Effective Strategies is devoted to sharing ideas that can improve
your business performance. Last issue, we discussed the resources for getting
advice and information to make your business successful. This issue,
we look at business lessons to be learned by volunteering your time. If you missed the last issue,click here to read it.
Feel free to forward this e-mail to anyone who can benefit from this
information. To sign up to receive this e-zine, send an e-mail to
carrie@soarhigher.com.
What I Learned about Business While Working for Free
Year-round, I invest time in my community in volunteer roles that I feel
benefit others. One of these is my commitment to supporting the Creative
Referral Network (aka the Rogers Friday Coffee) and the other local networking
groups. However, I spend a good portion of the second quarter of my year in what I call my
fund-raising season. The last three years, a time-intensive piece of that time
is devoted to coordinating a motorcycle show and poker run called the Cancer Road Challenge.
It is just one part of the Cancer Challenge (www.cancerchallenge.com),
a three-day annual cancer fund-raiser in Northwest Arkansas. Other events include a
massive golf tournament, tennis tournament, run, and trap shoot. This isn’t any
normal fund-raiser — it raised over $750,000 this year.
You may ask, “Why would you sacrifice valuable time from your already packed
schedule for this event? You don’t even ride motorcycles!” Close to this June
event each year, I even ask myself that question when I’m working late hours
trying to make up all the time I spend on the event.
Here are the reasons that I do it and why I encourage you to do it, too.
- It’s really good experience to personally invite people to attend your
fund-raiser. The ability to extend a personal invitation is an important
business skill. Customers don’t invest their time and dollars with organizations
that are apathetic about whether or not they do business with them. Many
customers jump from one business to another because they were personally invited
to do so.
- Charity involvement is a smart part of your marketing strategy. Whether you
want to realize it or not, you are your brand. There is no better way to promote
your company and your abilities than by getting out there face to face with the
community and being a good corporate citizen. When all things are equal between
you and your competitors, your passion for community service can become a
deciding factor for your potential clients.
- You can learn a lot about business from a well-run nonprofit event. You not
only learn about budgeting and projections, you learn about building teams and
managing relationships. I'm proud of my ability to recruit the right
volunteers. Some of the most effective volunteers I’ve met were stay-at-home moms
running major fund-raising activities at their children’s schools. They were
running lean organizations with high profit margins and rolling out programs in
record time. They could teach the corporate executives a thing or two.
- Business success is often about who you know. People are more likely to do
business with someone they know well. I locate professional speakers,
celebrities, and trainers for organizations. While working on the Cancer
Challenge, I rub shoulders with people who hire professional speakers and
celebrities and purchase training for their organization. Because I have gotten
to know some of them over the last three years, we have been able to form good
relationships. It makes it nice when I have something to say when we see each
other instead of, “So, are you ready to do business with me yet?”
- Volunteering is a great way to add influential people to your business
referral network. Some of the most influential people are involved with
charities. Instead of watching the news to find out what is happening in their
community, they are out making news working alongside people like you. They are
most likely to be deeply involved in event planning or boards. That normally
means that they meet regularly with the people they volunteer with as they
fulfill the group’s mission. When you see people more often, you build deeper
relationships. The best referrals come from people you know well.
- Sure, you meet people by volunteering. More importantly, you make friends.
Some of my closest friends are people that volunteer on the same projects that I
do. The moments that we spend together in service are the fibers that make up a
life worth living. We learn about each other and ourselves as we discover our
strengths. I have a group of people I love to volunteer with and our
relationships are richer because we experience the challenges of life together.
- Some of the best stuff on my resume is my volunteer service. The exciting
thing about volunteer work is that you don’t need a certain number of years of
experience or a particular degree to tackle anything you think you’re big enough
to try. For many people, they volunteered for organizations to explore their
talents and dreams and ended up working for the charity. Some like to do what
they are experienced at but others feel a freedom to explore activities they’ve
never tried. There is a reduced risk when your next promotion or raise isn’t
riding on your performance. There is a deeper desire to excel because you are
serving a higher cause. I worry less about making a mistake. Besides, what are
they going to do, fire me?
- Sometimes you get a little publicity for your volunteer work that sparks some
interest in your professional life. Reporters get bored just talking about all
the money you’re going make for charity and what kind of food you’re going to
have and how many people are going to be there. Most reporters prefer a human
interest story so they write about the people behind the event. Here is a recent article
that Bettina Lehovec at the Morning News of Northwest Arkansas wrote about my
work with the Cancer Challenge.
http://www.nwaonline.net/articles/2005/06/12/our_town/05carrie.txt
Okay, it was nice to be recognized and score some sincere publicity for my
charity event. However, over the next three days, I had 1,500 hits to my website
where people learned more about my company. At least 10 people contacted me that
I had never met that I can do business with. People I had never met asked about
my book and my training programs. Not only that, but when people do a search for
my company or my name in the future, the online article will come up in the
search engine results.
- Here is the most important thing of all — you get a chance to make a
difference by serving others. At the end of the day, you will make a difference
to someone in your community. At the end of your life, you will have served
something bigger than yourself. How much better does it get than that?
This is part one of a two-part series on volunteering as a business
strategy. In the next issue, I will discuss tips and tricks for creating a
successful volunteer experience. There is a right way and a wrong way to do it,
and I’ve done both. I will share ideas that will help you create a great
community service experience.
Reader Ideas
Your Opinion Please
Do you have a great small business management idea you’d like to share with
our readers? Share your ideas via e-mail at
carrie@soarhigher.com.
Closing Notes
If you have specific questions and topic ideas, please submit them. I would
be glad to address them in upcoming issues. For more articles,
click here.
Feel free to forward this e-mail to anyone who can benefit from this
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Carrie Perrien Smith
President, Soar With Eagles
Release Your Potential
479.903.0208
Soar with Eagles equips successful individuals and organizations to reach their peak performance through teamwork, communication,
strategic planning, and execution.
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