"67% of employees" want their company to offer payroll giving
Howard Lake | 4 March 2004 | News
Launching its Big Leap campaign, The Giving Campaign reports that 67% of employees believe that employers should offer their staff the chance to donate to their favourite charities and causes directly from their salary.
The Big Leap is the Giving Campaign’s initiative to promote payroll giving to smaller and medium sized companies. It takes its name from the fact that 2004 is a leap year.
The poll was carried out in the last week of February 2004 by YouGov, based on an omnibus survey with a sample size of 2279 from across the UK.
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It also found that 41% of salary earners would consider giving two hours of their salary each month to a cause that they cared about. Donors giving two hours of their salary to charity each month will have given an entire day (24 hours) after one year, hence the leap year theme.
People in the North of England and in Scotland appeared to be particularly supportive of payroll giving.
Guy Simpson, spokesperson for The Big Leap, welcomed the survey results: “Payroll Giving is an extremely easy and tax-effective way of supporting charity, and yet just 1% of companies and 2% of employees participate. The figures from the YouGov survey show that many more employees would like to support charities at work, given the opportunity. The Big Leap provides that opportunity.”
The Big Leap is encouraging employers to sign up and promote Payroll Giving to their employees. From mid-March, employers will be able to log the number of hours pledged by their employees on the campaign’s Web site, feeding into a national total.
About Howard Lake
Howard Lake is consultant editor of UK Fundraising. He founded the site in 1994 and successfully sold it in 2022. As director of Giving X Ltd he is exploring growing giving on a massive scale.
He is the founder of Fundraising Camp and co-founder of GoodJobs.