Communication Tactics to Make Your Business Philanthropy More Dynamic Save Time, Control the Flood, & Get More Results

It’s early in the New Year. For many readers, it’s time to set your CSR or corporate social responsibility strategy. One aspect to consider is how you’ll communicate your CSR to your customers, employees, and nonprofit partners.

What are your options? Here’s a list of tactics businesses use to share or not share philanthropic intent. They range from silence to full disclosure. Each offers benefits, drawbacks, and challenges.

1. Private. Give anonymously, so privately that even your senior managers gain only vague knowledge of your interests.
2. Minimal Information. Decide internally how to give so only insiders know your intent. Provide no public information.
3. Specific Causes. Announce particular interests on your website and elsewhere.
4. Specific Information About Your Process. Share your interests and your decision-making procedure publicly. This choice includes variations, such as:
   • Pre-qualification questionnaires. Prospects answer questions. If correct, they access a partnership request form.
   • Application. List questions to answer, provide an easily reproduced form, or an online application.
   • Firm deadlines. Explain your decision timeline.
   • Involvement. Require that employees, vendors, and/or customers sponsor all requests.
5. Results. Publish your recent activities. What we do speaks volumes more than what we say.

Depending on your goals, but assuming your intent is to maximize your return on philanthropy, the more you disclose the greater your yield of quality partnerships. So Options 3, 4 and 5, when used well, will save you time, control the flood of requests, and stimulate greater returns.

Request a discovery meeting with Karen to explore your practical business philanthropy strategy and how to gain from your underused assets.