Giving back is a good way to market your brand. This will help you build long lasting relationships that will benefit your organization in the long run. Making employees be part of this creates passion that helps them working harder.
There’s no greater feeling, no greater satisfaction, than knowing you’re making a difference. But giving back to your community is also good for business. Think about it. Philanthropy helps build relationships with clients and potential clients. It helps build and support your brand. It promotes employee engagement. And let’s face it: good corporate citizens want to do business with others who share their values.
Building relationships.
Let me give a great example. Our foundation hosts the Holt Brothers Playoff Party during the AFC and NFC Championship Games to raise money for our grant programs. It’s pretty informal – jeans, game jerseys, football, beer and great food. A lot of our sponsors are companies we work with in the construction industry. Through this event, we have gotten to know them and they’ve gotten to know us in a totally different way. We’ve had clients tell us they want to do business with us because of our passion. It’s an unintended consequence, but philanthropy is helping us build customer loyalty.
Building your brand.
Philanthropy also builds and supports a brand. Think of the NFL and United Way. The league has done a great job associating itself and the guys with a successful organization that does good work for communities throughout the country. You feel good when you see a player sitting at a desk, coloring with a bunch of kids and joking with them.
I once read a quote that really stuck with me, “A well-developed philanthropic program will resonate with clients on a deep, emotional level that goes beyond any creative ad campaign.” In other words, the act of giving back evokes emotion and fosters an authentic connection. That’s exactly what’s at work with the NFL–United Way partnership.
Building employee engagement.
We’ve also found that philanthropy as a core value promotes employee engagement. It infuses passion in those around you. It gives employees more energy and drive. After all, who doesn’t want to be a part of something bigger?
Sourced from: https://www.entrepreneur.com/article/245044
Organisations are no longer sincire on their philanthropy they only give when they expect something back mostly as a way of marketing and advertising. This is the case due to the expectations of shareholders where business money should be put in profitable ventures.
Corporate philanthropy is in decline. Charitable contributions by U.S. companies fell 14.5 % in real dollars last year, and over the last 15 years, corporate giving as a percentage of profits has dropped by 50 %. The reasons are not hard to understand. Executives increasingly see themselves in a no-win situation, caught between critics demanding ever higher levels of “corporate social responsibility” and investors applying relentless pressure to maximize short-term profits. Giving more does not satisfy the critics—the more companies donate, the more is expected of them. And executives find it hard, if not impossible, to justify charitable expenditures in terms of bottom-line benefit.
This dilemma has led many companies to seek to be more strategic in their philanthropy. But what passes for “strategic philanthropy” today is almost never truly strategic, and often it isn’t even particularly effective as philanthropy. Increasingly, philanthropy is used as a form of public relations or advertising, promoting a company’s image or brand through cause-related marketing or other high-profile sponsorships. Although it still represents only a small proportion of overall corporate charitable expenditures, U.S. corporate spending on cause-related marketing jumped from $ 125 million in 1990 to an estimated $ 828 million in 2002. Arts sponsorships are growing, too—they accounted for an additional $ 589 million in 2001. While these campaigns do provide much-needed support to worthy causes, they are intended as much to increase company visibility and improve employee morale as to create social impact. Tobacco giant Philip Morris, for example, spent $ 75 million on its charitable contributions in 1999 and then launched a $ 100 million advertising campaign to publicize them. Not surprisingly, there are genuine doubts about whether such approaches actually work or just breed public cynicism about company motives. (See the sidebar “The Myth of Strategic Philanthropy.” )
Sourced from: https://hbr.org/2002/12/the-competitive-advantage-of-corporate-philanthropy