As an employer, how do you even begin to customize your grant relief fund for your employees?
Budgeting for this may be overwhelming as you don’t know what to expect. Some companies may think that that a family death is the leading cause of why someone may end up needing financial assistance. Although that is one of many reasons why employees seek assistance, a serious illness or injury is the most common requested grant, followed by a natural disaster.
The percentage of employees who apply for grants and how they help fund the program is substantially determined by the five main factors below:
Is the program broad or narrow?
Does the employer effectively communicate the program to employees?
Are employees encouraged to help fund the program?
When implementing your employee assistance program and setting up the initial funds it may be most beneficial to begin with a narrower set of event and expense criteria. As time goes on, you can re-evaluate, expand and customize your fund parameters.
Employers can make reasonable estimates of application volume for budgeting purposes, even during the initial launch of the program. Once the results of actual activity (including both donations in and grants out) are known, the budget should be recast.
Truly thinking through the criteria for assistance, the types of disasters your fund will assist with, and educating your employees how they can benefit and help others, creates the most beneficial results.
Author:
Doug Stockham
President, Emergency Assistance Foundation
doug@emergencyassistancefdn.org
The Emergency Assistance Foundation, Inc. is a 501c(3) charity created to design and operate multiple employer-sponsored disaster relief and employee hardship funds. These funds allow domestic and international employers and employees to help their coworkers in times of crises.
EAF is a 501c(3) tax-exempt, public, non-profit organization with IRS approval specifically for Employee Hardship and Disaster Relief Funds which can be administered in the United States, Canada and internationally.