WHAT IS YOUR "NATURAL GIVE"?

This will be a quickie on a topic that is becoming more relevant as we become more well known—charitable giving.

Face it. When you are small and cash flow is a frequent struggle and bills are mounting, it is difficult to shell out cold, hard cash every time a charity rings, and it often does not feel right, which is what this blog is really about.

As a business, we are solicited to provide products and cash for charities, gift bags, raffles, auctions, and the like, or provide time to various causes and charitable events.

Some of these requests hit like a lead balloon, and some actually feel pretty good to me. I took a look at the types of things that felt good to us and those that did not, and this idea of a Natural Give hit me. Asked about startup businesses and charitable giving the other day, I turned to this idea of Natural Give.

I define Natural Give as that type of giving that feels effortless and sustainable to you and your company, that feels right whether it results in sales or PR or not. We have discovered that our natural gives are 1) small product donations to local community events for raffles and auctions; and 2) providing entrepreneurial mentoring time to local youth; and 3) providing information to and sharing experiences with other business people who read this blog. Having defined our Natural Give, we stick with it. We do not sponsor teams, or donate cash or multitudes of gift bag freebies to local organizations (one organization wanted a gift bag donation of 300 pieces, a little much for us right now).

Peter Shankman’s help-a-reporter site is a great example of a very successful Natural Give that I am sure involved some money, but mostly Peter’s time and his natural talent for connecting people. In an effort to help reporters and sources get together, Peter created a thrice-daily email that in a very short time has reached over 16,000 people, connecting them all and helping everyone. We have certainly benefited from help-a-reporter, and the reporters we have contacted have certainly benefited from talking to us.

So, instead of feeling guilty every time you are solicited to give, find your Natural Give and stick to it. Remember that there are others out there whose Natural Give is different from yours, so many types of giving are occurring all over the place, even though you are not participating in all of them.