At the 2010 Spirit of Caring Celebration, we honored Microsoft with the Innovative Fundraising Award for breaking new ground and exploring creative ways to motivate employees to give to its workplace giving campaign.

The Microsoft Auction Tool
Microsoft IT built an online auction tool to help raise funds for United Way among employees. Over time, the capabilities of the tool have increased dramatically, in part because the tool has migrated to Windows Azure, the company’s new cloud services platform. Using Azure has enabled dramatic enhancements of the user experience, including 3-D graphics and motion effects with the Microsoft tool, Silverlight. In 2009, the Auction raised a record of nearly $500,000 for United Way, including the company match. The success of the auction tool has attracted broad interest from other companies and NGOs, and Microsoft is working to share its innovation with others to assist in their fundraising efforts.

The Microsoft “Give” intranet site
Each year, Microsoft chooses a theme for its employee giving campaign. This year’s theme was “What’s Your Story?” Along with creative designs for T-shirts, ID badges and water bottles, Microsoft made creative use of Silverlight on the employee intranet to easily capture and share personal stories of giving. In addition, the entire site was re-architected using Microsoft SharePoint, making it easier for employees and volunteers to find and share information about charities such as United Way.

Digital Photographers@Microsoft 2009
Microsoft’s Photography Club partnered with the photography book company, Blurb, to produce Photographers@Microsoft 2009, a fine art photography book. Photos from nearly 200 club members were selected. The club decided it wanted to generate a $25 donation to United Way of King County from each book. Microsoft Community Affairs agreed to match that amount, bringing the contribution to $50 a book. To date, nearly 900 books have been sold, generating nearly $45,000 in contributions. In addition, Photography Club members were able to count all their time on the project as volunteer hours. Matched by the company at $17 per hour, this generated another $8,000, making the effort’s grant total well over $50,000.