Suggested Steps for Organizing a Workplace Campaign

1. Establish a team of people at your workplace who are passionate about the issues and who will help organize the campaign within your organization. Often by simply sending an email to your colleagues, you will find a team of people interested in helping. Be sure to provide the link to the Give a Day website in your email.
2. Provide the name and contact information for the designated contact person to coordinator@giveaday.ca.
3. Develop a communication plan to get more people involved and raise awareness. Visit the Give a Day Resources for posters, brochures, donor post cards, documentary DVDs, campaign ideas and website tools – all available for your use.
4. Set up one or more internal events to tell the story. A coffee/muffin drop-in or a pizza lunch are excellent opportunities to inform people of the campaign and the issues. We will assist you in arranging a special speaker or provide you with a short documentary DVD that passionately sets out the issues. To see what some other workplaces are doing – check out our blog or follow us on Twitter. Please share what you are doing too – be a part of the conversation!
5. Challenge your colleagues to respond by giving one day’s pay (for World AIDS Day, December 1) and designating their donation to either (or both) of our two trusted recipients, Dignitas International and the Stephen Lewis Foundation.
6. Follow up with an email or postcard to all possible contributors. Give instructions about how to donate.
7. Designate members of your firm or office to help collect donations. See the section below on “How to Collect Donations for a Workplace Campaign”. Consider if the same individuals involved in collecting donations for the United Way would play a similar role for this campaign. Donations can also be made directly on-line, but it is helpful if you also keep an internal tally.
8. Get your most ambitious supporters to chat with their peers and encourage participation with December 1, World AIDS Day, as a deadline.
9. Consider setting up an information desk in your reception area or staff lounge on November 30. Advertise this location as a resource site and a place where donations may be collected in advance of World AIDS Day.
10. Tally and celebrate! Total your donations and let us know how you did at director@giveaday.ca then celebrate your participation in “Give a Day to World AIDS”! We would love to see photos of your celebration if you would like to share them, so that we can post them on our website or Facebook page.

How To Collect Donations in a Workplace Campaign

One of the beauties of Give a Day to World AIDS is its simplicity! The concept is: give one day’s income on World AIDS Day to an organization that will use the money well in the fight against AIDS. Exactly how you do that may vary from place to place. Some businesses may be able to offer a payroll deduction.

Here are a couple of ideas that work well:

• Designate one or two people at your workplace to collect and direct donations.
• Encourage colleagues to estimate for themselves approximately what one day’s income would be. Challenge them to donate this amount to make a difference in the AIDS pandemic. Donations to recipient organizations may be made in one of two ways. Use the information below to inform your colleagues about how you would like their donation to be made.

1. Donation by cheque:

• make your cheque payable to Dignitas International or the Stephen Lewis Foundation.
• be sure to include the address to which you’d like your receipt to be sent
• place the cheque in an envelope which can be given to the workplace coordinator.
• you may choose to set up a booth in your entrance lobby or staff lounge on December 1 as a place where donations may be collected on World AIDS Day.
• colleagues may choose to mail a donation directly to the organization with a note explaining that it is part of the Give a Day campaign at your workplace.

The addresses are as follows:

2. Donation online:

Offer your colleagues the opportunity to make a credit card donation online.

Find out more about The Stephen Lewis Foundation
Direct link to donate

Find out more about Dignitas International
Direct link to donate

Please indicate your workplace name in the drop down menus. Individual donations will remain anonymous, but this will allow us to tally the total amount raised each year through various Give a Day initiatives.