According to Giving USA, Americans contribute over $300 billion a year to nonprofit organizations and causes. Of this, about $5 billion is contributed through thousands of workplace giving programs. Today, workplaces have become more decentralized, flexible and remote, which makes it more challenging for companies to conduct workplace giving programs in the traditional sense.

Workplace giving is certainly not new – American Express asked its employees to contribute change to help build the pedestal for the Statue of Liberty in 1885 – and the first community fundraising campaign was in Cleveland in 1913. But workplace really took off when the GE Foundation offered to match employee contributions to their alma maters in 1954.

United Way was the leading beneficiary of this type of workplace giving for well over half a century, but its influence began to wane as more companies professionalized their giving programs and employees became more sophisticated in their choices of nonprofits and causes to contribute to.

Now, innovative approaches are needed to reinvigorate workplace giving, and luckily there are numerous new enterprises designed to do just that.

Read the full article about innovation in workplace giving by Timothy Mclimon at Forbes.