You can only go so far with conventional PR activities, for example, placing stories in the appropriate media. However, by donating your expertise or by taking part in activities based in, or associated with, the community in which you do business, you can do more to raise your local profile than any amount of paid advertising – and it needn’t necessarily cost a lot of money.

One thing any business needs is a good image. This guide looks at ways to help you raise your profile, with the two-fold objective of letting potential customers know that (a) you exist and (b) you are the sort of organisation they’d like to deal with.

Connecting your business to the community

While almost any sort of connection that raises your profile is a good thing, it works best if there is some sort of logic to the connection, for example, a sports equipment shop would fit well with local schools.

Sponsored events lead to business

One men’s and boys’ clothing shop sponsored events at several schools. When one of these schools wanted to appoint an official supplier for its uniforms, this shop was the obvious one to approach. Several other schools soon followed suit, allowing the shop not only to boost its business on the uniform side, but also allowing it to open a new department for girls’ school clothes.

Charitable activities as a training exercise

You can use community work to gain valuable experience. One publishing company helped its local village school write and design a new prospectus. Not only did the company raise its own profile among all the parents at the school, but also it uses projects like these as low-risk training exercises for staff to learn or practise new skills.

Working together results in additional publicity

Working with the community does not always involve giving. You could put on events or activities of general interest to the public or to a particular group. For example, when Dee Brain opened a shop selling designer dresses, she didn't have any money to spend on advertising. So she contacted the local Cancer Research Campaign office and offered to put on a fashion show for them. They were delighted. They worked on their contacts to get a lot of publicity for the show. They also had a big mailing list of likely donors whom they invited to the show. The show was a sell-out and a great success. The charity kept all the ticket money; Dee Brain sold her clothes and launched her shop memorably.

Your business may not be one with an obvious connection to community organisations, and the longer-term benefits to you may not be that obvious. However, there is almost always some way to establish a bond to mutual advantage. The returns may take some time in coming and may arise in some surprising ways. For example, it could be that the chair of a charity you sponsor turns out also to run a business that will need your services next year.

Why connect?

What you are ultimately trying to do falls into two categories:

• Encouraging people to come to your business because you provide something directly connected to their needs and interests. Examples include a consultancy specialising in environmentally-friendly buildings. It held a series of lunches for local councils and transport companies. This produced several consultancy jobs, including one advising the local council on solar heating systems. Or the firm of solicitors which holds seminars on appropriate topics for various associations, such as a copyright seminar for writers’ groups.
  
• Encouraging people to use your business because your community activities demonstrate your overall company ethos. This covers the restaurant that provides free hot drinks for a winter charity walkathon, the print shop that prints free flyers for local charity events and the residents’ association, and the travel agent that gives a free holiday each year as a raffle prize for their local pensioners’ charity.

In either case you also gain customers who wouldn’t have known you existed until they found your name in the programme of sports event or a newspaper report on something that interests them, or actually met you or your staff at an event.

What sorts of connection are available?

Charities

The most obvious connection is with charities. In some circumstances, straight gifts to charities may be tax advantageous both to your business and the charity, but you should check this out with your accountant before making a commitment, as you may have to comply with certain rules or lose the benefit.

Otherwise, account for the money under the heading of advertising and other marketing promotions. There are many ways of doing this. For instance, you might pay for some printing that includes advertising for your business, or provide vests for a charity fund-raising walk that bear walkers’ numbers alongside your logo.

Non-profit making organisations

The next set of deserving recipients is other non-profit making organisations. Think of schools, hospitals (these usually have a ‘Friends’ group), sports clubs, allotment societies, museums or art galleries. Almost every hobby or interest has a group of enthusiasts who need financial or other help.

There are many other local events that are not officially registered charities, such as a fund-raising drive to send a local child abroad for life-saving medical treatment.

You might involve your business in other community ‘one-off’ concerns, such as worries about an increase in town-centre violence, or a proposed rubbish recycling plant. In many such situations you could provide meeting facilities, arrange speakers and so on.

What you can do when you’ve made a connection

Once you’ve made connections, there are numerous possibilities to develop them. The simplest and, oddly enough, probably the least effective in raising your profile, is donating money. This is probably because to the public eye it lacks involvement. You might tell the local media that you have made a large donation, but unless you let them know that what you have given involves a major sacrifice on your part, like donating your holiday money for this year, the public is more likely to conclude that you are a fat cat trying to ease your conscience. If giving cash is all you can do, try to do it based on ‘I’ll match what the campaign collects’.

Here are some other possibilities:

• Pay for something like programme printing or drinks at an event. Put this through your advertising expenses by having your name or logo prominently displayed.
  
