How To Start a Local Business Volunteer Council

Here in the SF area, across the bay, lies a group of communities called the East Bay where businesses care about by giving back through volunteering and donations. As an example, last year we referred to an article, that emerged from the East Bay, Why Giving is Good for Business.  Now we get to see a role model of a group of businesses that have joined forces in the mission of volunteering for local charities in their community.


East Bay Business Volunteer Council (BVC) was founded by individuals from companies such as AAA, Charles Schwab, Safeway and others, as a coalition of businesses with the common purpose of community engagement and business volunteering. At their regularly scheduled meetings,  they provide the opportunity for members to exchange information and recognize best practices as well as identify and learn about the volunteering needs in the community. With membership there is free consulting provided by the staff to members on how to develop a volunteer program. Their programs include listings of volunteer needs, student volunteering, volunteer opportunity calender, holiday volunteering events, and organized disaster response. They are affiliated with HandsonNetwork. This organization is a terrific model for any community of businesses to follow.

How to start a similar business Volunteer Council in your community or area.

• Brainstorm together with a few like minded business leaders on how to start such a group.
• Tie in with a local community foundation, or Chamber of Commerce to set up an organization. This helps offset any start up costs of creating a non-profit on your own.
• Develop a mission  and vision statement that reflects the needs of your community and of what your organization wants to accomplish.
• Create an affiliation with a volunteer opportunities provider such as Hands On Network, or with a local organization such as a community foundation. 
• Develop a database of all the non-profits in the area and their volunteer needs
• Develop relationships with local non-profits, with links to their websites.
• Structure monthly meeting times at opportune, breakfast, lunch, or after hours, that is convenient for most and serve food!
• Publicize your organization in local media or through direct marketing though the business community, to encourage more businesses to join.
• Invite local non-profits to come to the meetings or better yet, create a membership category just for them.
• Let businesses know what the benefits are to their business for joining the organization.
• Offer members free consultation to help with developing an employee volunteer program.

What are the benefit's?  BVC describes this well on their website. But the benefits are much the same as described in the article cited above. Basically, giving back whether in time, money, services is good for your business because it helps build your community and in the end the community helps your business grow.

Wondering How Your Business Can Navigate the Maze of Giving?

Understanding philanthropy can be a maze that can confuse and discourage any business that would like to start a giving program. There are a whole lot of worthy causes out there that small businesses may have the desire to give to but don't understand the landscape of  philanthropy enough to know where to begin. While some businesses prefer to support local causes and non-profits, others would to like support organizations that address broader problems such as health, hunger, water, poverty, the environment, or world peace. And when disasters strike, like last year's earthquake in Haiti, knowing which types of donations and which charities are  the most effective at delivering aid becomes critical. 

Sometimes businesses may have a cause in mind  but are unsure of which charities deserve their philanthropy. Take for example the cause of promoting breast cancer awareness and supporting breast cancer research. With all the "pink" around in Oct. how would one necessarily know which breast cancer non-profit to give to -Susan B.Komen for the Cure or The Breast Cancer Research Foundation? What is helpful is to have a guide that anyone can use to check out the different charities and their effectiveness.

The folks at  Masters of Public Administration.com have published online such a resource:  Give Smart: 25 Websites To Learn A Charity's Effectiveness and Efficiency. Their site offers the links to 25 websites of organizations and government agencies that rate charities, compile approval ratings, and unmask illegal behaviors. Small businesses can now have the opportunity to research which charities are well managed and which ones best serve their cause effectively which can help them make decisions on where to give wisely.

Joseph Morris the founder of Masters Of Business Administration.com offers a basic definition of what qualifies as a charity:

According to the IRS, an organization qualifies as a charity if 35% or less of its income goes to administrative expenses such as salary and operating costs.

