It’s no secret that the energy sector is uniquely positioned within the social good landscape as it faces increasing societal pressure due to its significant environmental footprint. And with rising global challenges like climate change, pollution, and deforestation, corporate giving programs are more than just good business. As a result, leading energy companies have made strides to implement robust corporate social responsibility (CSR) programs to address top-of-mind issues and weave philanthropy into the fiber of their corporate purpose.
At CyberGrants, our energy-based customers align their workplace-giving strategy with their company’s objectives, mission, and values to ensure their CSR strategy is a part of the end-to-end employee experience and not an afterthought. We help our energy customers execute—and measure the efficacy of—foundation grantmaking, disaster relief, and employee giving and volunteering programs. In this article, we’ll demonstrate through real-life examples from Impact Makers like you how CyberGrants can help your energy company implement and execute meaningful CSR programs.
Unlock a Streamlined Grantmaking Process
For most CSR leaders, processing grants is often complex, tedious, and time-consuming. With manual workflows and multiple layers of approval criteria, your processes are likely error-prone. And without a single source of truth, it can be difficult to measure and report on your organization’s impact. Leading energy companies invest in CSR software to streamline the grantmaking process and demonstrate community impact through deep reporting capabilities. As a result, CSR leaders can focus more on delivering meaningful services to the causes that matter most. Take a closer look at how CyberGrants can help:
Workflow Automation: By automating the entire grantmaking lifecycle—from pre-qualification to results tracking—you’ll be able to process more grants in less time. You’ll also be able to put funds into the hands of grantees and nonprofits faster.
Payment Processing: Leverage the CyberGrants Disbursements Solution (CGDS), a donor-advised fund (DAF), which provides your organization tax benefits while taking the payments processing burden off your accounts payable staff.
Ensure Compliance and Mitigate Risk: CyberGrants works with the Internal Revenue Service (IRS), international watchlists, and other global databases to guarantee that nonprofits meet the charitable standards of our energy customers.
For even more ways that CyberGrants can simplify the grantmaking process so your business can focus more resources on the causes that matter most, download our latest eBook, Energizing Philanthropy.
Customer Spotlight: Xcel Energy
The Xcel Energy Foundation donates millions of dollars each year to support needs unique to communities across its eight-state footprint. In 2022, the Foundation launched a grant program framework, Energizing the Future, which lays the groundwork for strong community impact, is aligned with business priorities, and reinforces Xcel Energy’s continued commitment to diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI).
In 2022, through its focus area programs and investment in CyberGrants’ grantmaking technology, the Xcel Energy Foundation contributed $4.4 million to 426 nonprofits working to create strong, vibrant, and inclusive communities.
Deliver More Dollars to the Point of Need
Across the globe, devastating, heart-wrenching disasters seem to endlessly alternate in headlines. Whether you and your community are facing a local crisis, or you’re inclined to respond to urgent needs at the international level, the need for support is constant and you need not look further than your employees and the community for those willing to take action. While you can’t always predict when or where the next crisis will hit, you can ensure you have the programs and technology in place to execute a scalable and sustainable response. CSR software offers a powerful opportunity for companies to band together, respond to urgent needs, and drive social change. Here are a few ways the CyberGrants platform enables rapid disaster relief:
Partner Nonprofits: When a crisis hits, feature nonprofit partners on your CSR platform that need support, donations, or supplies. The increased visibility is sure to incentivize participation from your workforce!
Recurring Giving: Enable automatic, recurring giving for your employees. While disasters call our attention to immediate needs, recovery efforts are often needed for years—long after initial contributions have been exhausted.
Employee Assistance Programs: It can be easy to forget that an emerging crisis may affect your very own. Establishing an Employee Assistance Program (EAP) allows your employees to request assistance in a time of need.
The flexibility of the CyberGrants platform allows you to tailor your program to the specific needs of affected communities. As a result, your employees can participate with the knowledge that their efforts are truly making a difference.
Customer Spotlight: Alliant Energy
Alliant Energy’s purpose is to serve customers and build stronger communities. Most days, that means staying focused on innovative solutions to bring clean, renewable energy to homes, schools, and businesses. In 2019, when a derecho—a windstorm—swept through Iowa, the company and its foundation found themselves focused on something much more basic: getting the lights back on. By the time the storm passed, more than 256,000 homes were without electricity. But even as power became available, some homes were too damaged to connect back to the grid. Those homeowners needed electrician repairs first—a cost of up to $1,500.
The Alliant Energy Foundation created Project ReConnect to help low-income customers afford these repairs. The foundation invited Alliant Energy employees, board members, and even retirees to donate. Using the CyberGrants system, they raised $105,000 in just a few weeks. The Alliant Energy Foundation matched Project ReConnect gifts two-to-one, bringing the total impact to $315,000—enough to make repairs for everyone who sought assistance, as well as help with other critical recovery efforts.
Drive Deeper Engagement with Employee Programs
When it comes to employee giving, it’s not enough to offer programming that aligns with your business objectives or corporate purpose. If you want to successfully engage your workforce, it's critical to meet them where they are with programs that offer flexible ways to participate, align with your employees’ passions, and are accessible to multiple types of workers.
With the CyberGrants platform, not only can you unify all of your employee-giving and volunteering programs, but you can also enable multiple types of participation to meet the varying needs of your workforce. And when all of your programs exist within a single platform, you can easily manage multiple initiatives while accessing a holistic view of your company’s impact through real-time updates and data visualizations. See how CyberGrants can unite your giving programs and drive employee participation:
Promote Opportunities: Quickly and easily add organizations that have volunteering or giving opportunities for your employees. Highlight featured events and ensure that people have all the details at their fingertips.
Create Viral Engagement: Drive immediate increases in buy-in, participation, and contribution by harnessing powerful, peer-driven capabilities such as individual dashboards, gamification, and activity feeds.
Rules-Based Approvals: When it comes to matching gifts, the review and approval process can be tedious. Remove complexities, reduce administrative burden, and eliminate the back-and-forth by automating approvals using set guidelines.
But this is only the tip of the iceberg! For even more ways that CyberGrants can enable greater employee engagement and reduce administrative burden, download our recent eBook tailor-made for energy companies like yours.
Customer Spotlight: Schneider Electric Foundation
To drive awareness and increase employee engagement from day one, the Schneider Electric Foundation has implemented a New Hire program. New employees are given $25 to donate to the charity of their choosing and are given 20 paid volunteer hours to spend working with organizations they care about. The foundation’s focus on giving back to the communities they serve and encouraging its employees to do the same has become an essential part of the employee experience. New hire participation has increased by over 10% and is only expected to grow year after year, fueling an employee population that is aware and engaged in Schneider Electric Foundation’s corporate giving programs.
Ready to Join the Ranks of Leading Energy Companies?
In our latest eBook, Energizing Philanthropy, we dig deeper into how energy companies are uniquely positioned within the social good landscape and how CSR technology can unleash greater impact by addressing top-of-mind causes that matter most to your employees, customers, and communities.
In this guide, we’ll discuss:
- How to measure and report impact on your grantmaking, employee giving, and volunteer programs.
- How to create grassroots-level support among your employees and drive deeper engagement.
- How CyberGrants’ grants management solution can automate and simplify the entire grants lifecycle.
- How to align programs with your corporate objectives, mission, and values.
- How to quickly mobilize your resources and rally your workforce when emerging needs arise.
- How CyberGrants’ energy-based customers are already harnessing the power of CSR technology.
