Employee giving in an age of skepticism.

• Position: Philanthropy

"Creative" accounting practices; bigwigs who duplicitously line their own pockets at the expense of workers; financial mismanagement that leads to reams of bad publicity. If this list sounds like snippets from news stories about corporate scandals a la Enron, think again. It actually refers to public impressions of the charity scandals that have sprung up like dandelions in the past couple of years. The wave of skepticism that now faces nonprofits feels an awful lot like that generated by their for-profit brethren. For any company wishing to institute a workplace giving or volunteering program, what is the solution?

Why not take control of all of your giving activities instead of letting the old opaque "umbrella" charities tell you what to do? According to Craig Wichner, chief executive officer of KindMark, a provider of software solutions and services that facilitates more successful corporate giving programs, "In their heart of hearts, most people want to give to worthwhile causes. But they must first get past the fear that they're being misled or manipulated--a fear that's grown exponentially over the past couple of years. Therefore, the corporation that provides its employees with a way to give to trustworthy nonprofit agencies they care about will reap tremendous benefits in terms of community goodwill and worker morale."

To institute such a program, it's important first to understand how your company values and envisions the delivery of all of its giving programs. Then an online system is created that reflects those values, supports all your charitable programs, and contains a number of nonprofit recipients of your choosing. Once this "giving neighborhood" is set up, employees can visit, access information about each nonprofit and make donations, sign up for volunteer activities, apply for matching grants, etc.

Why should a company institute an online giving system in this age of skepticism? Wichner offers the following four reasons:

Transparency and accountability. One of the reasons why people are so skeptical about giving to big, bureaucratic "umbrella" charities is that the structure of such organizations prevents donors from knowing where their dollars are going An online system allows employees to choose nonprofits with which they feel a personal connection. Furthermore, because of the nature of online giving, it is easy for employees to leek up detailed financial data on specific nonprofits before they make the decision to...