Community Shares offers donors chance to diversify their dollar

Bringing businesses and nonprofit organizations together is one of the goals of Greater Cleveland Community Shares, the city’s only workplace giving federation that supports social justice and philanthropic initiatives. For 30 years, the organization has helped generate operating funds for various nonprofit groups working to make positive changes in their communities.
About 45 charitable organizations that address various social issues such as promoting health care, education, home ownership and job training make up the federation. More than 110 Cleveland-area businesses include Community Shares in their annual workplace giving campaigns, providing their employees an easy and effective way of supporting these responsible causes.
Greater Cleveland is one of four Community Shares federations in Ohio and one of 20 in the country. It is the second largest fund of its kind in the U.S.
Making the connection
Greater Cleveland Community Shares works with nonprofits to extend the reach of their fundraising teams by working with the human resource departments of various businesses, government agencies, law firms, accounting firms and schools to help maximize their contributed revenue.
“We conduct their workplace giving campaigns, and we run those in association with other federations, the biggest one being United Way,” says Cynthia Ries, executive director of Greater Cleveland Community Shares. “The workplace decides on how they want to do their campaign and how they want to involve their employees in charitable living.”
Community Shares makes it simple for employees on all different levels to participate in charitable giving. The current campaign season kicked off in September and runs through January or February, depending on the company.
“If someone is of modest means but they want to be charitable, we give them an easy way to make a modest contribution and split it up over 44 organizations,” Ries says. “It is pretty efficient because they only have to write one check or it’s spread out over pay periods whether it’s 26 or 12 depending on the workplace.”
Community Shares makes presentations to employers about the charitable choices offered each year. The federation also brings in speakers and resources to help them make those decisions.
Giving back
Greater Cleveland Community Shares has more than 5,000 donors, recently adding more than 1,000 because of the recovering economy and its offerings. Community Shares has something that interests just about everyone.
“Oftentimes, we promote those campaigns with EarthShare Ohio, United Negro College Fund or health charities depending on the workplace,” Ries says. “We also give donors the option of writing in or choosing any registered 501(c3) nonprofit that they want to donate to that is their particular passionate cause in addition to our 44 member organizations. We want donors to know their money is being used wisely.”
Greater Cleveland Community Shares also provides businesses with other types of assistance.
“Many of our organizations can be useful for employees,” Ries says. “Some of our health organizations and our arts organizations will go back after a presentation and work with a company to help educate their employees.”
For instance, Neighborhood Housing Services of Greater Cleveland helps encourage people to participate in the homeowner experience by offering workshops to employees on how to buy a house and navigate all the different financial systems.
“Connecting those companies and their human relations departments with resources in the nonprofit community is as important as what we do in terms of enabling them to be charitable in their community,” Ries says. “We work with very small businesses with a couple of people, and we work with very large businesses like the Northeast Ohio Regional Sewer District.”
Many of the campaign worksites also invite Community Shares members to come back and participate with their company on a volunteer day or specific workshop.
“One of the things I think Community Shares does well is connect people with things in their community because sometimes businesses don’t know what’s happening,” Ries says. “Some of our members are working in areas that are really critical to how our region is developing but they not might know it.”