Philanthropy and Skillsoft – The Perfect Pair

Sue Orchanian
edited August 6 in Talent Insights
I am a volunteer and board member for my local animal rescue called Pick Your Paw.  Last Saturday was a very frightening time for our rescue since one of our own, Olive, who has always been a very scared puppy, ran away from her foster home.  We did all that we could to find her by hanging flyers, posting on social media and doing a search throughout the neighborhood where she was last spotted.  This story does have a happy ending when, 24 hours after she ran away, Olive’s foster parents found her eating a bowl of food they left for her outside their back door.  The lesson the rescue learned is to purchase GPS trackers for their dogs so this will not happen again.  Since the cost of purchasing the GPS trackers can be expensive, an idea came to mind.


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Olive’s adventure provided me with the opportunity to think how organizations can help non-profits, while increasing adoption of their learning program.  Since the holidays are approaching, and National Philanthropy Day is November 15th, what better way to give thanks and help non-profits then to get your entire organization involved in the effort and host a contest!

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Here is how it would work.  Hold a contest for the month of November (or any other month) called Giving Back through Learning.  For every course completion earned, the organization would donate $5 (or any amount your organization chooses) to a non-profit or charity.  At the end of the contest, the person who earned the most completions would get to pick the non-profit or charity the donation is going to be made to.
 
Ask a Senior Executive to sponsor your contest and record a video which you can share.  To make this even more exciting, make it a competition between different departments and have a leader board to highlight which department is making the most progress.  For each week of the contest, have the Senior Executive encourage participation by sending a communication out and sharing the leader board stats.

Remember to get your organizations' buy-in before beginning the contest.  To help get you started, here is a communication, called Giving Back through Learning, you can send out to all employees to kick off the contest.  

If you think this is an idea your organization will endorse, please comment.  If you like the idea for a future contest, please comment on that as well.
 
I look forward to hearing about the success of your contest and the donations made as a result of this blog post.

#adoption
#marketing