Study Backs Access to Workplace for Charities
Opening up charitable drives in the workplace to organizations other than United Way increases overall charitable giving and may be the way of the future, a new study said Sunday.
The study, by Deborah Kaplan Polivy of the Institute for Social and Policy Studies at Yale University, appears certain to escalate efforts by a number of charity collection groups that are not members of United Way to break the federation’s near-monopoly on workplace solicitation and payroll deduction.
Another chapter in that battle will be played out Tuesday when the U.S. Supreme Court hears oral arguments in a case pitting the NAACP Legal Defense and Education Fund against Donald J. Devine, head of the Office of Personnel Management, over opening the lucrative federal workplace to non-United Way solicitation.
Polivy’s study looked at six large corporations that allowed their employees to make payroll deduction gifts to non-United Way charities.
“Expansion of payroll deduction options may be the trend in employee giving for the future,” Polivy concluded.
Opening the workplace helped “fledgling federations trying to effect some social change stay alive and healthy,” provided additional funds “to a plethora of nonprofit organizations” and “probably startled United Way into competing more actively for donor contributions,” the study said.
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