How Philanthropy Helps Your Business

By Sebastian Troup


When holidays such as Christmas arrive, we emote a great deal about how true joy is ascertained by giving and not by receiving. It's a sentiment we hope to pass on to each new generation. This sentiment of giving is also something that companies can embrace.

In the same way that giving gifts is good for our personal wellbeing, corporate giving is good for business. Companies that engage in giving programs reap a wide variety of benefits leading to greater employee engagement, improved business performance and stronger relationships with their clients and customers. Here are six ways that giving back is good for business.

People want to feel good about the places where they work. Not feeling connected to a job or feeling ambivalent about an employer means employees invest less of themselves in their work. Like every other manager, you know the quality of your employees' work is key to your success as a company.

Companies that focus on giving back to the community can forge stronger emotional connections with their employees and help them to feel good about where they work and for whom. Philanthropy and corporate giving campaigns show employees that you care about more than just the bottom line.

Corporate giving efforts present the perfect opportunity for employees to learn new skills. Some of the new things employees can learn while giving back include valuable skills such as making new social and business connections, organizing and managing resources or people or building awareness for a cause through a more effective use of marketing and social media channels. Employees who put these skills to work while volunteering will naturally find ways to incorporate them into their daily work as well.

Giving back will help your company develop a sense of corporate empathy, or recognizing how others feel. Empathy is one of the three principles that Steve Jobs used to drive Apple's business success, and it can work just as effectively for your business, too. Giving and volunteering help a company see the world through the community's perspective, which strengthens the understanding of how the company fits into that community. By looking at the world through a different lens and putting yourself in someone else's shoes, you can gain valuable insight into how your products or services affect others, the issues that matter most to your customers and how you can play a role in strengthening your community.

Each company should have a mission statement as well as a set of values that drives the company. These values influence all of the decision making and interactions with employees and also help forge a bond between the company and the community. These core values can create an emotional connection between managers and employees as well as the company and the community, especially when the giving program targets organizations that complement your core values. This simply provides great meaning to all of your philanthropic endeavors.

New skills, community engagement, and a new perspective certainly can help a business succeed, making giving back worth the effort. It is also important to remember that giving back is a lot of fun, too. Companies that volunteer or donate to the community rarely have any regrets about it, and once they start, they generally find they enjoy it and only want to give more.




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