Tag: Corporate Social Responsibility

Corporate Philanthropy

How To Factor Corporate Philanthropic Efforts Into Your Business’s Finances

Posted on | by mpitre72 | Leave a Comment on How To Factor Corporate Philanthropic Efforts Into Your Business’s Finances

Guest Post By Sam Bowman

Your business can simultaneously help a nonprofit, develop ties within its community, and extend its market reach. However, corporate philanthropy requires careful planning and attention to detail. With the right approach, your business can factor philanthropic efforts into your finances — and help your company and the community as a whole.

Corporate Philanthropy

Why It Pays to Prioritize Corporate Philanthropy

Corporate philanthropy can provide a competitive advantage. It can serve as a form of public relations or advertising and allow a business to showcase its brand within its community. Meanwhile, it lets a company highlight its commitment to a cause. It can lead to high-profile sponsorships that help a business extend its reach, increase its earnings, and distinguish itself from rivals.

Thanks to corporate philanthropy, a business can improve employee morale as well. Giving workers opportunities to volunteer at a nonprofit can help a company engage with employees and keep them happy. These employees may be more prone than others to support their company in any way they can. The result: a business can use corporate philanthropy to help its employees feel and perform great.

How to Account for Corporate Philanthropy in Your Business’s Finances

Corporate philanthropy can help your company stand out from its competitors. It does not require you to break your budget, either. Now, let’s look at five tips to help you make room for corporate philanthropy in your business’s finances. 

1. Compensate Your Employees

Let your employees perform their everyday duties at a nonprofit and compensate them accordingly. This enables a nonprofit to add temporary help to perform tasks across a wide range of areas. For instance, you can have your accountants help a nonprofit get its finances in order.

Or, you can offer human resources support, so a nonprofit can develop and implement effective HR policies. By compensating employees who work with a nonprofit, you can help your workers do good deeds with little to no impact on your finances.

Plus, you may be better equipped than ever before to encourage employees to commit time, energy, and resources to nonprofit work. The result: these employees will do their best to deliver outstanding results for a nonprofit.

2. Give Up Your Time

Set aside a work day for your employees to work at a nonprofit. Doing so enables your workers to commit their full attention to focus on what’s most important: helping a nonprofit.

Giving up time to help a nonprofit can help your business’s finances in several ways. First, your employees can take solace in the fact that they are contributing to a good cause. This can ultimately translate to superior productivity in the workplace going forward.

Also, your employees can promote your company during their nonprofit work. They can show your community what your company is all about, without putting a dent in your marketing budget.

3. Offer Seasonal Help

Allow employees to help a nonprofit at busy times throughout the year. For example, you can offer marketing support to a nonprofit that wants to promote special events around the holidays. Furthermore, you can provide access to your accountants if a nonprofit needs assistance during tax season. Tax season is tough for everyone, but it can be confusing for nonprofits that run with skeleton crews, especially if they generate significant revenue.

The seasonal help a nonprofit needs varies based on the organization. As such, learn about different nonprofits in your community and find out if certain seasons are busier for them than others. Next, you can offer assistance to myriad nonprofits at different points during the year.

4. Donate Goods and Services

Offer goods to a nonprofit instead of money. Product samples and other goods may be readily available to your business. You can donate these goods to a nonprofit, so the organization and its stakeholders can use them. In addition, if the products have your business’s logo or name on them, they can help you promote your brand in your community.

Along with goods, you can donate various services to a nonprofit. A business’s expert web developers, for example, can help a nonprofit build, launch, and maintain a website. Provide services that a nonprofit can use, free of charge. This can help your business foster goodwill with a nonprofit. It can lay the groundwork for a long-lasting partnership with a nonprofit and its stakeholders, too.

5. Establish Partnerships

Seek out nonprofits in your community and partner with them. Over time, you can foster partnerships that help your business thrive. As you develop nonprofit partnerships, continue to explore ways to grow these relationships.

Your company can work with a nonprofit to find opportunities to spread the word about your respective goals and missions. That way, both organizations can get the most value out of these partnerships.

Use Corporate Philanthropy to Gain a Competitive Edge

Corporate philanthropy can benefit your business, employees, and community. With the right approach, your business can empower its employees to support a nonprofit. Moreover, your philanthropic efforts can help your company grow.

Get started with corporate philanthropy and account for it as part of your business’s finances. Then, your company can use philanthropy to help a nonprofit, make a difference in its community, and gain a competitive advantage over its industry rivals.

Charitable Giving

The Profitable Benefits of Charitable Giving for Small Business

Posted on | by David Worrell | Leave a Comment on The Profitable Benefits of Charitable Giving for Small Business

Why should your small business donate to charities? Because you are “good people doing the right thing?” Maybe… but I think there’s a much more pragmatic (cynical?) reason for it. Like all business decisions, giving to charity is profit-driven.

Charitable giving can be profitable for a variety of reasons — and aligning a company with an image of charity is a great financial decision.

Charitable Giving

A Social Demand

Consumers vote with their dollars. The products they buy reflect their values. Today, customers support companies that align more closely with their moral and socially responsible ideals. To remain relevant — and competitive — companies must demonstrate similar values through their products and their actions.

In response to waves of social change like #metoo and #blacklivesmatter, some companies are scrambling to show their support for gender and racial equality. The largest have stepped up to make substantial donations to social justice causes. These charitable donations might advance noble goals … but in any case, they bolster the company’s standing with consumers.

Charitable giving has real benefits. Some experts note that the brand positivity associated with charitable donations is profound and can increase the likelihood of a purchase by upwards of 85%. Associating your brand with a cause is just good business.

Employee Expectations

But customers aren’t the only reason to adopt a generous (and/or ethical) stand toward social giving. Employees appreciate it, and younger employees expect it. Millennials, for instance, tend to strive to work for companies where they feel as though they are contributing to something larger.

Experts believe that both millennials and the younger Gen Z are driven to work for a company that aligns with their moral values. Being aligned with charities can attract some of the top, young talent in today’s market.

Many employees love being involved in a company’s charitable enterprises. The activity makes them feel great about the company and the community they live in. This pride translates to greater productivity in the workplace — employees who participate in company-sponsored charitable giving events tend to be up to 13% more productive.

Finally, moving a company toward social activism and charitable giving can also increase business networking opportunities and connections for employees of every level. Generosity comes back to roost as new partnerships and new products. Employees enjoy wider community collaboration, customers see their values reflected, new products emerge, and the company thrives.

Systemic Changes

Ready to take giving a step further? Participate in the annual Giving Tuesday.

This charitable giving event, which began in 2012, offers individuals and organizations the opportunity to make changing the system part of — well — the system. Giving Tuesday occurs at the beginning of every holiday season around the globe. Individuals and businesses alike are encouraged to donate both funds and time to causes they find most resonant. Give all your employees a full paid day off on Giving Tuesday to donate their time to a cause of their choice.

Volunteering can be left to the employee, or coordinated to support a single corporate-chosen charity.

Giving to charities and trying to make the world a better and more equitable place feels good. But it can also have a significant positive benefit to the companies that participate in it. Social and environmental awareness is something that customers are demanding from the companies they frequent.

Likewise, employees are expecting greater contributions from the companies they work for. Charitable efforts represent a significant step towards achieving both profitability in the short term and sustainable growth in the long term!