Givers Gain

Welcome to TrueNorth Business Consulting’s (www.truenorthbusinessconsulting.com) presentation of a Business Makeover. Each month will feature an idea that can help your business. True North focuses on helping health and wellness practitioners to maintain and grow their business using the areas of business law, marketing, insurance and project management.

The question to answer this month is: Why would you want to affiliate with a charity or nonprofit? I can give you three answers, free advertising, good public relations and it makes you feel good. There is nothing to lose and everything to gain because givers gain.

What is a charity?
A charity or nonprofit company is not in business to make a profit. They have a charitable purpose which may be social, educational or religious. As you can guess there are a lot of charities and philanthropic organizations.

Which one should I choose to affiliate with?
Pick a charity that you have a passion for. It may be animal rights or it may be helping the homeless. I am a big fan of Doctors Without Borders. http://www.doctorswithoutborders.org/. Remember though when looking a charity affiliation you want to see how they will advertise your business. Do they have a website or a newsletter? Can they put up a flyer in their office?

Your next step is to think about how you will advertise and what you will offer. My suggestion is putting a notice on your website and passing out flyers to your existing clients.

An example I can give you is connecting with a local food pantry. For every bag of food a client brings in you can give 10 to 20% off your services. You post a notice in your office (or hand out notices), place a notice on your website and then see what services the food pantry would provide to you, too.

What are my other options?
Maybe there are no charities which you wish to form a connection with at this time. That’s okay, there are other choices. You can have an essay contest among students to have them write about how your services will help them. The prize can be money or a gift certificate for your service (it can be transferable or if the winner is under the age of 18 then gear some services, with permission of a guardian, to them). You can also have a contest to create a logo or a tagline for your business. You are still helping people.

Remember, givers gain and you could be gaining some new clients.