Donors Have Rights Too
February 22, 2018
How many donations does a Fund need prior to accepting applications?
May 12, 2018April 14, 2018
As an organization, how do you even begin to customize a relief fund for your team members? Budgeting for this may be overwhelming as you don’t know what to expect. Some companies may think that that a family death is the leading cause of why someone may end up needing financial assistance. Although that is one of many reasons why team members seek assistance, a serious illness or injury is the most common requested grant, followed by a natural disaster.
The percentage of team members who apply for grants and how they help fund the program is substantially determined by the five main factors below:
- Is the program broad or narrow?
- Does it include many common types of events and expenses, or
- Is it narrowed to only include a few events, such as natural disasters and related expenses?
- Does the organization effectively communicate the program to team members?
- How well do team members understand the benefit?
- Are team members provided frequent feedback of success stories?
- Are team members encouraged to help fund the program?
- Do communications about the program encourage donations to assist fellow team members, or
- Do they only promote opportunities to receive a grant when an team member is impacted by an event?
- The team member demographics and geographical dispersion.
- Did a large-scale disaster event occur affecting many team members in the area?
When implementing a disaster & hardship relief program and setting up the initial funds it may be most beneficial to begin with a narrower set of event and expense criteria. As time goes on, you can re-evaluate, expand and customize your fund parameters.
Organizations can make reasonable estimates of application volume for budgeting purposes, even during the initial launch of the program. Once the results of actual activity (including both donations in and grants out) are known, the budget should be recast.
Truly thinking through the criteria for assistance, the types of disasters your fund will assist with, and educating team members how they can benefit and help others, creates the most beneficial results.
