I recently read of a new San Francisco hotel that offers guests the opportunity to participate in local charitable activities through an innovative online volunteering network. How creative! The hotel management found a fantastic way to tap into guests’ desire to not only experience the world but to serve it.
It has long been good for business to be active on behalf of non-profits. I suspect that smart vendors in the Roman Forum provided special togas for youth chariot teams racing at the local track. Keeping our service relevant to the times though is as critical to successful support as it is to our own business. Simple but timely ideas such as incorporating website links into company e-newsletters can provide valuable visibility.
But what else is out there that others are using to promote worthy causes that perhaps we haven’t considered at Randall-Paulson? A quick Google search revealed a whole social/business networking charitable world of Twittering, YouTubing, Blogging, Linkedin-ing and Facebooking already going on.
One undeniable fact is that even as we move deeper into the digital world of charitable support, we can’t disengage from direct hands-on activities. Nothing beats an after-hours event wrapping holiday presents for less fortunate kids, creating fantastic sculptures at a “Canstruction” event, or actually meeting a mom raising medically fragile children through tremendous strength of character and a strong side of support from one of our favorite non-profits. This is because when it comes down to it good business is about good relationships. And relationships don’t start and stop with the list of active projects in-house or numbers of contacts on a digital list. They come from an ongoing sincere interest in the well-being of others. This same interest in the health of the community at large will find the business itself operating with truthfulness, fairness, and reliability in its professional activities, values that directly result in repeat business – and that’s good at for-profit and non-profit companies.