Mighty oaks from little acorns grow. Bayer employees have an extremely convenient opportunity to donate a few cents from their pay in support of social projects – and it’s all thanks to the “Helping Cents” employee donation campaign run by the Bayer Cares Foundation and HR.

They make your wallet or purse too heavy, get forgotten about in jars and piggy banks and – if you spend too long sorting through them at the cash desk – they can even cause embarrassment and frustration, for you and others. Cents, pennies, coppers – whatever you call them, they have a shadowy existence. But that’s now a thing of the past thanks to Bayer and its “Helping Cents” initiative.

The idea is that all employees in Germany can round off their salary by donating the cents that appear after the decimal point on their pay sheet to a special account. The Bayer Cares Foundation will then use the funds in this account to support social projects run by employees. “Our colleagues at Bayer have an opportunity to do something good for very little effort and expense,” explains Thimo V. Schmitt-Lord, Executive Director of the Bayer foundations. “They can be sure that each and every cent goes to a good cause, as the money will be donated directly to projects around the world that Bayer employees are involved in on a voluntary basis.”

Bayer is doubling donations
Dr. Kemal Malik, member of the Bayer Board of Management and Director of the Bayer foundations, is enthusiastic about the concept and hopes the workforce will be just as keen to get involved: “If as many as possible of the approximately 30,000 Bayer employees in Germany take part, we have a real opportunity to achieve a lot together. That’s why we want to support the initiative from the company’s side, too. Bayer will double all the cents that are donated. Get involved and turn your cents into ‘Helping Cents’.”