As a company, aligning your giving with your mission is something you can do year-round — and it’s easier than you may think.
There are many great opportunities for giving during the holiday season. It’s a natural time to think about our neighbors and community. Yet, there are other ways to keep that spirit alive throughout the rest of the year, and to keep your businesses’ mission front and center with your employees and customers.
From the founding of SheMarkets Group, it’s been woven into our mission to give back to the community via charitable giving and volunteerism.
How We Encourage a Culture of Giving
There’s nothing like the feeling of sharing with others. Altruism not only lifts us up in the moment, but according to the There’s nothing like the feeling of sharing with others. Altruism not only lifts us up in the moment, but according to the Greater Good Science Center, it is one of the twelve Keys to Well-Being with long-lasting implications for our health and happiness.
While our pursuit of giving may have been motivated more out of a sense of feeling great about giving back and less about scientific data, we’re happy the science confirms it is a practice worthy of serious time and attention.
Here are four ways we’ve baked giving into the day-to-day at SheMarkets Group:
💗 Pro-Bono Work. We select a small business or nonprofit to work with who either would not be able to afford our services or we LOVE what they’re doing and want to help out! Our goal is to work with one pro bono client per quarter. (And we’re taking nominations now for 2022 if you have your favorite org or business to nominate!)
💗 Monthly Lunch & Learns. Our Lunch and Learn topics originally grew out of a desire to raise awareness about causes team members are already involved in. Each month we invite a speaker to come share their mission with our team for an hour. At the end, team members are encouraged to ask questions, are invited to learn more, or told how to donate in support of the speakers’ mission if inclined to do so. Since starting these monthly gatherings we’ve hosted speakers on topics as diverse as gender-based violence and human trafficking to local policy development to food justice and food sovereignty.
💗 Employee Birthday Charitable Giving. This is a favorite for many of us! On each of our birthdays, we get to choose where a donation will be made by SheMarkets Group in our name! This not only helps team members expand their own giving efforts, it raises awareness for other team members about causes and organizations they otherwise may not hear about. So far gifts have been made in our team members’ names to: Days for Girls, Instituto Onça Pintada, the Friends Committee on National Legislation, the Redwood Empire Food Bank, Dogwood Animal Rescue, Salish School of Spokane, Syrian Emergency Task Force, St. Croix Environmental Association, among others.
💗 Encouraging Volunteerism. We encourage a culture of sharing about what volunteer work we’re doing in our communities. It’s a great way to learn about team members and their outside interests, give charitable organizations exposure, and promote the importance of volunteering as part of a well-rounded life.