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The days after Thanksgiving are packed with a variety of nicknames: Black Friday, Small Business Saturday, Cyber Monday and Giving Tuesday, for example. And while the Tuesday after Thanksgiving is known as the day to contribute to your favorite charity, some workplaces are incentivizing their workers to donate year-round.
Workplace giving programs are bouncing back, and right on time. As CEOs cut back on DEI and tell young workers to leave their politics at home, charitable giving, with an employer match, has emerged as a way for employees to bring their own values to work.
Take platforms like Benevity, which facilitates giving as a company benefit, especially when a match is involved. Users can select to have automatic paycheck donations every pay cycle or put them in a giving account with Benevity, which employees can then use to donate at any time. (You can also use cash or credit card to donate through Benevity).
The platform has appealed to younger workers, who report feeling the most stuck and unengaged at work, by allowing them to donate to causes they care about. According to a sample of 62 companies that provide demographic information to Benevity, these workers’ donations are heavily tied to the news cycle. Employees under 30 are donating to more disaster-relief organizations (particularly those working in Gaza) compared to their older counterparts.
Giving overall has increased in the last year. U.S. charities received about $557 billion in donations in 2023, according to Giving USA’s annual tally. Through Benevity alone, donations grew 14% to $3.2 billion in 2023, with the company expecting double-digit growth again this year.
Still, there is more room to grow. By some estimates, between $4 and $7 billion of matching dollars go unclaimed every year, according to Double Your Donation, which maintains a database of employers’ match programs for its clients (who are charities). It’s definitely worth taking a look at your own benefit policies. You can read the rest of my report here.
Happy reading, and have a lovely week!
WORK SMARTER
Practical insights and advice from Forbes staff and contributors to help you succeed in your job, accelerate your career and lead smarter
It’s performance-review season! First, write a list of your proudest accomplishments, and then take a look at how to make your performance review work for you.
Using ChatGPT? Here are seven prompts to slash your workload in half.
Make sure to prepare for these 25 questions about your communication skills in your next job interview.
DEEP DIVE: Meet the Under 30 Listers Who Climbed the Corporate Ladder
Forbes released its annual 30 Under 30 list on Tuesday, highlighting over 600 founders, entrepreneurs, content creators and leaders that represent some of the biggest names across 30 industries. While 69% of the listers started their own company to tackle everything from workplace use of AI to validating online identities, a healthy share have climbed the corporate ladder.
Just take a look at our Venture Capital list, where nearly all 30 honorees are either investors, principals or even partners at some of the country’s most renowned firms. But that doesn’t mean that these listmakers aren’t creating and leading projects on their own. Michelle Aguinis, 29, leads strategy and operations for Menlo Labs, a startup studio inside of Menlo Ventures. She’s helped launch eight companies, including Squint.ai, a cloud cost-optimization platform. And at Bain Capital Ventures, partner Rak Garg, 28, launched BCV Labs, an AI-focused accelerator behind six startups including Contextual AI, which provides tools for improving the use of large language models, and Prophet Security, building AI tools for security operations.
The games and finance categories were the next lists with the most non-founder titles, with 13 and 11 listers respectively. (We excluded creative titles, content creators and heavily academic roles to focus on those working in corporate America). Titles for such listmakers ranged from vice president and heads of departments to brand, operation and research managers, as well as agents and directors.
Standout leaders within other organizations also made it onto some of our most creative lists. Lauren Marker, a 29-year-old honoree on the 2025 music list, is the youngest-ever vice president at Wasserman Music, one of the leading global agencies managing booking, touring and partnerships. Over on the marketing and advertising side, Tobi Gbile, 28, is leading strategic partnerships at Gap as a senior manager of collaborations. You can thank her for the Gen Z-loved Gap x Cult Gaia collaboration.
And alongside the most viral content creators, Parker Butler, director of the KamalaHQ account for the vice president’s recent presidential campaign, made our social media list.
You can check out the rest of the 30 Under 30 lists here.
TOUCH BASE
News from the world of work
Coders, are you worried AI will replace your job? For our latest magazine cover, Forbes’ Rashi Shrivastava and Richard Nieva wrote about Cognition, the venture-backed startup creating an AI tool that’s meant to take the grunt work out of coding. While Cognition’s founders say the tool could act as an “army of junior engineers,” its users (and competitors) are not sure the technology is there yet.
Who exactly are the folks attracted to billionaire Elon Musk’s DOGE? Forbes’ Alex Konrad spoke to some of the young hopefuls—coders, tech CEOs and founders alike—who are applying to work at the so-called Department of Government Efficiency.
CEOs are leaving. Intel CEO Pat Gelsinger announced Sunday he would be retiring and departing the firm immediately as the company struggled against its competitors. Over in the automotive industry, Stellantis CEO Carlos Tavares also announced abruptly on Sunday he would be resigning, effective immediately. The maker behind Jeep, Rams and Chryslers has endured a sales slump this year, and faced criticism and a vote to strike from the United Auto Workers Union over its failure to deliver on the guarantees made in the last year.
Not all young millionaire founders are the VC-backed stars of this year’s 30 Under 30 list. Some, like Nick Huber, are tapping into the practical and sometimes “dirty” jobs of owning and operating moving and storage facilities. Forbes’ Brandon Kochkodin reports on how the 35-year-old is making his AI-proof small-business fortune.
President Joe Biden announced Tuesday he is seeking to end the “subminimum wage” for workers with disabilities, Bloomberg reports. Federal law currently allows employers to pay workers with disabilities a “special” minimum wage below $7.25 an hour on the grounds that their disabilities impair their productivity. The rule, whose fate lies in the Trump Administration, comes at a time where research shows that one in three neurodivergent workers fear they will be fired.
NUMBER TO NOTE
42,000
That’s the number of federal Social Security Administration workers, represented by the American Federation of Government Employees union, that will continue to have work-from-home policies available until at least 2029, thanks to a new contract, according to Bloomberg.
VIDEO
How To Collaborate At All Levels Of Corporate America
QUIZ
A federal judge in Delaware struck down a massive pay package––valued at $50 billion in stock options––for what billionaire CEO?
A. Jeff Bezos
B. Warren Buffett
C. Elon Musk
D. None, the pay package was approved
Check if you got it right here.