There was a time when our United Way was criticized because it resisted letting donors designate where their gifts should go. “Designation” was tantamount to a four-letter word. “Just give us the money and trust us to make sure it is used wisely,” we used to tell people.

That was 20 years ago. Today we are perhaps the most donor-choice-friendly United Way. Typically, 60% of what we raise passes through us to another nonprofit. Back in the early 1990s, when I was a volunteer on our board, we voted to listen to our customers and change it.

In essence, that means every gift in the campaigns we manage is a “designated” gift–with some gifts designated to other nonprofits and some designated to United Way for its projects. We no longer just put the money in a big pot and just divvy it up among a small list of nonprofits.

What’s interesting is that even as we embraced donor choice, increasing numbers of regional employers began moving the opposite direction. I’ve lost track of how many local employers have created their own foundations as a vehicle for corporate philanthropy.

Some fund these foundations out of profits or the sale of assets such as a buildings. Others also ask their own employees to contribute to their foundations. Often when that happens, corporations limit who, if anyone else, employees can give to a small, pre-selected list.

Fundamentally, these employers are doing what United Way used to do: limiting donor choice. I bring this up because of the irony of the situation and because I think the employers who do this today are just as wrong as our United Way was back before we embraced donor choice.

Some employers who do this are just behaving paternalistically, believing they know better than their employees what nonprofits merit support. Others seek to leverage their employees’ gifts to magnify the strategic impact of their corporate contributions.

Still others simply want to avoid the complex and costly process of collecting and distributing multiple employee gifts to multiple nonprofits. And letting employees give through payroll deduction adds yet another layer of complexity.

No one knows this better than we do. We receive thousands of pledged gifts through hundreds of employers and send them to thousands of different donor-designated nonprofits monthly. We do it accurately and less expensively than employers can. And we do it at no cost to employers.

So the added cost of administering donor choice is no excuse for limiting donor choice–especially when there are cost-effective alternatives with whom employers can partner to enhance their employees’ ability to have an impact on the issues they care about.

In the final analysis, it is the employee’s money, not the corporation’s, and the employee should not be limited as to where s/he can direct their gift(s).