CFC Info Center

The use of online pledging in the Combined Federal Campaign will continue to expand this year.

The Office of Personnel Management said Oct. 9 that 43 of the more than 300 campaigns this year will allow employees to use Employee Express, the government’s electronic payroll and personnel system, to pledge a portion of each paycheck to their preferred charities. That’s up from 32 campaigns last year, and far more than the seven campaigns using the system in 2007.

And when another program developed by a Minnesota company called CFC Nexus is factored in, 56 local campaigns nationwide will be able to offer agencies in their areas the option of pledging online.

“We’re expanding technology to make giving as easy as possible,” CFC Director Mark Lambert said. “More and more local campaigns are providing online giving options to federal employees.”

CFC officials said Employee Express and CFC Nexus allow employees to donate easier and faster than with paper-based pledge cards. Under the online pledging |system, participants choose the charities they wish to donate to from an online catalog, then select how much they want to give, |and submit their donations electronically. Employee Express automatically deducts the donation amount from an employee’s paycheck.

CFC Nexus, which is not directly linked to payroll systems, requires staffers in an agency’s payroll office to manually enter employees’ charitable deductions. The programs also prevent errors by immediately validating charity codes and refusing to accept incorrect ones, and they speed up processing by cutting down on data entry.

And campaign officials don’t have to walk around the offices to physically pick up donor cards, which comes in handy for offices that have large numbers of employees who telework or are otherwise frequently out of the office. OPM said that because Employee Express and other online donation systems cut down on paper and printing and save on other administrative costs, more donated money can go to charity instead of bankrolling the campaigns.

OPM said it has not yet collected enough data to study how much electronic giving saves. Last year, 7,389 donors used Employee Express to donate nearly $4.7 million. Another 28,321 donors used CFC Nexus and a hybrid system combining Employee Express and the CFC National Capital Area’s own online system to donate nearly $13.5 million. The total number of online donors in 2008, 35,710, represented a 68 percent increase over the previous year. And the $18.2 million pledged online in 2008 represented a 73 percent increase over 2007.

Lambert said online donations represented nearly 6.6 percent |of the $276 |million raised in 2008, up from 3.8 percent in 2007.

“It’s a small part of the total amount contributed, but it’s a great increase,” Lambert said. “As campaigns expand online giving options, we’ll see that become the significant way donors contribute to the CFC.”

OPM said it’s happy with the rate campaigns are adopting online pledging, and expects that eventually all donations will be made through Employee Express or some other electronic system.

Elise Castelli contributed to this report.