Charitable giving is always something that can bring value to your personal life — but did you know it can benefit your business as well?
Will My Charitable Efforts Make An Impact?
As a small or medium sized business owner, you may wonder how much of an impact your charitable giving can make on your business. The answer? Quite a lot.
According to SCORE, the nation’s largest network of volunteer, expert business mentors, approximately 75% of small businesses donate an average of 6% of their profits to charitable organizations annually. Compared to larger businesses, small businesses donate 250% more to local nonprofits and community causes, often in the following ways:
- Giving to local charities
- Supporting youth organizations
- Donating to local first responders
- Supporting local religious organizations
- Aiding local service groups
- Donating food or volunteering in soup kitchens
When you work with LNP Media Group, it’s easy to combine multi-channel marketing with charitable marketing because LNP Media Group is part of WITF.org, a non-profit public media organization. WITF is a regional affiliate of NPR and PBS, and provides educational services to teachers, community members, and to local schools. By associating your business with LNP Media Group and WITF you will be working with a trusted local non-profit with a mission to provide local news and education services.
How Exactly Can Charitable Giving Positively Benefit My Business?
Attract Customers Aligned With the Cause You Support – And Increase Sales
As a business owner, earning sales and reaching your goals each month is likely your constant, top-of-mind priority. But did you know you can get closer to your bottom line by prioritizing charitable efforts? When potential customers see that you support nonprofits or causes that are important to them as well, their perception of your business will change in a positive direction — and they’ll be more willing to purchase your goods or services. Customers are also more likely to be loyal to a business that prioritizes the values that they align with. When customers feel connected to your businesses’ values and charitable efforts, they will feel that giving you their business is also making a philanthropic impact. Purchasing from your business is linked with the same warm feeling people feel when they donate their own time or resources to a non-profit. According to Platform Magazine, a study revealed that nine-in-10 millennials reported that they would switch to brands that are associated with a cause they support. Further, research by Accenture looked at factors that attract people to buy from certain brands over others and found that 50% of consumers were influenced by whether the brand “supports and acts upon causes that we have in common.”
Read our blog about Cause Marketing for more information on how cause marketing can help your business can stand out in Lancaster County.
Enhance Your Brand With Authenticity
According to an article from Business.com, companies are no longer judged solely on their bottom line, but also on the role they play in the community. Customers are genuinely committed to seeking out brands that are charitable and honest about their values. When you establish philanthropy as a part of your company’s mission, it becomes a part of your brand story. Both returning and potential customers will associate your company’s name, logo, products, services, and employees with philanthropy when you make it a recurring and prominent part of your organization. This will be most successful when it’s done for the right reasons — because you want your business to make a true difference in the charities and causes it supports.
Build Team Camaraderie
When an organization is focused on helping others in need, it helps employees put day-to-day work into perspective — which can boost morale and productivity. Your employees will feel positive about working for a company that cares for others. A particularly great way to build team camaraderie and boost morale is to set up volunteering opportunities that double as a team bonding experiences.
Consider asking your employees what volunteer efforts they would be most interested in – you can even take a vote and pick a new cause to support each month or season. Likely, your employees will suggest volunteering with causes close to their hearts — and if they feel their work is able to support something they care about, they’ll be more likely to work with enthusiasm. As an employer, a best practice is for you to pay your employees for the time they spend volunteering; this really demonstrates your support for volunteerism.
Attract Top Talent For Open Positions
It isn’t just customers and current employees who will be interested in your philanthropic efforts — it will also appeal greatly to potential future employees.
According to a study from 2021 featured by the University of Cincinnati, 8 out of 10 employees say it is important for company values to align with their own. Further, 75% of workers expect their employer to be a force for good in society, and more than 50% of workers say they would quit their job if their company’s values did not align with their own.
In a 2023 study by Fidelity Charitable, an independent public charity and the nation’s largest grantmaker, in an ongoing tight labor market 86% of employees say it’s important to work for a company whose values align with their own, and 81% of employees want to work for a company with socially responsible business practices. This is particularly true among Generation Z and millennials. It’s abundantly clear that many employees are valuing, more now than ever, working for companies with strong values.
When your business advertises its open positions, you can include photos that show your team volunteering together and include copy that describes what charities are important to your business. In interviews with job candidates, you can discuss the prioritization of charitable efforts, which appeals to potential employees who are looking to be involved as well.
Look Into Potential Tax Advantages
While motivation for charitable efforts should come from a place of wanting to help others, it is wise to be aware of the potential tax advantages that may be available to you. According to LifeLongLawyers, deducting qualifying charitable donations reduces the amount your business pays in taxes. Talk to a financial expert about which donation strategies make the most sense for your business.
