By Betsy Nelson
Special to The Daily Record
March 29, 2003 The local Little League team needs money for uniforms.
The senior center down the street asks for help printing its newsletter.
The food pantry wants your company to help with a food drive.
Before you know it, you have a full-fledged business charitable giving program.
But a charitable giving program is a lot like other aspects of your business. Good planning goes a long way toward making it a success.
The Baltimore Giving Project and the Association of Baltimore Area Grantmakers recently developed the Maryland Business Giving Workbook to assist businesspeople in Maryland in making their giving programs more effective, as well as to assist those who wish to start a charitable giving program.
Sponsored by Mercantile Bank & Trust, the Maryland Business Giving Workbook is designed as an easy-to-use, 65-page workbook with questionnaires and samples.
The workbook takes businesspeople step-by-step through the process of designing and implementing a charitable giving program.
It includes tips and strategies for cash giving, including direct grants, matching funds for employee donations, and dollars-for-doers programs, in which companies donate funds to nonprofit organizations at which employees volunteer.
It also provides help in starting non-cash charitable giving, including donating goods, providing pro bono professional or technical services, and sponsoring events.
“Nonprofit organizations provide critically needed services to our community. Many individuals support these organizations with generous donations,” said Janice Davis, director of Corporate Communications, Mercantile Bank & Trust.
“More and more, we also have the opportunity to support them as employees of public-spirited companies. Mercantile is very pleased to sponsor The Maryland Business Giving Workbook in order to expand and promote the power of corporate philanthropy,” she said.
Steps to success
Here are the basic steps used to establish a successful business giving program:
Clarify your goals: What do you hope to accomplish with your giving program? Identify the tax benefits: What can you deduct as a charitable contribution? Set a budget: How much do you want to give? Set up a process: Will you accept solicitations? Who decides? Set up criteria for evaluating requests: What information will you ask for? The many ways businesses answer these questions lead to very different kinds of giving programs.
For example, a business with a goal of increasing employee morale might emphasize employee involvement with the giving program. This business could set up a matching gifts program, in which the company matches employee contributions to nonprofits.
It could also engage employees in a company-wide volunteer effort, and have employees sit on the committee that makes decisions about cash grants.
A company that wants to have an impact on a particular issue (for example, a publishing company that wants to see increases in literacy) could steer all its cash donations to local literacy programs, give employees release time to volunteer as tutors, and make in-kind donations of books to local schools and libraries.
By aligning it with the company's goals, a charitable giving program can be an effective business strategy, as well as a way for a company to make a real difference in the community.
Copies of the Maryland Business Giving Workbook can be obtained by downloading from the Baltimore Giving Project Web site or by requesting a print copy for $15 via email at bgp@abagmd.org or by phone, 410-727-0719. --------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Betsy Nelson is executive director of the Association of Baltimore Area Grantmakers. Her column appears every other week. She can be contacted at bnelson@abagmd.org.
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