Ways to Get Your Business More Involved in the Community
There are so many good reasons to get your business more involved in community service and community programs. Whether you want to better utilize your company's time and spare money, to improve employee morale, or to better engage with your business's local community, it's always a good time to come up with some creative ways to give back. Take these suggestions as starting points, and see how you can customize them to better suit your business and business model.
Consider picking a local cause that your business will always support. This could be a local charity, an environmental group, a civic group, a fund towards some community improvement, or a homeless shelter. Get some A-frames from eSigns to advertise around your business that you support this cause. Advertising this fact will improve both employee and customer opinion of your business.
Find some real, tangible ways to give to the cause or causes you've picked. Some businesses will make an annual or semi-annual contribution to this cause. You could either raise money by fundraising specifically for that cause or be dedicating a certain percentage of your annual proceeds to that cause.
One popular idea to encourage customer engagement is to choose three or four local charities and hang a box or bucket for each of these charities by the door. Advertise that you will be donating a percentage of every sale to charity. As customers check out, give them each a token with their contribution written down on it. So if you are able to donate as much as 5% of every sale to charity, a customer who spends $40 should receive a token that says $2. Invite the customers to put these tokens in the box or bucket for whichever charity they want their money to benefit.
Give employee rewards for service activities and charity done on their own time. This should be something simple but fun to encourage employees to “compete” over who can do the most community benefit work. For example, each time an employee brings in a photo of themselves doing a service project or donates some food or clothing to a cause, put a star on a board. At the end of six months or a year, give the person with the most stars a gift card to a local restaurant or some other small reward. The reward shouldn't be big; instead, focus on ways to make doing community service a fun activity where your employees will compete to do the most good. It's a great way to promote community spirit within the office as well as in the greater community.
Run a donation program where customers can round up on their purchase to donate to charity. Or consider putting money forth from company proceeds to donate for each customer purchase. For example, round up to the nearest whole dollar amount for each customer purchase.
Have an ongoing food, money, or clothing drive at your business. Invite customers to bring by donations year-round. They will appreciate not having to go far to donate their unwanted items. If you are also interested in supporting other causes, find some way to make your business a central part of the local effort. For example, for an environmental cause, you could make your business a drop-off location for batteries, old electronics, plastic bags, or other items that are difficult to dispose of.
Getting your business more involved in the community is beneficial for everyone involved. With the nice weather abound, many people are looking for ways to get outdoors and to get more active, so it's a great time to engage employees and customers in a charitable frame of mind that will last them all year.
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