NAB Launches Points-to-Donations Platform

Points earned through credit card purchases can now be donated to the largest pool of charities attached to a banking reward program through the National Australia Bank.

NAB Rewards allows customers to earn up to one point for every dollar spent, which could traditionally be used for flights and other goods and services.

Participants can now donate their points to a choice of 80 charities across health, education, emergency services, environment, aid and youth services.

NAB’s executive general manager of customer lending, Angus Gilfillan, said engaging customers in a rewards program was a priority for the bank.

“NAB Rewards gives customers more flexibility, control and choice so they can pass their rewards on to the causes that matter most to them,” Gilfillan said.

The bank partnered with workplace giving specialist Good2Give to secure the large number of charities for the banking reward program.

Good2Give CEO Lisa Grinham told Pro Bono News extending a giving program from employees to customers demonstrated the growth of shared value.

“NAB has been a long-term workplace giving client of ours… and when they were looking to create this NAB Rewards program they wanted to give their customers the choice they give their employees in terms of giving them access to many different charities to make donations to,” Grinham said.

“I look it as a shared value partnership… I see it as a really exciting approach to doing good business.

“If you think about a company like NAB, they no longer have to apologise for doing [business] because they’re doing social good in the community as well as getting a business benefit for their company.

“The NAB rewards program delivers both economic and social benefits, which ultimately supports the communities in which we’re all working and living.

“I think more and more of these initiatives where companies are looking at the value that they can bring through their business services to help communities makes an awful lot of sense. And if we can also help then do that then that’s actually good business sense for us as well.”

She said Good2Give was looking to create other partnerships like the one with NAB.

“We’ve made some significant investments in technology over the last few years, and a lot of that has been around increasing workplace giving donations. But the platform has deliberately been developed so that we could actually process other types of donations,” she said.

“For us it’s about providing the charities with a really strong, regular income stream of donations, and they may be workplace giving donations, they could be exchanging rewards points and there could well be other opportunities in the future.

“So we’re very open to all sorts of new ideas and I think that there’s a lot of businesses that have been really creative in how they’re delivering their products and services to help communities, which is great.”