If you go back to my very first blog post, I tell you WHY I started this business. Why I am passionate about corporate community investment. But why should YOU care about community investment? Why should your business want to do this work?

I need to start with a disclaimer, or a reminder: when I am talking about philanthropy, I am not talking about organizing a volunteer day or writing a check to a few organizations every year. I am talking about community investment. I am talking about a strategy consistent with your business goals, values, and the product or service you offer that meets a community need long term. Something that moves the needle (this could very well INCLUDE check writing, but it doesn’t stop there).

In the world I come from, businesses are known as selfish and ignorant. Cross sector partnerships exist because of dollars, not because of needs and expertise. And both sides are cool with that. But this status quo is not working. There are a bunch of reasons that businesses do charity, like employee engagement and commitment, marketing and PR, and taxes. When you look to businesses who have consistently been on the cusp of innovation (see any case study blog post), you see that’s not the only reason to do this anymore. 

Businesses are called upon to participate in social change, and this is to your benefit. When you marry your business strategy, goals, and values with your philanthropy strategy, goals, and values, you open up dozens of opportunities while still benefiting from the aforementioned reasons to do charity. When you develop long-term partnerships within a community to utilize the skills, services, products, and expertise you already have, you are providing professional development for employees, exposing yourself to a new market, opening up potential business partnerships, collecting new data, etc. All this, and you still look good. You are still participating in solving a social issue. And any social issue negatively affects you as a business. Simply working to improve education, eradicate food deserts, prepare low-income families for retirement, or whatever issue or geographical area you choose, improves the condition of the market. Everybody wins.

This work is no longer something cool and trendy to do. It’s a need for your business to succeed in this world. Give me a call, shoot me an email, and we will get started.