DRW’s Giving Challenge Sets Records: A Model for Workplace Giving

The real-time dashboards and live leaderboards are truly what allows us to run the Giving Challenge. Totals jumped minute by minute. It was an adrenaline rush. The Giving Challenge became a topic of conversation firm-wide.

DRW is a global trading firm with a long history of giving back. The firm has had a philanthropic presence since 2004, with deep roots in Chicago and a growing global footprint.

Each year, DRW brings that commitment to life through its annual Giving Challenge—a company-wide workplace giving campaign that invites employees to support the causes they care about, backed by generous matching gifts.

In 2024, DRW’s Giving Challenge marked both a record-breaking year and the 20th anniversary of the DRW Foundation. You can read that story here.

This case study explores the next chapter—the 2025 Giving Challenge. We spoke with Monica Grant-Cohen, Director of Community Investment at DRW, and Liesl Block, Community Investment Specialist, to understand how they raised the bar even higher in 2025.

The result is a near-perfect workplace giving campaign other companies can learn from.

Challenges: Scaling Up Without Losing Momentum

Setting a bold new fundraising goal—grounded in data

After raising $634,400 against a $500,000 goal in 2024, expectations for 2025 were sky high.

To set a realistic goal, the team used their data in Percent Pledge.

We now have Giving Challenge data from multiple years in Percent Pledge, so we were able to compare the data. I wanted to set an ambitious goal, but I also wanted to be realistic.
_{Monica Grant-Cohen, Director of Community Investment}

With all data centralized in one global CSR platform, DRW could analyze trends and make a data-driven decision on the right new goal.

The result: a $750,000 goal. The largest ever.

Taking a calculated risk on new teams and competitions

In 2023 and 2024, DRW organized teams by geography. Each office had its own User Group within Percent Pledge. Participation was strong.

But, preparing for 2025, they noticed a pattern: smaller offices topped the leaderboard. With fewer people, hitting participation targets was easier. Nothing was broken, but there was room to improve.

The four teams that won last year were all very small offices. We thought, if we approach this differently with our largest markets, will we actually increase participation?
_{Monica Grant-Cohen, Director of Community Investment}

For 2025, DRW decided to take a risk: redesign the competition, even though the old model had worked.

Instead of location-based teams, they created randomized teams led by influential captains. They used Workday and Percent Pledge data to identify employees who could influence across markets and had a strong history of engagement.

It was a meaningful shift with no guarantee of success. But DRW unlocked higher engagement and set new records.

Here’s how DRW pulled it off together with Percent Pledge.

Solutions: Inside a Perfect Workplace Giving Campaign

What made the 2025 Giving Challenge special wasn’t one feature or tactic. It was how many intentional steps came together—each supported by Percent Pledge’s CSR software.

Step 1: Start with historical data

DRW began by analyzing years of giving data inside Percent Pledge. Because everything was centralized—donations, matches, volunteers, participation—the team could easily break down trends and pressure-test their assumptions.

That data didn’t just inform the goal. It shaped every decision that followed.

Step 2: Activate Community Champions

Between the 2024 and 2025 Giving Challenges, DRW expanded its Community Champions program. Champions helped employees understand how DRW supports giving and volunteering year-round.

One key addition was new-hire coffee chats, where employees learned how to use Percent Pledge a few months after joining. By the time the Giving Challenge launched, awareness was already high.

This showed up in data too. Awareness of community investment programs had the largest year-over-year increase on the employee engagement survey.

For the Giving Challenge, that foundation mattered:

By the end of the first week, we were almost at where we ended last year.
_{Liesl Block, Community Investment Specialist}

Step 3: Build smarter teams with the right captains

One of the most important building blocks of DRW’s Giving Challenge was how they grouped employees.

DRW identified influential employees who had shown strong past participation and cared deeply about community investment. These employees became team captains.

DRW then used Percent Pledge’s User Groups feature to create balanced teams mixing offices, roles, and regions.

User Groups give us complete control and creative freedom in how build teams and segment employees.
_{Monica Grant-Cohen, Director of Community Investment}

Thoughtful groupings, friendly competition, and internal influencers drive employee engagement.

Step 4: Create connection with multiple communication channels

DRW knew emails alone wouldn’t work for a global competition and signature initiative.

In 2025, they met employees where they were.

Each team had a Slack channel led by a captain. Captains shared updates, celebrated progress, and highlighted causes. These channels drove connection and engagement.

People were sharing different charities they care about, and then we’d see folks donating to those causes immediately after in the real-time reporting.
_{Liesl Block, Community Investment Specialist}

Emails provided structure and reminders. Slack channels made the challenge a live conversation. Together, they drove firm-wide communication.

Step 5: Give employees ready-made options with custom Cause Portfolios

A major participation driver was team “Captain Cause Portfolios”.

Each captain created a Cause Portfolio of vetted, top-rated charities. Employees could support multiple causes with one donation, automatically split evenly across organizations.

