Organizations have team members across many different life stages — first-time parenthood, post-divorce, or on the verge of retirement — that require a a nimble, responsive set of benefits and offerings to support a diverse workforce. There is a consistent theme across various generations, races, and genders in the workplace: workers want and need employers to support their financial well-being in meaningful ways. 

An employee relief fund stands out because it offers targeted, immediate financial assistance during emergencies, addressing urgent needs that other financial wellness solutions might not cover. Unlike broader programs that focus on long-term financial health, a relief fund offers anonymous, immediate financial support to employees when they need it most. Additionally, team members receive charitable grant money that never needs to be repaid to truly help them recover from unexpected, sometimes destabilizing emergencies like natural disasters, unexpected medical expenses, or death in the family. By investing in a hardship fund companies have a unique opportunity to show employees they are listening to their most acute needs.

Ultimately, we believe most organizations need a diverse set of solutions to support the financial well-being of their employees. Financial relief is an important pillar of any employee financial wellness strategy given we know workers are struggling financially and are looking for employers to help them become more financially stable. 

There are many reasons to outsource management of an employee relief fund. Your organization is likely already providing some sort of real-time relief to team member, whether informally or through an internal relief program. In turning management over to a third-party platform, like Grant Circle, you receive the following benefits: 

• flexible, creative program management: from program parameters to structure, Canary partners with each client to create a Grant Circle that reflects the unique needs of their workforce;
• employee anonymity: the identity of applicants and any details of their situation are never revealed to their employer;
• equitable assistance: Canary’s grant specialists provide anonymous application review and grant distribution, removing any internal bias;
• streamlined, 8-step application: the Grant Circle application is designed to gather all information needed to decision grants in as few steps as possible to avoid additional stress for the applicant;
• rapid financial relief: all applications are reviewed and replied to within 48 hours and once approved, payment is received within another 48 hours. This means, employees can have financial relief within just days of applying;
• responsive grant specialists: each applicant receives compassionate, individualized support from a dedicated team of grant managers;
• risk mitigation: comphrehensive program parameters based on IRS guidelines  around financial hardships, guarantees legal compliance;
• anonymized impact reporting: between a real-time dashboard and annual custom impact reports, Canary provides client-by-client data to illustrate their Grant Circle impact.

Grant Circle helps teams address issues within their workforce before they become bigger, harder to solve problems AND diagnose other ways to support employees.

Investing in a meaningful solution, like employee relief, now is a smart, proactive move that solves a common root cause of poor financial well-being among your workforce.

The stats show us that:

• Many workers (yours included) live paycheck-to-paycheck and regularly experience financial hardship: 63% of Americans live paycheck to paycheck & over 60% of households experience financial hardship each year.
• Finances are stressing your employees out: 57% of employees say finances are the top cause of stress in their lives
• When they’re stressed about their finances, they’d be open to working somewhere else that cared more about their financial well-being: 73% of financially stressed employees say they would be attracted to another employer that cares more about their financial well-being

It’s more cost-effective to offer a tangible solution in the face of financial hardship than to deal with the financial fallout of unresolved financial stress.

For example, we know that:

• Financial issues cause lower productivity and higher absenteeism rates among your workforce: 4 work weeks are lost to a financially stressed employee dealing with personal finances.
• Employee financial stress is a big expense when left untreated: Companies lose up to $4.7B per week in productivity due to financial stress. 
• It’s more expensive to rehire & retrain new employees to replace one that quits due to financial crisis: It can cost more than $7,000/employee who quits due to a financial crisis.

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A financial hardship is when one or more unusual or unexpected events occur that make it difficult for an individual or family to afford basic living expenses. To be eligible for funding from the Grant Circle, an applicant must have experienced one or more events selected by the client within the client’s defined lookback period (i.e. the last 12 months).

Currently, each client has the ability to select from the following emergency events: 

• Natural disaster or catastrophe: a natural event, such as a hurricane, earthquake, fire, tornado, or flood.
• Medical bills not covered by insurance: a necessary out of pocket medical expense affecting employee or someone for whom they have financial responsibility.
  
• Medical leave not covered by PTO: An unpaid medical leave affecting employee or someone in their household.
• Car issues: an emergency or unexpected event related to a car needed for essential tasks, such as getting to work. Expenses resulting from driving without insurance and other illegal acts are not eligible. 
• Eviction or forced move: Unplanned move due to receipt of an eviction notice, selling of an apartment building, condemnation of an apartment building, or another unexpected and/or involuntary reason.
• Death in the family: death of a spouse or partner, child, sibling, parent, grandparent, aunt or uncle.
• Home or property issues: unexpected emergency related to home or property.  For example: damage due to a burst pipe.
• Domestic issues: domestic emergency, such as being the victim of domestic violence or abuse, gaining unexpected care-taking responsibility for a family member who isn’t a child, or the sudden end to a relationship with a romantic partner with whom employee lives.
  
• Robbery or burglary: theft of your property.
• Significant and involuntary loss of household income: unplanned loss of a household income source.