Doing Good is Good for Business
Choosing a Charity to Support for your Small Business
A core value that our business upholds is that we will choose to be a business that gives back. We believe that no matter how difficult at times it may be, giving back to local charities will in some way come back to us in a meaningful way. Giving to local charities benefits our employees, our customers, our community and ultimately our business.
We started something new this year. Our leadership team decided that we would give back by donating a small percentage of our monthly sales toward local non-profits. Rather than choosing the charity that appealed to the business owners, we made a decision to include our leadership team in the process. We asked each of our core leaders to recommend to us a charity of their choice which we would then include in our company’s monthly giving. We decided that we would then renew our list each calendar year during our annual planning session.
We gave the team a list of 9 sectors by which to guide them in searching out the charity of their choice. The 9 sectors were: Children/Youth, Poverty, Environmental, Medical, Faith, Drugs/Alcohol, Sexual Abuse, Incarceration and Disaster Relief. We encouraged them to not only recommend the charity but to also consider personally supporting the charity, though this was not a prerequisite.
At our planning day, we had them share the charity of their choice along with an explanation as to why they like the work this charity does for our community. It was a great discussion. As each member of our team shared we not only learned about great work happening in our region, but we received insight into the lives of our leadership team. It made for one of the best planning days we had all year. The “buy in” from our team on the core values of being community oriented has come back in numerous discussions around the table.
Our team is stronger and our company is stronger because we have included them in our decision to give back. The old maxim is more true today than ever: Doing Good Is Good for Business, and I would add, Doing good “together” is especially good for business!
- Dave Wescott owns and operates Transblue Construction Franchises and started mBridge.global, a non-profit focused on giving back both locally and globally
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