Top 6 Ways Businesses Can Choose Charities to Work With

Giving back is beneficial not only to your community but also to your business. Businesses that donate to charities strengthen the bond between them and their customers, facilitate networking, and improve brand visibility. The culture of giving back has also been shown to attract productive and kindhearted employees, which is a plus for any company seeking genuine loyalty from its workers. If this is your first time getting involved with a charity or otherwise giving money or time to your community, here are six great ideas to help you get started:

Idea #1. Give Priority to Your Locality

Take a look around your region or city and familiarize yourself with all the charities in it. If your business is small- to medium-sized, consider non-profits, small charities, chapters of national or international organizations, and smaller institutions that would appreciate your donation. You can pledge a percentage of your net profits or just decide on an amount to give out or use to buy items. If yours is a large company, find a bigger nonprofit or charity that can make proper use of your significant donation. Lottoland’s work with the Crumlin Hospital Tiny Hearts Christmas Appeal is a good example of charity acts large companies can get involved with.

Idea #2. Research on the Organization

Researching on nonprofit or charitable organizations before donating should be a crucial part of your filter-down procedure. Ensure your organization of choice is responsible, reliable, honest, and open. You should at least know how your contribution is going to be used. You can check with popular charity evaluators to help you review your list of options and make a final choice. Nonprofits should have analytic tools from companies such as UpMetrics to help with providing insights and streamlining their organization. This may be a question to ask during your research period to see how vigilant they are.

Idea #3. Find an Organization That Speaks to You

It is a wise thing to consider nonprofits that have some sort of relevance to your business. There are many organizations out there related to the expertise and mission of your company. Try to find them and prioritize the ones that operate in your region. Choose groups whose works align with the company’s objectives and your employees’ interests. If you have the means, you can even start an organization of your own and work towards the cause(s) you feel most aligned with. You can hire separate finance teams from the likes of Porte Brown (https://www.portebrown.com/industries/not-for-profit) to handle the funds and other teams to organize events. This way, you will be able to reduce internal disagreements and get more employees to contribute wholeheartedly.

Idea #4. Give Freedom to Your Employees

While trying to come through for people who genuinely need help out there, it is important to ensure no one is forced to be a part of the cause. Charity should be voluntary at the core. Your employees should not be compelled to give part of their income to an organization the company chooses for them.

Once you have settled for an organization, ensure each of your employees gets the memo, and, more importantly, that they know they don’t have to be a part of your plans.

Idea #5. Work With a Food Bank

Even for businesses, giving money is not the only way you can contribute to a charity. You can agree with your employees on specific dates when you can go over to a local food bank and help prepare, package and distribute food to needy people. You can even challenge other local companies to participate in a competition of some way, where the winner is whoever does the most packaging or food distribution in a year. Working with a food bank or any other organization that gives directly to people in need will improve their productivity and reduce their “cost of production”, which is equivalent to giving money.

Idea #6. Participate in a Charity Run

Smaller companies are unlikely to have volunteer programmes in place, which may make it significantly hard and costly for them to have sporadic arrangements for charity donations. When this is the case, businesses are encouraged to sign up for charity walks or runs that have been organized by third party entities.

Conclusion

Giving back to your community is one way to give gratitude to the local people for doing business with you and accommodating you in their area of residence. It improves your relationship with them and gives you the edge on your rivals from a business standpoint. The above tips will help you find a charity to donate to and finally achieve your mission of helping the needy. Be sure to involve your employees right from the theory part or at least give them a chance to deny or agree to your request.