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Larger donations, but fewer participants

ELISE CASTELLI

Participation is dropping, but an annual increase in average individual donations has kept the Combined Federal Campaign growing.

Since 2002, participation in CFC has steadily slumped from 35.5 percent of the federal work force to 32 percent last year, according to Office of Personnel Management reports. During the same period, total donations climbed from nearly $237 million to $268.5 million, with individual donations increasing from approximately $175 to $215, the reports show.

The dwindling participation figures could be due to heavy retirement rates among senior staff in the federal work force, said Edmund Byrnes, spokesman for OPM, which oversees CFC.

In response to newer federal employees’ interest in online giving, CFC is promoting the use of online technologies in addition to paper pledges, and work is under way to fully implement online giving options, Byrnes said.

The trend in CFC participation mirrors a national decline in workplace charity campaigns, said Don Sodo, president of America’s Charities.

An America’s Charities study released last month showed declining participation in corporate campaigns, including those dominated by United Way, due to lack of diversity in the charities offered, Sodo said. Corporate efforts to improve workplace participation over the years have resulted in more corporations running their own campaigns and permitting more charities to participate, he said.

The federal government took steps to diversify its campaign in the 1980s with more than 22,000 charities now participating every year. The government “has shown a great deal of leadership to have a very inclusive campaign,” said Sodo.

Attracting younger employees to the campaign is one of the four goals for the National Capital Area CFC this year, said Anthony DeCristofaro, the executive director of the Washington area campaign.

Although numbers at the National Capital Area campaign have been higher than the national average, with participation last year at 47 percent, attracting younger employees to the campaign will help achieve another goal of 50 percent participation.

Because younger employees are “the future of the campaign,” DeCristofaro has been working to ensure they are asked to give. He has assembled a team of young employees to help brainstorm ways to reach the new demographic through gift incentives, such as water bottles.

The Denver CFC is aiming for 100 percent contact with the nearly 34,000 federal workers there, said Scott Shirai, the local CFC director. “The more people you ask, the more that will give to the campaign,” he said. The Denver CFC hopes to encourage contact with employees by offering airline tickets to volunteers who achieve the highest contact rates. Other incentives the Denver campaign intends to offer include discounts at local shops, sporting events and theaters.

Despite declining participation, the increasing amount of average individual donations has kept CFC the largest contributing workplace campaign for many charitable organizations.

CFC accounts for more than half of the workplace campaign donations to America’s Charities members, such as Junior Achievement and Ronald McDonald House. The average overall individual donation to America’s Charities, which is a federation of charities, was $195 last year, compared with CFC’s national average of $215.

While some corporate employees may give larger donations, federal employees are on average more generous in terms of giving greater percentages of their salaries to charitable organizations, said Steve Ristow, executive vice president of Global Impact.

He said federal employees are an important support network for Global Impact’s member charities. Global Impact’s annual reports show that for the last three years CFC has accounted for nearly 60 percent of all workplace donations to its member charities.