As an entrepreneur, do you wait to give back until you’ve reached a certain level of success? Or, have you considered the impact to your business by starting now?
It doesn’t matter if you opened your doors yesterday, or even if you don’t have doors yet. Giving back and adding a social good component to your business, making it a part of your culture, can reap you, your team, and the world around you many rewards.
Of course, I don’t advocate giving back just to drive traffic to your business. You should find causes close to you and your team, where you can use your talents for good. Doing so creates a win-win-win scenario. You win as a business as you create a truly loyal customer base, your customers win as they can do good simply by supporting a business they like, and the cause wins as they get much needed funding and awareness.
Do you give back financially? Do you donate your time? Do you motivate your team to join local charitable events? Any or all of those are good, but it can be tough to figure out how to integrate social good into your business.
So, if you’ve thought of doing more to give back, here are some great resources:
- Mashable’s Social Good News: http://mashable.com/social-good
- Causecast: http://causecast.com
- Causes.com: http://www.causes.com
- Razoo.com: http://www.razoo.com
- Ammado: http://www.ammado.com
- Do Something: http://www.dosomething.org
- Simon Mainwaring: http://simonmainwaring.com
- Joe Waters: http://selfishgiving.com
- Conferences I hope will return in 2012: We First: http://wefirstseminar.com & Mashable’s Social Good Summit: http://mashable.com/sgs & Sustainable Brands: http://sustainablebrands.com
- eGood: www.eGood.com – launching soon*
Now, you may be asking how this helps with lead generation. Simple answer: support causes your customers care about and they’ll support you. Now, more specifically for lead gen, you can read Joe Water’s post about cause marketing.
*eGood is our project at SWIRE – it’s a social good site we’ll soon be launching. Sign up when you visit and you may get invited to our private beta. Also, we’d love to hear what you think about eGood. To watch our journey unfold, watch it here.
- 10 Social Good Sites Your Business Should Know About - April 26, 2012