Good, Better, Best Smart Corporate Giving to Adopt Today
It’s the giving time of year. Our inboxes and mailboxes flood with requests for support from worthy organizations. How to respond? Do you use good, better, or the best approach to corporate giving? Let me explain each style:
1. Good. You give. Thank you. You recognize that being in business has rewards and responsibilities. Ninety percent of Americans, “believe that businesses need to place at least equal weight on society’s interests as on business interest,” according to Edelman’s Good Purpose Study.
2. Better. You give with a plan. The plan balances emotion and logic. Ideally, you use criteria to review requests for impact. For example, your review sheet considers geographic nearness, mission connection, and opportunities for employee engagement and other factors.
3. Best. You give strategically to maximize impact. You seek three outcomes: improvements for the community, a strengthened nonprofit sector, and business returns. A property insurance company offers mini-grants to nonprofits to improve their properties. Resulting gifts capitalize on the insurance company’s expertise. Over time the effort supports local rate reductions and more secure nonprofits. Best corporate giving is addictive in a positive sense; you want to do even more because of the results.
If you’re in Southwest Florida, join us December 13 when I’ll be presenting more on this topic at the Lakewood Ranch Business Alliance Luncheon. You’ll learn more and find out what your peers do. Register here. To read more, check out this blog.
