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Charities gain from green scheme for corporates

by Natasha Elkington | Thomson Reuters Foundation
Thursday, 10 November 2011 11:36 GMT

A new company has developed a simple scheme using social networking, similar to a Facebook group, that gets staff to fund their favourite causes with the money they save their company through eco initiatives

p>LONDON, Nov 10 (AlertNet) - A new company has developed a simple scheme using social networking, similar to a Facebook group, that gets staff to fund their favourite causes with the money they save their company through eco initiatives. 
 
Devised by two marketing professionals in London over two years ago and using an internet-based system, Ecoinomy encourages organisations to motivate employees through a reward system. It saves companies money by reducing waste, costs and carbon dioxide emissions. 
 
Employees help their companies save costs by reducing travel, printing and switching off their electronic devices, for example. Those actions are then calculated on the Ecoinomy metric system into money that has been saved for the company, and this money can then be redirected to charities or causes of employees’ choice. 
 
“We are all about saving, saving and saving. It’s saving the planet, saving money, and it’s saving for good causes,” John Grant, one of the co-founders told AlertNet.  
 
“Our system relies on economic benefits on making those savings so that some of the money saved can be converted to good causes. So it does rely on savings for sure.”
 
In one example, an employee was able to save his company thousands of pounds in one afternoon by setting up a virtual library instead of printing documents on paper as he had done in the past. Printing nine documents in black and white and only one in colour can save 100 pounds, according to Ecoinomy.
 
Companies can decide on the levels of reward, typically 25 percent of the cash saving being donated to employees’ chosen charity or cause. There is also the option to reward employees individually too, at 25 percent of the savings.
 
The system allows staff to fill out claim forms that are as simple as writing a text on a mobile phone. Every employee has their own account that keeps tabs of what they have claimed and they can choose which “Guild” to join (resembling Facebook groups), allowing people to join together and save for the same cause.
 
“The objective is to create an engaged work force as happy people do better jobs,” co-founder Robert Colwell said.
 
“It’s tough out there at the moment and the main thrust of it is that we want to put money into communities and money into local charities that really do struggle.”

(Editing by Rebekah Curtis)

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