10 Ways Your Business Can Give Back to the Community Part 2

If you’ve had a chance to read many of our featured articles about Top Rated Local® award winners, then you are already familiar with the fact that we always make it a point to ask about a business’ mission and how they give back to the world and their community. While most of what we do is focused on a business’ online reputation, much of that online reputation is forged in their community, and it’s a key part in a business’ success.

Building a strong online reputation starts by building a strong reputation within your community.

Contrary to popular belief, your business’ online reputation is not a separate entity than your business’ reputation within your community. In fact, they are a lot more entwined than you might think. If you take a few minutes to think about all of those people who are writing reviews for your business and those people who are reading reviews about your business, you’ll find that most — if not all of them — are people who, like you, live and work in the community. They are your friends, family and neighbors, and what they think of you will absolutely be reflected in your business’ online reputation.

Because your reputation within your community plays such a vital role in your online reputation, in our last blog, we went over five ways that small businesses can give back to the community. Keep reading to learn about five more.

Five Things Your Business Can do to Give Back to Your Community

#6. Donate your services and skills.

When people think of volunteering, they often imagine themselves dishing out servings at a soup kitchen or building a house with Habitat for Humanity, but volunteering can be a lot more personal than that, especially if you’re in the service industry. In fact, one of the biggest ways you can give back and make a name for yourself as a giving company is to donate your services and skills!

As a professional, you’ve been educated and trained, and you have a very special set of skills that you can offer the world and your community. For example, if you’re a pet groomer, you could donate your skills by grooming animals at a shelter before an adoption event. If you are a roofer, you could donate roof repairs to people in need after a hail storm.

Not only does this apply to service-based businesses; businesses that sell products can also get in on the action by donating excess merchandise or out-of-season items.

#7. Have a collection jar.

As you can see, there are many avenues for giving back and being a more charitable business. Some of them take more time and energy than others, and if you’re looking for an easy, stress-free way to give back, you’ll love the simplicity of a collections jar. In fact, all you have to do is pick a charity/cause, make a sign and set out a jar, and your customers and clients will do the rest.

You may not get a whole lot of publicity by setting out a jar, but this is one of the simplest ways to start giving back, and the beauty of it is how little time and effort it takes on the part of the business owner or management.

#8. Offer up your space.

If you have a brick and mortar shop, warehouse or office, another super-easy way to give back is by simply offering up your space for charitable events. Reserving a venue can be pricey, and when nonprofits host events, you can greatly reduce their costs by offering up your space for free.

By offering up your space, not only are you giving back to a charity or organization without actually having to utilize your resources, but you’re also gaining invaluable visibility for your business.

#9. Go green!

In 2017, Cone conducted a survey to determine the importance of corporate social responsibility, and what they found was astounding:

  • 87 percent of respondents said that they view companies more positively when they support environmental or social issues.
  • 92 percent of respondents said that they are more likely to trust a company that supports social or environmental issues.
  • 68 percent of millennial respondents say that they have bought a product that has a social or environmental benefit.

If you’ve been wondering whether or not consumers actually care about the environment, you’ve got your answer, and it’s a resounding yes. Making it a point to go green within your business is a great way to give back to the world and to your community while also curbing your energy costs and reducing your carbon footprint.

Going green doesn’t have to mean installing solar panels on your roof or investing in electric company vehicles. In fact, there are a ton of small changes you can make that make a huge impact:

  • Go paperless
  • Invest in company water bottles instead of disposable cups
  • Start recycling
  • Set your lights on timers

#10. Make giving back a part of your company’s culture.

A lot of people think of giving back as a one-time thing, like a donation or a volunteer way, but if you truly want your business to have a reputation as one that makes your community and the world a better place, it starts with your company culture. To do this, you need volunteerism and charity in your veins and in the DNA of your business.

One of the best ways to instill a sense of community and social responsibility in your company culture is by incentivizing giving back. For example, if one of your employees volunteers at the homeless shelter, allow him or her to dress casually for work or take an extra hour for lunch.

Giving back just makes you feel good, and a lot of times, it will just take a small push from you to encourage your employees to donate their time and/or money to a cause they are passionate about.

Build the kind of reputation you want online and offline.

Your business’ online and offline reputation go hand in hand, and every successful business owner understands the need to have a strong reputation both in their community and online. Making a name for your business as one that gives back and stands behind their community will help to make your local brand unbeatable, and here at Top Rated Local, we can help you make your online reputation one to remember as well.

By helping business owners avoid common pitfalls, like fake reviews, blackmail, competitor reviews and more, we can help you take more ownership of your online reputation and mold it into what you want it to be. In addition to reviews, we utilize five pillars of the customer experience, allowing your clients and customers to highlight what they think is most important, and giving you more valuable feedback than you’d get from reviews alone. Best of all, it doesn’t cost anything for you to become a Top Rated Local business!

Are you ready to build a strong reputation both online and in your community? If so, take the first step by listing your business for free with Top Rated Local today! Visit us online now to get started.

