Imagine asking a business person, what are your business goals for this year and they business person would respond, “I have no idea”. It is highly unlikely that a serious business person would not know what their business goals are for the year. But, ask a “good person” what their philanthropic goals and your likely to get a confused glazed over look on their face. While it is almost certain that people have personal and business goals it is highly unlike that the average person thinks about philanthropic their goals. The possible reason for this is that people get rewarded for their business goals by being able to live in a nice home, drive a expensive car, and wear elegant clothes. Personal goals are rewarding and may by be essential like being healthy and fit. Philanthropic goals on the other hand are things that you are not supposed to brag about and make a big deal about. Community involvement just does not seem to be as important or pressing but, studies shows that volunteering and giving to charity are the habits of highly successful people. The benefits include personal networking like minded people and developing new relationships that eventually results in a new career or future clients. People that are involved in charity work are usually the leaders of the community and tend to be the most educated and wealthy people of our society. Community involvement is a great way to open new doors for your personal development. It is the best shortcut to living a significant and meaningful life. These are some tips to establishing your giving goals and developing the philanthropist in you. Setting and achieving charity goals will help you develop as a whole person. 1. First, determine what causes you are most passionate about or align with your business goals. If you own a pet store you can more effectively benefit a cause that helps pets because it aligns with your client base and scope of knowledge. Your affiliation with this charity can actually be classified as a marketing activity and benefit your business goals as well as your philanthropic goals at the same time. This is an example of working smarter instead of harder. 2. Next, develop a list of charities in your local community that does social service in this area. Choosing a local charity makes it easier for you to stay involved with the charity and you can help recruit people in the local community to assist in the charitable work of this organization. Non-profits that are headquartered far away may have a local chapter in your community. 3. Then, make sure the charity you have chosen is in good standing with the Department of Justice, secretary of state and is a registered 501C3 with the IRS. You can google the Secretary of state in your state and your can do a business search to see if they are in good standing with your secretary of state. You would be surprised how many well-known charities have lost their good standing with the state. The Departement of Justice also keeps files on charities that are public record. 4. Determine what the potential social impact of the charity is upon the community. Looking up a charities standing with a website that reviews charities does not necessarily translate into social impact. While it is a fast and easy way to eliminate charities off your list many non-profits are doing outstanding work in the community but are not listed on these website because they do not have a budget to obtain a membership with these online evaluation services or the non-profit is simple too small for the evaluation service to be interested in reviewing the organization. In a recent interview with customer service representative of an online charity ranking website, the customer service rep stated that they are mostly interested in reviewing non-profits with a budget of 4 million dollars or more. This automatically eliminates about 90% of non-profits that operate on a budget of less than 4 million. Larger non-profits have staff and a budget allocated for working with online charity review websites while most non-profits are understaffed and do not have the resources to rank high on these specialized sites. 5. Learn more about the charity by visiting its website. Interview a director and ask them not just about the quality of work they do and not just the number of people they serve. For example: if the organization provides food, what is the quality of the food served and the way that it is delivered to its clients. (Some non-profits are terrible negligent in their food safety measures and the food they provide is not suitable for human consumption. Only 1% of the food needs to be contaminated for people to get a foodborne illness. While other organizations use only fresh products for cooking that are purchase at a store and cooked in an industrial kitchen. ) 6. Also, try to determine what the mission and values of the non-profit leadership. While giving money to a non-profit may not be illegal, it may be unethical if it allocates moneys to activities that are unethical. This is a very personal evaluation and will be evaluated by your own ethical standards. In the whole scope of things this is perhaps the most important factor. For example: some terrorists organizations do great acts of social service but funnel moneys to finance terrorism abroad and sometimes domestically. Be very careful that the charity is not in violation of the Rico Act and have not been linked to organized crime by Homeland Security. 7. Finally, create a personal giving budget for the year and communicate your giving goals to your non-profit. Knowing your giving intentions helps the non-profit spend less on its fundraising expenses and can budget the money in other areas you intended the money to be spent on. This will help drive down the charities administrative costs and improve its social impact. Taking careful consideration of all your finances will help you make a proper determination of how much you can afford to allocate to charity and avoid a personal financial pinch. Jose Rodriguez
Posted on: Fri, 02 Jan 2015 05:10:44 +0000
Trending Topics
Recently Viewed Topics
© 2015