For employees without a favorite charity or time to search millions of nonprofits, Cause Portfolios removed a barrier. They made giving easy, fast, and trusted.

Everyone could see the causes that were important to their team captain and support them. It was a really easy way for employees to participate.
_{Liesl Block, Community Investment Specialist}

“Captain Cause Portfolios” quickly became one of the most popular ways to participate.

They were our most popular Cause Portfolios behind the main DRW Cares Portfolio.
_{Liesl Block, Community Investment Specialist}

This inventive use of Percent Pledge Cause Portfolios drove engagement across the firm.

Step 6: Drive energy and friendly competition with live leaderboards

Percent Pledge’s live dashboards and leaderboards became the heartbeat of the campaign.

The real-time dashboards and live leaderboards are truly what allows us to run the Giving Challenge.
_{Monica Grant-Cohen, Director of Community Investment}

Employees weren’t just donating—they were checking progress, refreshing totals, and tracking their team’s position in real time. Visibility drove excitement, and excitement drove donations.

Day one, we were refreshing probably every 15 minutes. Total dollars raised jumped minute by minute. It was an adrenaline rush.
_{Liesl Block, Community Investment Specialist}

Grant-Cohen added:

So many more people were checking the live leaderboards this year. It became a topic of conversation firm-wide. Captains used the leaderboards to drive excitment and competiion.
_{Monica Grant-Cohen, Director of Community Investment}

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Step 7: Make it incredibly easy for employees to participate

Easy participation drives higher engagement.

Percent Pledge made it simple to donate, volunteer, upload receipts, and use Cause Credits. The result: 97% of employees who signed into the platform, donated.

Employees even became comfortable enough to help each other in Slack channels:

Employees began answering questions about how to use Percent Pledge before we could even get to them. Someone would ask, 'Can I upload a receipt to get matched?' and someone else would reply, 'Yes, it's two clicks. Here's how.'
_{Liesl Block, Community Investment Specialist}

Step 8: Add fun prizes using Cause Credits and involve ERGs

To layer in even more fun, DRW used Cause Credits for trivia and prizes. Several ERGs took it a step further, using their own budgets to fund Giving Challenge incentives—nearly $18,000 in total.

It was employee-led energy at its best.

Cause Credits allow us to fully embed community investment into the culture at DRW.
_{Monica Grant-Cohen, Director of Community Investment}

Step 9: Let the technology handle the hard stuff

Behind it all, Percent Pledge handled what employees never saw: processing donations, matching donations, Cause Credits, and payments to 1,000+ nonprofits around the world.

Removing that heavy administrative burden makes a huge difference for DRW’s small team.

The fact that we're not processing gifts to 1,100+ nonprofits reduces so much lift for our team. It lets us focus on growing the Giving Challenge instead of reactively managing it.
_{Monica Grant-Cohen, Director of Community Investment}

Step 10: Remember—find what motivates your people

As Grant-Cohen puts it, one of the biggest lessons from DRW’s Giving Challenge is simple: know your employees.

Competition works really well at a trading firm—but it might not everywhere. The sweet spot is understanding what motivates your employees.
_{Monica Grant-Cohen, Director of Community Investment}

For DRW, friendly competition, live leaderboards, and low-cost, high-impact incentives worked because they matched the firm’s culture.

The takeaway isn’t to copy DRW’s incentives exactly. The real lesson is to start with your data, listen to your people, and design a workplace giving campaign that fits your culture.

The Results: Records Broken and Culture Strengthened

By the end of the challenge, the results were clear:

• $1,543,802 raised (more than 2x the $750K goal, up 143% YoY)
• 1,067 employees participated (up 37% YoY)
• 822 global charities supported‍
• 97% of employees who viewed the campaign, contributed!

For the second year in a row, captains of teams who met a 50% participation threshold joined the Hot Takes Challenge—a spicy wing challenge in the spirit of "Hot Ones." Challenges took place in Chicago, London, and Montreal offices, broadcasted globally for all employees. At Chicago headquarters, the challenge was hosted by the President and Founder/CEO. Culture-building moments like this showcase how Community Investment ties to the firm's broader goals of collaboration and engagement.

Why DRW Recommends Percent Pledge

For DRW, Percent Pledge isn’t just a tool—it’s a partner that makes campaigns like this possible.

When asked if they’d recommend Percent Pledge to other companies, Grant-Cohen and Block pointed to:

• One global platform for giving, volunteering, and matching gifts
• The ability to scale without adding administrative work
• Ease of use for employee
• ‍Live Leaderboards‍
• Cause Portfolios‍
• Cause Credits
  

Ready to Run Your Own High-Impact Giving Campaign?

DRW’s 2025 Giving Challenge shows what’s possible when strategy, culture, and the right CSR platform come together.

If you want to run a workplace giving campaign that drives participation, builds culture, and delivers real results, Percent Pledge can help.

Request a demo to see how our CSR software makes it easy to launch, engage, and scale—globally.