Happy Birthday Geared for Giving!

The Geared for Giving campaign celebrated its 2nd birthday at the House of Lords this week. The event, a dinner, was hosted by Lord Joffe who has always championed giving from pay.

We were joined by about 20 employers including the John Lewis Partnership, Marks & Spencer, AXA, Holland & Barrett, FedEx, Beaverbrooks, Yorkshire & Clydesdale Bank and the Entertainer.

Although we celebrated the achievements of the campaign to date, it was clear that there is still much to do and the dinner gave us the opportunity to have a lively debate about how we could further engage those with a scheme and encourage those without one to implement it.

We were joined on the night by Crisis, a charity working with the homeless and Make-A-Wish, a charity which grants wishes to children who have life threatening or terminal illness and we heard from them just how much difference regular donations make to them, their ability to plan their work and the security of a regular income stream brings to their various projects.

We were most thrilled to be joined by the newly appointed Minister for Civil Society, Nick Hurd MP, who had hot footed it to join the dinner as he was most interested in how Workplace Giving could fit into helping to build the “Big Society” the new and fresh initiative supported by the Coalition.

The very strong message which came out loud and clear by the end of the evening was that Workplace Giving is not and should not be just a “box ticking” exercise, without effective, creative and enthusiastic communication of the scheme and its benefits, no employee can or will take part and it becomes another initiative of no real use to charity.

Join the growing number of enlightened employers who are part of the campaign.

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Posted on Friday, May 21st, 2010 by GforG Admin and is filed under
Campaign News.