motivation alone isn’t enough—your employees also need the ability to participate in your holiday giving campaign. Many employees feel like they don’t have enough time to volunteer, even when they have volunteer time off (VTO) benefits. Or employees feel unable to engage if the process is too complicated.
Here’s how you can make your holiday giving campaign simple and accessible:
Support donations with corporate matching or gifting
Corporate matching is a powerful tool that amplifies employees' donations, making their contributions go even further. When employees know that their donations will be matched by the company, it not only motivates them to give more but also encourages those who might not have donated otherwise. Percent Pledge makes it easy to set up matching programs, allowing employees to maximize their impact effortlessly.
Additionally, some employees may want to give but not have the disposable income to donate. Percent Pledge’s Cause Credits allow you to offer employees gift donations—free funds they can direct to their favorite causes.
Customer success story: Customer.io’s holiday campaign
Customer.io example: In their holiday campaign, Customer.io offered Cause Credits and matching donations together to create a highly engaging campaign. The Cause Credits acted as a gateway, drawing employees to the platform by allowing them to use free donations. Once on the platform, employees contributed their own funds, which the company matched. The pairing of Cause Credits and matching donations led to 90% global employee participation. Customer.io’s campaign was simple to set up using Percent Pledge’s platform, which provided real-time tracking of employee participation and automatic tax receipts for both employee and company donations.
Enable employees to give their time by volunteering
If your campaign is centered around volunteer service, ensure employees have the time to participate. Provide options like flexible VTO or virtual volunteer opportunities that fit into their schedules.
Offer both giving and volunteering in one platform
Percent Pledge makes it easy for employees to donate or volunteer directly from a single platform. No complicated steps or separate systems to navigate—just one place to give back. Plus, by offering both options, you increase the chances of more people getting involved in a way that works for them.
Step 3: Use prompts to boost employee engagement
In the Fogg Model, prompts are triggers that remind someone to take action.
Sometimes, even the most motivated employees need a gentle reminder to get involved. Prompts—like emails or messages—can make a big difference in turning good intentions into action. Communication is critical in making your holiday giving campaign a success.
Here’s how to effectively nudge your team:
Use timely reminders
Whether it's a message about a matching opportunity or a reminder that the campaign is ending soon, well-timed communication can push people to act. Percent Pledge helps you schedule and automate these reminders so you don’t have to do it manually.
Celebrate milestones and successes
Recognize participation by celebrating milestones or sharing the collective impact of the campaign. When people see the difference they’re making, they’re more likely to continue giving. Sharing impact reports and stories of change can inspire ongoing involvement.
Here’s how Percent Pledge supports internal communications
- Automated communications: Our platform provides automated email reminders to ensure employees know about the campaign and stay engaged.
- Campaign dashboards and real-time updates: Keep your employees informed with leaderboards, campaign goals, and progress tracking, so they can see their collective impact and stay motivated.
- Templates for admins: Our Social Impact Managers also provide you with internal comms templates to send to employees, prompting them to take action at key moments during the campaign.
Customer success story: DRW annual giving challenge
DRW successfully leveraged Percent Pledge’s automated communications and Leaderboard features to prompt employees throughout their campaign. The leaderboard showed real-time progress, encouraging friendly competition between offices, and the internal messaging templates kept employees aware of their progress, available matches, and Cause Credits.
Launch your holiday giving campaign with Percent Pledge
A holiday giving campaign should feel like a natural part of your company culture, not a burden. With Percent Pledge, you get an all-in-one solution that makes it easy to motivate employees, simplify participation, and prompt them to take action. And when employees can see the real impact of their contributions, they’ll feel even more connected and engaged.
Ready to make giving back part of your company’s holiday season? Get started with Percent Pledge today.
Visit behaviormodel.org to learn more about the FOGG Behavior Model.
