Kick off the year with a fun list of major events, campaigns or big goals that your company would like to reach with your CSR program. Share the details and communicate with your employees to get them excited about what’s in store for the year.

World Day of Social Justice, Black History Month and Anti-bullying day can all draw a theme for creating an inclusive culture and work environment for all of your employees.

International Women’s Day and Women’s History Month is the common theme for March that could be used acrossmultiple regions.

US National Volunteer Week and Canada National Volunteer Week starts April 21. This provides a great opportunity to create an volunteer engagement campaign for employees to rally around.

Checkout this podcast with Rachel Hutchisson, Global Social Responsibility at Blackbaud and Ben Sampson, Co-founder at WeHero on embracing new volunteer trends in a virtual world. Ben provides an example of a volunteer experience that incorporates empathy by simulating the day in the life of a homeless person. Volunteers see the world through the eyes of others before completing the act of service.

Tip: Use engage elements in CSRconnect to create a campaign resource landing page to house resources, information and documents to educate employees. Custom engagement elements can include survey forms to collect volunteer stories from participants, an event finder, and impact reporting. Surfacing the volunteer totals for all employees to see across regions is a great way to show your collective impact and keep the engagement momentum.

May 1 launches Mental Health Week in Canada, followed by the UK with the launch of Mental Health Awareness Week on May 13.  In the U.S. May is observed as Mental Health Awareness Month. The pandemic heightened awareness around the importance of mental health and employees will continue to face challenges through the recession. “Workers have come to expect employers to provide crisis support in the way of mental health care, financial assistance, backup childcare and flexibility.” – From Day One

CSR can play a vital role in employee wellness including belonging and financial wellness. Check out our whitepaper on developing CSR strategies that elevate your employees as your number one stakeholder.

This on-demand webinar also discusses the powerful connection between employee wellbeing and engagement.

Tip: Take a collaborative and cross-functional approach to plan and execute employee wellbeing initiatives. Bring together leadership from HR, CSR and Training and Development departments to create strategies for promoting employee mental health and wellness. Learn more in this blog: CSR Role in People and Culture.

Continue the theme of building an inclusive culture through Employee Resource Groups. Employee Resource Groups can support a company’s mission, values and strategy by building strong links between individuals in your organization and the local community.

The creation of employee resource groups will go a long way with the Gen Z workforce.

“Gen Z expects their employer to have ERGs or DEI strategic working groups they can actively participate in” – Tallo, What Companies Need to Know about Gen Z’s Diversity, Equity and Inclusion Expectations

Tip: Use CSR software like CSRconnect to support the development and management of employee resource groups.

• Create a group and ask ERG members to join.
• Create events through the software and track attendance at ERG meetings.

Hit the beach and reduce the volume of trash and pollution in our oceans with a beach cleanup day. Bring people together to focus on the environment and learn about ways to protect it.

Blackbaud employees help clean the beaches near Charleston.

Many companies kickoff their annual pledge campaigns in the fall. Provide employees the opportunity to learn about the nonprofit partners or causes you are asking them to financially support. Make sure employees know how to sign up and give through your CSR software. Communicate the details of your company match program and how employees can participate.

Tip: Invite nonprofit partners to come speak to employees. Have them share stories about the impact and outcomes they can achieve with the support from your company.

Global Goals Week, Climate Week and Hunger Action Month in Canada provides the opportunity to connect themes to the Sustainable Development Goals. Use our framework for elevating moments that matter to educate, collaborate, elevate, communicate and activate your employees around a cause supporting the goals.

Checkout our online resource guide for aligning CSR initiatives with the SDGs.

Use Canada Thanksgiving, and World Food Day to continue the theme and raise awareness for the SDGs. COVID-19 had a significant impact on the progress of the SDGs pushing millions of people back into poverty and reversing years of improvement for Goal 1 – No Poverty, Goal 2 – Zero Hunger and Goal 3 – Good Health and Well-being. Check out this infographic on the outlook of the SDGs through a CSR lens and see what CSR professionals are doing to strategically align their mission and goals with supporting the SDGs.

The end of the year continues to represent a large percentage of the giving. Blackbaud’s Charitable Giving Report shows that October, November and December represented 36% of giving in 2020. Prepare your employees earlier in the year with information on how to give through your CSR software.

Tip: Offer incentives to encourage employee participation. We see many companies give their employees Incentives or Cause Cards for first time donations. Cause Cards are a program within CSRconnect that can be issued to an employee like a gift card allowing them to choose a charity to receive a donation on behalf of the company.

We have tons of resources to connect your CSR initiatives to Giving Tuesday to help build a culture of philanthropy in your organization. Checkout this blog on giving season statics that features ideas for increasing employee engagement with giving.