CFC Info Center

The poor economy did not seem to hurt the Combined Federal Campaign last year.

For the fourth year running, feds donated more to the charities in 2008 than they did the previous year. That’s the good news.

The bad news: For the fourth year in a row, the percentage of employees participating dropped. The decline is directly tied to the retirement of longtime employees, who are dedicated CFC contributors, without an increase in participation from younger employees, said Mark Lambert, director of the CFC operations office at the Office of Personnel Management.

“We see our biggest area for improvement in terms of participation as being the newly hired, who tend to be younger donors,” Lambert told Federal Times.

“We need to reach out more.” David Wycinsky, a spokesman for the federal employee group Young Government Leaders, agreed.

“There is a general lack of awareness [about CFC],” Wycinsky said. It takes time for young employees to realize that CFC is an annual event and that they can give to the campaign through a payroll deduction, rather than a lump sum, he said.

Because younger government employees are paid less and are saddled with student debt, “there isn’t as much disposable income,” Wycinsky said.

In addition, younger employees demand more from charities than their veteran co-workers. “They want more transparency. They want to take a more active role than writing a check,” he said.

Charities and campaigns should tap social media tools — such as Facebook, YouTube and Twitter — to show younger feds how their CFC dollars are put to work, Wycinsky said. Communicating to donors in forms younger employees recognize will raise awareness, he said. Charities can also use the social networks to encourage another form of donation: time.

“Younger folks have more time to give than they can give money because they don’t have kids or aren’t taking care of aging parents,” Wycinsky said.

A donation of time now could result in a donation of money in the future, he said. Lambert said local CFC campaigns can use the same strategy to engage young employees. Every office has a key employee to coordinate events and collect pledge cards.

While a young employee may not have the financial means to give to the CFC today, CFC organizers can build a relationship with a young fed by getting that employee involved through the donation of time. That in turn will encourage the employee to give monetarily down the road, Lambert said.

When young feds are able to give financially, they can do so in a manner they’re comfortable with, including donating online or using a credit card, Lambert said. Many campaigns now offer contributors the option of pledging on the Web, rather than filling out a paper form.

OPM has also allowed some campaigns to pilot a program that lets employees charge their donations, he said. OPM agreed to the pilots after hearing from local offices that younger workers wanted to charge their gifts to earn credit-card reward points.

The National Capital Area CFC is tapping everything from OPM’s online tools to social media to reach out to younger federal employees, said Wendy Beach, communications director for Global Impact, which oversees CFC’s National Capital Area campaign.