Raising money, awareness and morale: CSR for SMEs

Prospect Research don’t raise thousands and thousands for charity. Far from it. In six years, we have raised just under £11,000 for East Anglia’s Children’s Hospices. Many more companies would have raised much more than us, but that’s not the point. We’ve been able to donate something towards the hard work of an amazing charity, had a great time fundraising, and it’s brought us together as a team to have some fun.

Lots of SMEs do great charity work. Like us, it’s just part of what they do every year. But there’s plenty that still dismiss CSR work as being too much hassle on top of their already heavy work load. We’d like to say that it doesn’t need to be.

Here are our five top tips for SMEs who want to get involved with raising money for charities.

Get your team’s feedback about who you should support. Come up with a short list of charities, and get a couple to come in and have a chat with your team about the work they do. Corporate fundraising teams are normally more than happy to do this. Then your team can choose who they want support. This will get their buy-in when they come to asking others for donations, and give a purpose to your charity work.

Be realistic about what you can achieve each year. If you only have the resources to support/organise one event a year, just do that. Don’t stretch yourself. Put everything into that one event.

Get all of the team involved. Divvy up jobs. Ensure that everyone’s on task at the event to networking, provide event support.

Utilise the PR opportunities. This is a somewhat un-talked about part of CSR. How uncouth to speak about PR when you’re raising money for a good cause. But charities know that this is a bit part of a company’s involvement, and they are more than happy to provide quotes for you to include in press releases. You can use your involvement with charities to include in press releases, encourage new recruits and add to tenders to show how your team work together.

Have fun!!! Choose events that your team enjoy. Don’t pick a charity parachute jump when only one of your team really wants to do it, and the rest are quaking in their boots. CSR can be a great way to work together to achieve something as a team.

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