Engage and inspire your employees in Pay It Forward Day events. Pay It Forward is about giving to someone else and making a positive difference by inspiring and engaging others. There are many ways that your workplace can get involved in Pay it Forward initiatives.

Enable employees to help support a ‘charity of choice’ by offering time off for participation, and encourage participation with posters, incentives and team events, including:

• Have a departmental challenge whereby each department competes with each other to make a positive contribution to the community, and donate funds raised to favourite workplace charities
• Celebrate staff appreciation by providing a healthy lunch or snack (like apples!)
• Provide a mental health break with a short 10-minute breathing/yoga class
• Host a bake sale, sending proceeds to a charity of choice
• Go ‘green’ and host a day to collect things like light-bulbs, old cellphones, batteries, etc.
• Hold a clothing/food drive and donate to a local charity
• Set up a book exchange in a centralized location and encourage employees to bring in books to share, and others to help themselves for free

Encourage individual acts of kindness – Create Posters, Bingo cards or Check off lists with incentives to encourage staff participation. Sample activities include: 

• Buy a coffee/tea for someone
• Give “Thank You” and “Values” cards to co-workers to show their appreciation
• Mentor someone (on professional or personal level)
• Simple: Smile, hold the door or elevator for someone
• Replace what you’ve used/is empty: i.e. the printer paper, fresh pot of coffee, etc.
• Invite someone new to lunch

Download tools and resources to support activities.