5 Pointers to Produce a Perfect Pledge
5 Pointers to Produce a Perfect Pledge
- Businesses want to give back.
- People want to make a difference.
- Having a positive impact on the world around you makes us feel good.
All facts, but the question many have is ‘where on earth do we start?’
Ensuring an organisation’s CSR or ESG strategy is understood, rolled out and relatable throughout the company is often difficult and many employees don’t know how to make use of the volunteering days provided to them let alone how to tangibly contribute to the wider organisational aims and objectives.
So, what can you do? Make Good Grow recently launched our Business Pioneer Pledge Programme – a simple way of businesses identifying, organising and curating their giving back. All pledges feature on our newly launched Pledge Marketplace – literally a one-stop-shop for any products, services or support offers pledged by a business. It gives Good Causes the chance to go shopping for free and get the benefit of amazing, invaluable things to help them thrive.
So how does a business put together the perfect pledge? One that can maximise the benefits to Good Causes whilst satisfying a businesses key ESG objectives? Our MD, Rob Langley-Swain details his top 5 tips…
- What’s in front of you everyday, but not used every day? Many businesses have unused resources and spaces that are an important part of your business, but often not being used to full capacity – so much so that they blend in and often go unnoticed. Think about meeting rooms, hotel bedrooms, offices or event spaces that could be useful for a Good Cause to host an away day, team meeting or even an event. Or perhaps you have products, software or other stuff that a good cause may be able to use in a raffle. Every little helps!
- Start with your people! Skilled volunteers (we call them Passioneers) are what our platform was founded on. Those people that graft hard to transfer the skills they use every day at work to make an incredible impact with a Good Cause. And your business is full of these people. Professional individuals and teams that work hard in their job roles, that could use their skills to make a difference in the community through skilled volunteering. Talk to these people and get them involved in deciding how they can use their skills for good. You can turn a simple employer supported volunteering programme into a measurable pledge. We can productise the skills your team has to create invaluable resources and support for Good Causes. For example – 1 day of an administrator’s time could become ‘Minute taking’ or ‘proof reading’ for a Good Causes
- Engage different teams across the business? You may be a flooring business or a fast food company and be a little stuck as to what you could pledge, but don’t worry! We know you will have a host of teams and individuals with a range of different skills sets. You can still challenge your digital team to commit to 4 social media audits a year, or your accountancy team may want to pledge to support a number of good causes with their annual report – the list is endless. And a little in-house competition is both motivating and good fun!
- Don’t be modest! We always encourage you to think big when it comes to a pledge – not necessarily in terms of what it’s worth, but always what value it could give to a charity. So, look at your teams’ transferable skills and work from there.
- What does success look like? A good starting point for any pledge is to understand what you, as a business, want the results to look like and how a pledge can fit into your business. So, what are your ESG objectives and targets? What impact do you want your company to make in the space of a month, quarter or a year? In addition to this, knowing what your busy and quiet times look like and when is a better time of year or a better time of the month to pledge your services can all help you start to craft pledges that compliment your business.
Making a pledge is not rocket science, but putting something together that can benefit a number of parties can be tricky. Our overall advice is to think outside the box, present us with a few ideas, or let us talk you through a few ideas, and we can help formulate a pledge that won’t cost you the earth, but will be priceless and mean the world to the Good Cause in our community.
As Arthur Ashe famously said: “Start where you are. Use what you have. Do what you can.”