Discovering the Steps for Your Business to Set Up a Successful Charitable Foundation
You may have heard about certain companies getting a lot of attention from people and the media because they were able to align themselves with very noble charitable causes. In fact, many of today’s successful brands are able to generate good approval ratings from the public due to their unfailing commitment to making a positive difference to society. And it would be in your best interest—and that of the company that you built—if you were to also take a stand and let the public know that your brand has a philanthropic side.
Wanting to establish a charitable foundation as a way to extend your corporate branding in a positive way is something that requires careful consideration on multiple factors. Even if your intentions are genuinely, consciously altruistic, you can’t just simply make grand charitable gestures on behalf of your company just because you want to do so. You need to be very smart and strategic about this type of situation since acting too rashly might cause people to think that you have underlying ulterior motives for being so charitable all of a sudden.
Much like the way you handle your daily business operations, you must be prudent when it comes to setting up a charitable trust or foundation in which your business will be held responsible for. All eyes will be on you once you go public with this step, so you have to be extra careful throughout every step of the process. Though this may be a daunting challenge, it’s something you can conceivably manage. That being said, look to the details featured below to know how your business can set up a successful charitable foundation.
Identify your core charitable cause
Before you even begin to start your journey of corporate selflessness and altruism, you should first need to determine exactly what kind of cause you intend to support. With so much hardship and strife plaguing the world at large, it can be rather challenging to pinpoint just one issue where you want to make a difference. And the operative phrase here is “making a difference” because this is the central conceit of your noble intentions.
And as much as you want to support multiple causes in the name of generating goodwill to society, it’s wiser to stick to one charitable issue so that you won’t run the risk of spreading yourself too thin. Whether you decide to align yourself with supporting medical research to find cures for serious diseases or wanting to join the green movement and help save the environment, make it a choice that you and your company can deeply relate with.
Always do your homework first
Of course, you can’t just decide that you want to support a cause without first knowing what that particular issue is all about and what can be done to address the concern. Before making that bold step of being a charitable champion, you have to do a considerable amount of in-depth research about the type of cause you plan on supporting. This is done to ensure that you’ll have ample knowledge on what exactly you are going to be dealing with.
Moreover, studying up on a particular cause that you have chosen will allow you to figure out a solid gameplan as to how you’ll be able to make your altruistic contributions. And there’s also the possibility that you’ll be speaking publicly about why you made your selection towards that cause, so it definitely pays to be well-informed about a topic whenever the press or public comes up to you for details and information.
Formulate feasible solutions
There’s so much more to charity than just throwing away your money towards nonprofit groups and charitable organizations, so you have to be very prudent when trying to come up with solutions that are not onl realistic, but they should also lend credibility to the fact that your business or company is doing the right thing. In fact, you could come up with a range of ideas that could change the way people think about doing charity for good.
For instance: if you’re looking to help underprivileged children get access to decent education, then you could set up a scholarship fund where your business will select a group of disenfranchised kids and sponsor their tuition fees. This is an ideal example because it allows you and your company to be more closely involved with the process of helping others who will be able to benefit greatly from your philanthropy and generosity.
Plan your long-term goals
When a business decides to showcase its philanthropic side, then that company must commit to being an institution that is dedicated to helping society in perpetuity. Charity isn’t just something that businesses can turn on and off whenever they feel like it; companies should take responsibility for their decision if they declare themselves to be agents of positive change. That being said, your intentions must be viewed from a long-term perspective.
Mapping out your long-term goals is absolutely necessary because you have to treat your philanthropic missions the way you would facilitate your daily business operations. Think about where your charitable foundation will hope to achieve within the next five years, and then determine which direction your charity group will go in ten more years down the line. You have to be conscious about these things all the time because it’s important for you to be able to achieve whatever milestones you’ve set for yourself.
Make fundraising a priority
You have to face facts that the source of the funds for your charitable institution shouldn’t come exclusively from the accounts or pockets of your own business. If that would be the case, then you’d probably go out of business rather quickly. In order to offset the burden of having to shoulder the expenses of maintaining your charitable organization, you have to seek assistance from others by launching and hosting fundraising campaigns or events.
Fundraisers are a great way for your community to get involved with helping the cause you are championing, and when you are able to collect a healthy amount of donations from people, then you won’t have to worry about giving everything all by yourself. Just remember to be always transparent with your donors whenever you invite them to fundraisers since they want to know whether their money is being used wisely.
