Offer Your Skills
Take a look at what you offer your customers and clients. Do any of those services easily translate into helping others? For example, a company in the hospitality industry may try to get involved with food services for the needy. Financial advisors may be able to offer counseling for low-income individuals, and tech firms may try to incorporate their product into other areas or make that technology freely available to those who need it. Making what you already do a part of your outreach mission is seamless, and ensures that the people on the receiving end are getting top-notch service! Of course, this doesn’t have to be the case. Nothing’s wrong with getting out there and spending your time with a non-profit that just needs a little more manpower to make their work that much more effective. But if you are going to go this route…
Listen to Your Employees
Especially if they’re on the younger side. It’s been well-documented that millennials take community service into account when they’re looking for employment. Volunteer work is hugely important to this demographic, so don’t brush it off. Couple that with the fact that no one really likes to be told what to do, and that means that a good leader will take a more hands off approach to the matter. Give your employees some sway as they figure out who/what they want to do, and then listen to them! Incorporate their ideas as best you can, and you’ll keep everyone happy.
Invest with Impact
This may be the hardest of these tips to follow. There are plenty of “brand-name” charitable foundations, and it will be all too easy to write a check and consider your work done. But what you should really be doing is figuring out where your dollar can go the farthest. Paula Goodman for HBR writes that these “high-impact” charities may not look as good, but your resources will make more of a difference there than at a charity that people are already aware of. Here’s an example. A Facebook co-founder and his wife recently donated to a charity focused on bringing iodine to the developing world. That’s hardly an organization you’d see an advertisement for, but they helped make a huge difference.