Helping in Your Community Can Really Help Your Business

Yes, it can. I don’t mean just writing a check to a local charity. Use the skills and talents of your company to contribute real value. Talk to your local housing authority and ask if there is a home that needs new windows to save energy. Maybe ask if the local school needs a new door that offers security. How about teaching glass cutting and glazing at a shop class? Or recaulk a senior citizen’s windows?

Each one of these options and hundreds more use your skills to help others. That alone should make you feel proud to help. Ask for volunteers to work on an extra Saturday and do a job that is needed. Some people say that you don’t have to pay your team if they volunteer. I disagree. Pay your team and your team will pay you back ten times over.

So far you have bought new windows or a door and spent big bucks on your labor team. Beside the pride, what is your payback? The week before the work day call every newspaper in a 20-mile radius and ask to speak with the assignments desk. Explain what you are doing and ask if a reporter can visit during your good deed.  Do the same with television, radio and for any local person who will put this on the web.

Get new T-shirts for your team on the special day. Order enough for your team and extras to give to the reporters who come to your jobsite. Make sure your safety gear is clean. If the job is a hard-hat job, see that all political stickers and rude remarks are off the hard hats.

With materials and labor, you may spend from $1,000 to $5,000. A 30 second spot on the evening news or a third page article in local papers would cost you ten times that.

It is good to help people in your community. If you give personal donations anywhere, that is your business and private. If you use your business then it is proper to get the community involved.

Good luck with this. If any of our readers do this, please drop me a note at paulbaseball@msn.com to let me hear of your success.