We’re excited because Comcast’s annual United Way Campaign among employees kicks off Monday. I’m personally excited because I have the opportunity to work with coordinators from 14 different offices at Comcast in Washington state. Those coordinators are doing an enormous amount of work to generate fundraising awareness and activities about United Way in offices as far apart as Aberdeen, Bremerton, Bellingham and Spokane.
The activities range from straight-up asking coworkers to pledge to hosting fundraising events. One office is setting up a dunk tank so people can donate for the chance to ‘dunk’ a supervisor. Another office is offering wristbands to people who donate. Several offices are hosting silent gift auctions, where employees can bid to win everything from Seahawks tickets to household items. And all the money raised goes to help United Way. In Spokane, last year the managers dressed up like the cast of “Duck Dynasty” to serve lunch to employees who donated to United Way.
We’ll be sharing photographs of some of this year’s activities. If you track social media, keep an eye out for the hashtag #IGiveBC, which is short for “I give because,” the slogan of the campaign. Employees share their stories and reasons for donating, such as the three employees above. They appeared in an email from the Fife call center coordinator to her coworkers announcing this year’s campaign. We’re very proud that Washington consistently ranks among the highest areas of Comcast for employee participation in the United Way Campaign.
Last year, with $6.5 million pledged nationwide, the company achieved a record of $50 million in donations to United Way. You can learn much more about the company’s commitment to United Way by clicking on this sentence.
I’ll just be honest, this post is a bit of a confession, because I’ve fallen behind in posting news from our office to this blog. Some say I lead the Comcast state United Way Campaign, but that’s silly wording: what I do is help our local coordinators achieve what they want to accomplish. Now that the United Way campaign is actually starting, and local coordinators are executing on great plans, I’m hoping to get back into the swing of things. So if you start to see a flood of posts about Comcast in Washington that might seem a week or two or three old, well, I am very sorry and hope I can help catch everyone up. And I’m also looking forward to sharing posts and photos with the hashtag #IGiveBC because indications are this will be the most lively year yet.
