Nothing feels better than helping others. After seeing a lot of non-profit organizations sign up for Gusto (formerly ZenPayroll) and recognizing how passionate our teammates are about various causes, we wanted to do something to give back. That’s why we built a unique feature called Gusto Giving, which allows employees to donate to their favorite charities directly from their paychecks. So far, we’ve already seen tens of thousands of dollars donated to over 130 different charities!

Just in time for the holiday season, today we’re proud to introduce employer charity matching for Gusto Giving. Now you’ll be able to support causes your employees care about by automatically matching their charitable donations. Your contributions are 100% tax deductible and automatically tracked.

You might wonder why a payroll provider would build a feature like Gusto Giving. Here are a few different perspectives:

For small businesses

Google and other big companies are known for their generous matching programs. However, they usually set up elaborate in-house processes or use separate corporate giving platforms. For the first time, small businesses can offer workplace giving as a perk because it’s already built into payroll. As Quentin Hardy at the New York Times pointed out earlier this year, Gusto loves helping the underdogs compete.

Alison Paris is co-founder of Parisleaf, a creative studio in Gainesville, Florida. She sees Gusto Giving as an opportunity to become closer with her team members, so she’s matching donations up to $100 per employee each year:

“I think Gusto’s Employer Matching feature is genius. My husband and I donate a lot to different charities. Now we also have another way to develop deep, meaningful connections with our employees. What you believe really shows in your actions, and we want to show our employees how much we care and support them as individuals in their personal lives.”

For non-profit organizations

This summer’s popular Ice Bucket Challenge raised over $100 million for the ALS Association this year, a 3,500% increase from the $2.8 million that the organization raised during the same time last year. We think it’s great to bring awareness to these causes. That’s why we hope more organizations can benefit from Gusto Giving, which makes recurring donations easy and enables non-profit organizations to get the support they need throughout the year.

For employees

Giving regularly has never been easier. We handle the payroll deductions, donation processing, and W-2 reporting automatically. All for free, and with lots of love.

It’s unfortunate that payroll is largely seen as transactional, because it’s actually all about a human relationship. Here at Gusto, we’re committed to building a product that not only empowers both employers and employees, but also strengthens relationships between them.

Tomer London Tomer is the co-founder and Chief Product Officer of Gusto. He is responsible for the development and execution of the product vision — reimagining how modern payroll, benefits, and compliance should operate.
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