August 20, 2009 | Read Time: 1 minute
NEW BOOKS
Small Businesses Give Big
edited by Maggie F. Keenan
Maggie F. Keenan, owner of Givingadvice, a company that advises businesses on philanthropy, edited this collection of profiles of small businesses that incorporate charitable giving into their operations. Each chapter is devoted to a different company and provides anecdotes about how their giving programs started or offers advice on how businesses can give.
The Seattle Chocolate Company began donating to breast-cancer research when its owner and chief executive, Jean Thompson, suspected she had the illness. Although she tested negative, Ms. Thompson wanted to contribute to the cause and thus added a chocolate named Survivor Chick to complement the company’s popular line of women’s chocolates. The item was popular, but sold only during October, breast-cancer awareness month.
To increase sales and what the company could give, Ms. Thompson decided to place a very small pink ribbon on the back of another best-selling product available across the nation all year long.
The O’Neill Pine Company, in Salem, Ore., introduced the concept of “business tithing” to its employees: in addition to the organization’s giving 10 percent of its net income to charity, workers would be expected to devote 10 percent of paid work hours to volunteering at nonprofit groups. The company also encourages employees to report unpaid volunteer hours and reports that these hours are at least triple that of paid service hours.
Ms. Keenan writes, “The message, purpose, and plan are the most important elements for a giving program to withstand hard economic times, and it will build your reputation as a business that stands for something beyond the balance sheet.”
Publisher: Alma Publishing, 170 West Ellendale, Suite 103, #135, Dallas, Ore. 97338; 112 pages; $16.95; ISBN 978-0-9796745-5-6.