• Offer resources. Known as ‘in-kind’ giving, this means offering things that you use in your business. It might be something connected with your product, such as cardboard boxes to pack toys and blankets for refugees, or something from your administration processes, such as photocopying or letter typing. You might produce and distribute a newsletter for a charity, or a prospectus for a local school. Space is also valuable: think of an empty office, meeting rooms, parking space for a community bus, warehouse space for those refugee donations.
  
• Offer your expertise. One multi-lingual travel agent provided translations for an immigrant support group, while an architect helped a scout group with the plans for their new hut complex.
  
• Offer discounts to members of charity support groups.
  
• Pass on your obsolete equipment (get it serviced first). Many items which are no longer suitable for your operation or which are just a bit old-fashioned are extremely acceptable to charities. Computers and their peripherals are the classic items for this purpose, but a restaurant might pass on crockery to a ‘feed the homeless’ centre, or a boutique its last-season’s range of unsold clothing. The organisation In-Kind Direct can help you to donate surplus stock. Based in London, it receives goods from businesses and distributes them to a wide range of charities, providing feedback on where the items have gone, which can then be incorporated in newsletters and literature. In-Kind Direct deals with new goods, but will accept used computers. They will erase data and software from computers before passing them on.
  
• Lend staff during slack periods. This shouldn’t be a problem as long as the staff are happy to do such tasks.
  
• ‘Adopt’ a local charity and devote a few days to it each year. You might organise and run a fund-raising event for it, or just encourage your staff to work on an existing annual event, such as Red Nose Day.
  
• Encourage your staff to give their own time to local community projects and back them up by making the businesses resources available to them. Open the offices at weekends so they can do their volunteer work there, or lend a vehicle to help with projects such as clearing a canal or the village pond. However, check that your relevant insurance policies cover these extra activities, should anything go wrong.

Redefine ‘local’ community

‘Local community’ used to mean somewhere that was geographically close to where your business operates – within a few miles perhaps. But the world is getting smaller every day, and if your business is one that finds its customers and delivers its product to them by national media, the Internet or the post, you can redefine ‘local’ to mean wherever your customers can be found.

One very successful insurance broker, who specialised in insurance for horses and riders, hit on the idea of giving £5 vouchers as prizes at horse shows. It offered these vouchers to all the organisations that run special championship classes at horse shows throughout the country, and set no limit on how many vouchers it would accept as part payment for any of the policies it offered. A roaring success, this scheme has raised this broker’s profile to the extent that every rider in the country knows who they are – and a high proportion now use them for all their insurance.

Tell the media

Local newspaper and radio editors are always looking for material to fill their pages and programmes – but if you don’t tell them what you’ve been doing, it is unlikely that anyone else will.

So every time you have anything to report connected with your charitable activities, prepare and send a press release telling them about it. Send it on your letterhead, emphasise your local roots, then give details of what you have done, and end by adding your contact details.

Of course, if it is a big event and you have plenty of advance warning, let them know well in advance and add a handwritten note inviting them to send a photographer along. Remember that the visually striking or unusual the event, the more likely they are to want photos, so if you are organising these events think of something different and eye-catching – a rhubarb fencing competition, say, or a custard painting event.

Where to find partners and other help

There are several organisations that can offer guidance on these projects:

• Business in the Community offers guidance on cause related marketing and offers a ProHelp programme of over 1000 professional firms committed to providing free advice and strategic support to community and voluntary organisations.
  
• Business Community Connections will help business and community projects get together and form partnerships. It also has a directory of
  broker organisations that provide practical assistance in finding partnerships.
  
• The National Association of Councils for Voluntary Services offers a brokering service for employee volunteering, and also a booklet Brilliant brokerage – tips for success.

Most of these organisations deal with national charities and organisations. A perfectly good way to find something to support is to read your local newspaper. There will be many reports of upcoming events and appeals for help that you can answer. You could also join your local branch of the Lions or Rotary Clubs and join in their various fund-raising events. This is another good way to plug yourself into the local business network.

Raising your profile in the community is good for business in many ways. That said, you must always keep an eye on your own commercial needs.

Useful contacts

In-Kind Direct

T: 020 7860 5930
W: www.inkinddirect.org

Business in the Community

T: 0870 600 2482
W: www.bitc.org.uk

Business Community Connections

Organisation that encourages business involvement in the community. Website contains links to many useful contacts.

T: 020 8973 2390
W: www.bcconnections.org.uk

The National Association of Councils for Voluntary Services

It offers a brokering service for employee volunteering and also a booklet, 'Brilliant brokerage – tips for success'.

T: 0114 278 6636
W: www.nacvs.org.uk

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