10 Ways Your Business Can Give Back to the Community Part 1

In every interview we have with our Top Rated Local® award winners, we ask what the business’ mission is and how they work to make the world a better place. Not only does this question help to highlight the humanity and passion in our award-winning businesses, but it also helps to highlight one very important piece of success for the modern-day business — giving back.

There are so many ways that your business can give back to your community and the world.

In our last article — The Benefits of Giving Back Your Community — we highlighted just a few of the ways that giving back and becoming a more socially conscious company can benefit your business. If you’ve had a chance to read it, then you know just how important giving back can be to your brand, your business and your success.

Making it a point to give back can help with everything from employee retention to productivity and brand recognition, and if you’d love to enjoy the many benefits of giving back, you’ll be glad to know that you have tons of options at your disposal. Giving back doesn’t have to look the same for your company as it does for another local business in your area, and with a little help from our team, you’ll find that there’s no shortage of possibilities at your disposal.

Five Things Your Business Can do to Give Back to Your Community

#1. Organize or sponsor a fundraiser.

There are so many ways to give back, and one of the most straightforward is to help financially support a cause that you’re passionate about. This doesn’t necessarily mean that you have to donate a huge chunk of your profits, either. Organizing or sponsoring a fundraiser for the cause or organization is a great way to raise money for that cause.

#2. Sponsor a local sports team!

Sports are as American as apple pie, and kids who participate in sports learn all kinds of invaluable lessons that they can take with them into adulthood, from how to have a healthy competitive spirit to sportsmanship and teamwork. However, not every child in the United States comes from a family that can afford to enroll them in even sports programs at public schools.

In fact, according to a TD Ameritrade survey, 63 percent of American families spend between $100 and $499 every month on youth sports. Fifty-five percent of those respondents said that they cut back on entertainment, 40 percent said they take fewer vacations and 23 percent said they cut back on retirement savings in order to cover the costs of youth sports.

This makes local recreational teams an essential and valuable asset for these people, and as a business, you can play a big part in that by sponsoring a local sports team.

#3. Encourage your team to volunteer.

As the owner of a small business, there are a lot of things that fall on your lap and no one else’s, but you’ll be glad to know that giving back to your community doesn’t have to be one of those things. Sure, you can and should lead by example, but one of the best ways to show the world that your business is one that cares is by giving back as a team.

One effective way to encourage your team to volunteer in the community is by giving them a certain number of paid volunteer hours — this way, they can volunteer for causes they are passionate about, they have more flexibility to choose when they volunteer and they are getting a break from the office and the day-to-day grind, improving their job satisfaction.

Another way you could encourage your employees to volunteer is to have an annual volunteer day where you shut down all business operations and volunteer as a team.

#4. Donate a portion of your profits.

One of the best ways to make a name for your business as one that gives back is to donate a portion of your profits. This can look like many different things:

  • You could donate a percentage of the profits from a specific day or time of the day.
  • You could donate a percentage of the profits from a specific product or service.
  • You could donate a percentage of the profits for categories of services or products.

Whatever route you choose, giving back in this way can benefit your business in a big way. When you advertise that a portion of the proceeds will go to a good cause, you’re also advertising your business and the product or service you want to highlight. Or, if you’re donating your profits based on a certain day or time, you’ll be driving more traffic during your business during those periods. Either way, it’s a win for you and your community!

#5. Support other local businesses.

When people think of giving back, they often think of donating money or volunteering their time, but it doesn’t have to be that straightforward. In fact, your day-to-day decisions, such as who you choose to source your materials from, can have a huge impact on your community, and one of the most effective ways to give back without having to sacrifice a whole lot of your time or money is to simply choose to work with other local businesses rather than large corporations.

There are a lot of great reasons to support local businesses — you’re putting money back into the community, you’re supporting local careers, you’re helping to keep the market competitive, etc. — but as a business, there are even more benefits. When you choose to work with a small business, you’re developing a valuable partnership and establishing beneficial community connections.

One other benefit of working with a local business is the increased access you’ll get. When you work with a corporate supplier, your business is just another number. But when you work with a local company, you’ll have the opportunity to talk with them face to face, which not only leads to better access but also better service.

Would you like to learn about five more ways that your business can give back to the community and make the world a better place? Stay tuned for part two!

Get listed for free on Top Rated Local to start taking control over your online reputation!

These days, it takes a great online and offline reputation to reach the widest audience, and while we can’t do much to help with your local reputation, we can help you take ownership of your online reputation and mold it into whatever you want it to be.

Unlike Yelp and the many other reviews sites out there, Top Rated Local is built on five pillars of the customer experience and designed to capture the overall customer experience like no other option out there. Top Rated Local empowers both businesses and consumers by solving everyday problems businesses face on typical reviews sites, like fake reviews, slanderous comments, blackmail, competitor reviews and more, and if you’d like to enjoy the many benefits of being a Top Rated Local business, it’s time to get started. The best part is that it’s absolutely free to get listed!

Take back your online reputation and become a Top Rated Local business by getting listed today!