jamadd's picture Submitted by jamadd on
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General Questions and Comments

We are a small start-up with limited capital right now, but strong growth potential. In the course of developing relationships in our varied market spaces, we are approached by contacts/prospective business partners to support various charitable endeavors associated with their mission/s. From a purely altruistic perspective, we would like to be able to assist with all of these requests. In many cases it is also good business—a means of networking with high value targets, etc. Financial realities being what they are, we are not able to dive into this area (both proactively and reactively) as much as we would like.

I wonder if any of you have developed strategies/mission statements around identifying priorities as it relates to philanthropy? When do we say ‘yes’? How do we say ‘no’? How to we pick areas to ‘target’?
 
Thank you in advance,
 
jamadd

Tuatara's picture
Submitted by Tuatara on Thursday January 28th, 2010 11:23 am

 

Hi jamadd,

We are constantly approached to support various causes and you are right, no matter how much you want to help all, it is just not practical. We chose one charitable organisation and we focus on that. It has several advantages:

  1. When approached by other organisations, we can tell them we have one we focus on. That way you can politely decline.
  2. It enables your company to have a greater impact on a charitable organisation as they are getting a larger amount than if you spread yourself out too much.
  3. It gives your team something to feel proud about when they see that charitable organisation doing good things in the community, knowing that it is partly because of the company they work for.

Which charity you pick is up to you. Our business means the vast majority of customers are women, so we chose one that they can relate to. It may be something in your area that is of pressing concern. We are not a massive company ($60-70 million pa) so we chose a less well known organisation as the they tend to have a hard time getting any publicity compared to some of the larger organisations.

Hope that helps in some way.

 

12string's picture
Training Badge
Submitted by 12string on Thursday January 28th, 2010 7:31 pm

 We give anyone with a valid 501(c)(3) number 10% off of their order(s).  Also, as a christian-owned company, we give churches 20% off their order(s). Some people ask for more, but I just let them know what we are able to do.

We get anywhere from 5-20 requests per week asking for deals and breaks off of our services. 

Everyone who doesn't fit into these two categories, we politely let them know how much revenue is asked of us throughout the year.  I also mention that if we were to give to all of the causes we want to, we wouldn't be able to do business with anyone.

Hope that helps.

~12string~

jamadd's picture
Submitted by jamadd on Friday January 29th, 2010 3:34 pm

Thanks for the input!  I appreciate your taking the time to share your experiences. Seems like standards are scant in this area.  As a diversified health care services provider, we are not really able to limit our activities to one or few charities.  We need to be present in different markets and are still challenged to come up with some sort of guidelines or business strategy to assure that our philanthropic efforts are aligned with our misson/goals.

Thanks again,

 

jamadd