10 Ways to Build Corporate Philanthropy At Your Company | Small ...

By Lain Hensley,?COO and Cofounder of Odyssey Teams

Corporate philanthropy might bring to mind company executives handing over big checks to deserving charities, but a new breed of giving is making philanthropy a much more integrated part of corporate culture and company identity. Companies are forever associated with the philanthropy they are involved in, and how they engage with charitable work can often define who they are to much of the outside world. Learn more from our guest blogger Lain Hensley, cofounder of?Odyssey Teams, a philanthropic teambuilding event planning business.

The benefits of corporate philanthropy are widespread. Philanthropy can motivate company staff, raise corporate morale and help a company identify with the community it serves. Here are ten ways your company can think outside of the check-writing box, and launch a philanthropy program that makes a difference both in your community and your company:

1. Write down what you already do: Even if you do not have an existing corporate philanthropy program, start by writing down how your business seeks to improve the world with their product or service. This brand statement will help guide your corporate philanthropy.

2. Select a Charity: There are hundreds of deserving charities to choose from, so narrow your choices to charities within the community where your business is headquartered and charities that have ties to your industry.

3. Give Away Your Products: There is no more direct tie between your company and your philanthropy than donating your products. If you are a computer company, give away computers to a local school. If you are a shoe company, donate shoes to low-income families.

4. Volunteer: Get your employees involved by encouraging them to volunteer. The person-to-person interaction of volunteering is incredibly rewarding, and having your employees out volunteering as ambassadors of your brand is a great way for your company to connect with your community. Require or encourage employees to volunteer four hours a month or one hour a week, and build from there.

5. Encourage Additional Volunteering: Just like sales teams get sales awards, volunteers should also be rewarded. Create a ?Community Member of the Year? award for the person who does the most volunteer work in the community each year.

6. Help a Family or Individual: Charity in the 21st Century can be a very impersonal act of simply handing over money. Re-personalize it picking a worthy recipient for your employees to support. Find a local family that needs help and get hands-on. Help clean up their yard, pay their rent, buy a used car for them, help them find a job. You?ll be amazed at how much more rewarding this personal form of charity is, and you will be amazed at the benefits to employee morale and co-worker collaboration.

7. Give Personal Donations: Give donations in people?s names to different charities as part of the year-end bonus to high-paid sales people.

8. Sponsor Sports: There is nothing more central to a community?s identity than high school sports. With current state budget cuts, and dwindling property tax revenue, schools are cutting back on athletics. Step up and sponsor a team. And then play a game against those teams at the end of their season, to let your employees meet and interact with the team they supported.

9. Highlight Results: If you are giving money to the local food bank or the local boys and girls club, connect your company to those non-profits by posting photos of the recipients of the food your company bought, or the children who now have a bike because of your company?s donation. Those photos allow your employees to see the results of your charity, and feel the empowerment that comes with giving.

10. Practice Daily Charity: Charity is an act, but it comes from an attitude of giving. Be nice to each other every day. See charity as an opportunity that is always just around the corner. Don?t miss the chance.

Lain Hensley is the cofounder and COO of Odyssey Teams Inc. He has developed effective and inspirational philanthropic team-building programs used by some of the world?s largest corporations. Since co-founding Odyssey Teams Inc., Hensley has traveled around the world presenting the company?s programs, including prosthetic hand-building program Helping Hands and bicycle-building event LifeCycles, to Fortune 500 companies. Hensley is the author of two books on facilitation.

Source: http://smallbizdaily.com/2012/03/19/10-ways-to-build-corporate-philanthropy-at-your-company/

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