City firms promote volunteering with e-mails to their staff
Howard Lake | 15 May 2003 | News
This week 636 employees of leading City firms signed up as potential volunteers in a new online registration drive by an East London business volunteering agency.
East London Business Alliance (ELBA) took the initiative in response to a perceived slow-down in volunteering.
Six major City companies sent “all-staff” e-mails to their employees, inviting them to sign up. The companies were UBS Warburg, Accenture, CMS Cameron McKenna, Man Group Plc, Schroders and the University of East London.
ELBA were very pleased with the results. Liam Kane, Chief Executive of ELBA, said: “Direct appeals for charitable giving elicit response rates of between 0.5 and 5%. Asking people to give of their time is a tougher challenge and we didn’t know what to expect. We obtained an average response of 7% across the total staff e-mail recipients in the six companies. If this translates into volunteers on the ground it will represent a great boost to the number of active volunteers in East London.”
The e-mail campaign was implemented by the technology charity Charity Technology Trust (CTT). CTT is focused on helping leading UK charity brands become more efficient and effective users of new technology.
Founder and CEO of CTT, Peter Sweatman said “ELBA’s success demonstrates the power of tailored e-mail delivery of charitable opportunities direct to the inbox of the desk based employee.”
To date CTT has sent 132 charity e-mail communications totaling 624,027 actual messages to 163,453 different people on behalf of 18 top UK charities.
Advertisement
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.