If you do itemize your deductions and claim charitable donations, your donations will need to meet certain requirements, including the following:
- The charity must be tax exempt under section 501(c)(3) of the Internal Revenue Code. You can check an organization’s eligibility to receive tax-deductible charitable donations using the IRS’s search tool. Individuals, social and sports clubs, political groups, most foreign organizations, for-profit schools, and other types of organizations do not qualify to receive deductible contributions.
- The three basic types of charitable gifts that can be deducted are cash, property or equipment, and travel expenses that result from helping a charitable organization. Donation limits apply, but they are quite high (generally 30 to 60 percent of your adjusted gross income, depending on the type of organization).
- You should keep track of your donations with written records in case you are audited. The IRS also requires you to obtain written acknowledgement of the donation from the recipient for any contribution of $250 or more (including cash or property).
- You must fill out an IRS form for each noncash contribution that is more than $500.
- The IRS has special rules for some types of donations, such as automobiles and inventory. There are also rules for determining the value of donated property.
Improve Your Community
While some large-scale causes can be beneficial to give to, for small and medium sized businesses, often the best way to be philanthropic is to help in your own community. When you support schools, clubs, or religious organizations in your own backyard, you can forge a genuine connection with the people and organizations in your area. When you make a point to prioritize charitable efforts with small organizations that do not have much exposure on their own, you can be seen as a leader in your community that really cares about your customer base.
How To Leverage Your Charitable Efforts
Attracting great employees, building team camaraderie, supporting your community, increasing your customer base, and getting tax cuts — these are all great reasons to prioritize charitable efforts. But how exactly should you go about charitable giving in a way that yields the above results?
Pick A Cause You Care About
It is not helpful to anyone to invest in a cause that you don’t have much interest in. Rather, put your energy toward supporting causes and organizations that pique your interest and passion. Otherwise, employees, customers, potential customers, and the community will sense you’re just going through the motions — which will negatively impact your business.
Be Strategic With Philanthropic Storytelling
It doesn’t only matter that you publicize your charitable efforts, but it also matters how you do it.
The LNP article, “Charitable Giving: A Marketers Guide,” outlines some of the best ways to strategically communicate your charitable efforts:
- Craft a compelling press release. Send out the press release to local media outlets with information and photos that highlights your involvement.
- Include dynamic stories about nonprofits and volunteering in your business’s newsletters and social media posts. Instead of just sharing that you helped, tell stories of why you helped, why the cause is important to you, how exactly you got involved, and what you plan to do next for the cause.
- Create links on your website. Whether linking to a simple web page for donations or including more information about volunteering opportunities, including links and key details on your website will help philanthropy become a visual part of your brand.
- Ask customers to get involved. Send out emails and feature posts on your social media pages, urging your customers to get involved in the causes you’re most passionate in supporting. By helping connect customers with a cause, you can forge a beneficial relationship with them.
- Connect with The Extra Give. Each year, the Lancaster County community supports the Extraordinary Give. The Lancaster County Community Foundation sponsors Lancaster County’s largest day of giving and raising millions of dollars in donations for over 300 organizations. LNP Media Group supports The Extra Give through an annual special section; putting your business in this section can help raise your profile as an organization that supports local charitable work.
Participate In Community Events
The first step in helping your community is being an enthusiastic member of your community. From attending community days to local sporting events, having a presence with your customer base will establish your presence and connect with you more people and opportunities for volunteering and giving.
What To Avoid When Finding Charitable Avenues
It is critical to carefully vet and choose each charitable organization your business associates with:
- Make sure the charity is completely legit and highly rated. WITF has a top 4 star rating on Charity Navigator. This tool is a fantastic way to do a quick search of a charity to view its star rating, its contact information, and details in different categories, including Impact & Measurement, Accountability & Finance, Culture & Community, and Leadership & Adaptability.
- Make sure the charity aligns with your business. It doesn’t make sense to associate your business with a charity or organization that is off-putting to your primary customer base or desired audience. Ensure that your philanthropic efforts align with the type of customers you want to gain. WITF is an affiliate of both PBS and NPR, and those customer bases are premium groups for almost any business.
- NPR audience demographics show that 42M is the weekly NPR audience across audiences; that NPR is the #1 and #2 drive time news/talk radio program in America; that NPR ranks #1 out of 13 news brands for trustworthiness, integrity, and respect; and that 89% of listeners agree that NPR provides them with information that other media outlets do not provide.
- PBS reaches over 36M adults on linear primetimes, linear primetime; engages 16M monthly users across PBS.org, OTT video app, and the mobile video app; and reaches 213M annual full episode general audience streams on PBS-owned platforms.
TL;DR:
Customers and employees today are drawn to businesses that value charitable efforts. Be strategic about the charities you support and how you promote your charitable efforts so you can have real impacts on your bottom line. Contact LNP Media Group to combine multi-channel marketing with charitable marketing efforts, through our status as part of WITF, a long-standing local non-profit with an impeccable record in the community.