Recently, the president of the Give Back Foundation, Jeanan Yasiri-Moe, penned an Op Ed piece for the Federal Times. The Federal Times is a source of information for senior U.S. government managers on trends and issues facing them in their job performance and career. Jeanan’s article (Looking Forward to Giving Back Again) dealt with the upcoming Combined Federal Campaign (CFC). As my regular readers will recall, the Give Back Foundation selected TASC to be the service provider for the CFC.
As the new campaign started on September 10, federal employees once again will have the opportunity to sign up and give back to their favorite charities through the CFC—a wonderful program begun more than five decades ago and with TASC’s help, recently revolutionized through a single nationwide online giving portal.
Needless to say, TASC and the Give Back Foundation are very excited about the upcoming campaign. After delivering the new platform on time, on budget, and with all the required sign-offs from the OPM, we’re more than ready to deploy Version 2.0 in the 2018 CFC.
While we were pleased with the 2017 campaign, we are hoping for better returns in 2018. In the 2017 campaign year, federal employees, contractors, and retirees pledged charitable contributions of more than $100 million, an average of $600 per donor. And only 409 calls regarding “charity lookups” came into TASC’s CFC dedicated call center, a ratio of less than one-quarter of one percent.
But what moved me the most was some of the feedback we received from the federal employees and donors who used the system. As Jeanan noted in her article, one member of the military told us the new online system was a “huge improvement over the old system.” He specifically appreciated the improvements in the search function that the new system offered. Overall, he believed it reduced his time to sign up from an hour and a half to only five minutes.
Feedback from several of the charities was equally as supportive. “Thank you for the online form. I was prepared for this form to be difficult and time-consuming. However, my processing time in 2018 was reduced from three hours in previous years to 15 minutes,” said one.
“I use a number of online application systems, and I found this one to be one of the most straight-forward, user-friendly systems I’ve come across. Thank you,” added another.
We understand that last year represented a huge change for the federal employees and retirees. I strongly believe that as more federal employees get used to the new system and move through the change curve, we can expect the number and amount of online donations to rise further in the 2018 fall campaign.
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