Why charity work can make a difference to your business

From building a reputation as a company that cares and building your business’ identity, to enhancing your internal culture and external relationships, the benefits are plentiful.

1. Build your brand identity

Whatever industry you’re in, charity work can give your brand’s identity a new edge. If your business has a very corporate image, charity work can show your head’s not always stuck in the business clouds. Particularly for business in the financial services industry, you’ll show that you’re not just about making money for your business, but for those that are less fortunate too.

Conversely, for businesses with an overtly playful tone, charity work can show you have a more serious side too.

A knock-on effect of this is that you’ll give your business something to proudly shout about, and it’ll be the type of stuff that clients or customers will be more inclined to engage with. If you’re a financial services business, for example, and you’ve got the choice to tweet about interest rates or your recent charity work, which do you think your audience would engage with more?

2. Build internal relations

With charity work comes the opportunity to organise fundraising events within your business. Whether it be a weekly or monthly cake sale, dress down day or helping out at local charity events, there are a whole load of charity-related activities to be done. Within this lays another great opportunity – employee engagement.

To build your brand and spread the word about the work you do for charity, remember to take some snaps of the event or activity and share them on your website or social media channels.

3. Employee retention

Charity work could even help you to retain employees. Giving to charity gives people a real sense of satisfaction and pleasure. If you’re the one providing the platform for such elation, there’s a good chance your employees will be more inclined to stick around longer – providing the rest of your business is up to scratch too, of course.

4. Networking opportunities

Depending on how you involve yourself with charity work, you could open the door to networking opportunities, like a charity ball, for example. This is more likely to be the case when you commit to a single charity and raise notable amounts of cash for them.

You never know who you’ll meet at any event. You may land yourself a new client, partner, supplier or employee. Either way, the possibilities are (almost) endless.

5. You’ll show you’re a company that cares

Not every business takes the time to organise activities and give to charity. By investing in this, you’ll be giving yourself an edge over others.

People like to work for companies that have more about them than their core purpose. You should class incorporating charity work as a business perk. Who knows, it could even help attract potential employees.