And he adds that:

With literally thousands of groups qualifying, it can be confusing to decide which organization to give to. Every day, the images of those who need help reach us, along with mailings, charity walks, food drives, and even guys dressed as Santa ringing a bell.
With literally billions of dollars at stake, how does the average person navigate this maze of giving?

Here are a few of the organizations that assess and rate charities using different criteria that Joseph Morris  has mentioned:

American Institute of Philanthropy- Stop here for a nationally prominent charity watchdog service whose purpose is to help donors make informed giving decisions. They rate, grade, focus on top salaries, and other hot issues in the charity sector. You can also read tips for giving wisely and hear what others have to say.a charity watchdog service help donors make informed giving decisions by rating and grading non-profit organizations.
Charity Navigator- This site works to advance a more efficient and responsive philanthropic marketplace by evaluating the financial health of over 5,500 of America’s largest charities. You can browse by every category from animals to religion. There are also loads of top ten lists to keep you busy such as “Top 10 Most Requested Charities” and “10 Super-Sized Charities.” There are also tips, methodology information, and more. Be sure not to miss the blog with more in charity evaluation.lists charities by categories and evaluates the based them on their
Guide Star-The tagline of this site is “trusted data, customizable analysis, targeted results.” Recently reviewed organizations often make the list and are done by volunteers, clients, and donors. They even offer an Exchange Seal to outstanding charities.

In addition, the guide lists associations and government agencies such as the BBB ( Better Business Bureau), the IRS, the FBI, the FTC, other blogs and online reports that research and document fraud and illegal behaviors in the non-profit sector and other useful sources such as online news sites, and websites, most notably The Chronicle of Philanthropy.

This is a terrific resource where any business can find almost anything that one needs to know in order to be able make an informed decision about how best to administer their philanthropy.

Related posts you may be interested in:
Looking For a Cause
100 Books That Will Inspire Your Giving
How Not To Business Philanthropy Like Skecher's BOBS
Black and White and Pink All Over

B1G1 – Global Giving Partnering Businesses With Charities

Buy One Give One (BOGO) is the home of transaction-based giving.

STOP. Take a breath. And imagine you were part of a world where every single transaction made a difference.

Imagine, for a moment, you purchased a television, and automatically a cataract-blind person got the gift of sight. Automatically. Or imagine if today you purchased a cup of coffee and someone in Africa got access to clean, pure drinking water as a direct result. Again automatically.

It’s all happening right now. Already Buy1GIVE1 (Buy1/Give1) has become a true global giving ‘village’, bringing together businesses, their customers and worthy causes in a way that’s never been done before.

It’s happening globally, every second, every day and in every way with a staggering 556 projects already underway and making a difference.

That’s because in the Buy1GIVE1 world, every single sales transaction, be it buying a cup of coffee in Cape Town or renting a car in Reno (and everything in between) gives back in a well-defined, resonant and measurable way.

In this present economy, when both corporations and charities have seen a decrease in profits and donations, cause-related marketing appears to really be catching on. Cause-related marketing is a business scheme involving a partnership between a company with a product to sell and a charity with a cause to advance. As opposed to “corporate philanthropy,” which simply involves a company making a tax-deductible charitable donation, cause-related marketing benefits both the company (by helping to increase sales, and thus, profits), and the charity (by giving contributions and calling attention to the cause.)

You buy a book, a tree gets planted. You dine out, a child is fed. Buy One Give One – simple. The list is endless and the giving simply happens automatically, every second, every day and in every way.

And it is beautifully simple. Buy1GIVE1 is now becoming a global movement as more and more businesses jump on board and enjoy the incredible benefits of transaction based giving.

In Buy1GIVE1, they made sure that in all cases, the consumers are not only involved in CSR initiatives on a daily basis. Buy1-Give1 generates answers to that and it does it every second, every day and in every way.

Discover more about how Buy1GIVE1 (BOGO) can transform your business using Cause Marketing.

This article, B1G1 – Global Giving Partnering Businesses With Charities has free reprint rights.


Article From Articles Cafe