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Charity emails

Hi everyone,

Has anyone come across a request from an employee requesting to circulate charity information they support to raise funds? Is it okay to send it to employees? 

Thanks

Shweta

503 views
  • Its Ok but its more a judgement call than a legal thing.

    its around what parameters you choose to put around this. If staff can send "all employee" emails or just to colleagues they know etc. It happens a lot at this time of year due to people undertaking sponsored challenges like marathons.

    Some organisations are very relaxed some ban it almost entirely
  • Hi Shweta, I'm not clear on whether this would be a fund raising event, e.g. London Marathon, or someone wishing to publicise their chosen charity. If it's the former I don't see a problem, if it's the latter I'd be more inclined to put a poster on a noticeboard rather than circulate using email. Would be interested to hear views from other members.
  • In reply to Clare Marie:

    Its the latter. One of our employees is trying to raise money using online fundraising platform for someone they care for and want to send it to all employee.
  • In reply to Shweta Thorat:

    My inclination in this case would be to say "no" to the APB. It's a busy world. One easily-ignored email will disappear like a stone in still water.

    But if you have a staff newsletter or regular round-robin, you could put it on that as a sidebar. If you have a company Facebook or LinkedIn page, that's more likely to both catch attention and serve double-duty as a marketing opportunity (yes, mercenary, but business is business).

    I guess I'm saying "go big, or go home". Either this is something the company should get behind and promote in a structured and intelligent way, or it shouldn't touch it at all.
  • Isn't this simply a matter of ...business equipment and systems are provided for business use ...and not anything else? The moment usage becomes anything other than for business purposes, drawing the line becomes an almost impossible task.
  • In reply to Robey:

    Thankyou Robey. Makes sense :).
  • Hi Shweta

    My current company allows employees to circulate fundraising requests via email. (It started well before I began). I've found;
    - They get deleted quickly and are barely read
    - Some staff have actually set up filters to auto-delete emails with fundraising, charity etc as subject titles
    - Most people only contribute to those they know, e.g. part of their existing team so in all honesty, feel an email is unnecessary
    - It detracts massively from the company charity and corporate social responsibility work (emails get 'lumped' together so in turn makes our charity teams job harder as they cannot rely on email to communicate 'whole company' charity initiatives)

    I think its a can of worms - and around local marathon dates you get inundated and therefore causes complete charity apathy.

    Kind regards
    Laura
  • In reply to Laura Fazackarley:

    Thankyou Laura, exactly, I feel its can of worms and not sure to open it or not. I am going to let the employee know that she/he can send it to the colleagues they know well vs all.
  • In reply to Robey:

    Understand and agree. Thanks for your feedback :).
  • In reply to Keith:

    Thanks for your feedback Keith ! :)
  • The easiest option is to have a designated charity for company employees to fundraise for the year, anything else goes on a noticeboard, the thing is though what happens when it becomes something personal to one of your employees or yourself?