Awards

This award is for the campaign that demonstrates innovation linked to success in the use of Payroll Giving.

Payroll giving, where people make tax-free charitable donations direct from their pay, can take many forms. The winners this year are as innovative as can be. The staff of one national company pledged both to offset their personal carbon emissions and to support their named charity by planting trees and looking at ways of reducing their carbon footprint. They use a carbon offset payroll-giving product entitled ‘Owl’ – but known as Ollie –to calculate their annual carbon footprint. Ollie collates all information needed to complete the payroll-giving form and set up a monthly donation.

A pilot study recruited 130 donors, delivering an annual charity donation of £8,000. Since January this year the scheme has been promoted group-wide; it will take 11 months for all sites and a huge workforce to be visited and enrolled. The idea goes beyond fund-raising. Says the company’s head of sustainability, “What we’re doing is spreading the word about a sustainable environment, not just giving people a way to offset.”