Regardless of size, companies benefit when the community in which they do business thrives. For entrepreneurs, giving back to the community is more than just a charitable act; it makes good business sense. If you have been reluctant to get involved in philanthropic activities, fearing it could cost too much and distract your employees, think again. Community involvement can strengthen your company directly by bringing in new business and indirectly by enhancing your company’s reputation and improving employee morale.

The Possibilities

Crafting a charitable giving strategy for your business involves more than just selecting a worthy organization and writing a check. While you may get a tax deduction on cash donations, your business may get considerably more out of community involvement, especially if you carefully consider the causes you want to support and the organizations that would make appropriate partners for your company.

The type of charitable giving you choose may be influenced by the type of business you operate, the interests of your employees, and the needs of the community. Whether your company produces goods or provides services, organizations within your community could likely benefit from your support. A restaurant or caterer, for example, could choose to donate leftovers to a soup kitchen or homeless shelter. A construction company could donate materials and labor for building a community playground or renovating a youth center. Involvement in such worthy initiatives may be very effective in making a positive influence in the community.

Getting the Word Out

To maximize the impact of your charitable efforts, your company (or the organization your company is helping) may choose to distribute a press release or inform the local media about upcoming events and activities. This often results in free—and positive—publicity for your company. It may also be possible for the charity to help increase your company’s visibility through its marketing resources. When partnering with a nonprofit, you may be able to arrange for your company’s name and logo to appear on the organization’s advertising materials and website.

Benefits to Your Company

Ongoing charitable involvement can help attract new customers and engender loyalty within your existing customer base. A company that donates a portion of its profits to worthy charitable causes may gain a competitive advantage. It can generate goodwill among customers and enhance your company’s reputation to be associated with important causes in your community, such as helping abused children, improving literacy skills, or finding homes for abandoned pets.

Employee morale can also be improved through charitable initiatives. When deciding which causes your business will support, be sure to include your employees, especially if you want them to participate in events. By asking your employees what causes are close to their hearts, you may discover that some have personal passions that can prove valuable to a charitable campaign. Providing paid time off for charitable work may be considered a valuable benefit by your staff. Having your employees volunteer as a group can serve as a positive team-building exercise, as well as provide a welcome break from the work routine.

Another benefit of giving back to the community is the potential for networking with other local businesses. Through professional clubs or your local chamber of commerce, you may meet other business owners who may want to cooperate with you in organizing events. By participating in charitable events, you and/or your employees may forge valuable friendships with other business owners, staff, and the media.

Regardless of your company’s size and resources, you can find a way to make a difference in your community. Even minor gifts—such as allowing your facilities to be used for a school event or donating used equipment—can go a long way toward making your community a better place to live and do business. And that’s the bottom line.

Life is filled with challenges: finding a job, paying for college, affording your retirement. While this may seem paradoxical, on Thanksgiving we should be thankful for frustrations and obstacles.

Often on Thanksgiving we think of the Pilgrims. The English colonialists were a grateful lot, but on religious days of thanksgiving, they focused on prayer, not feasting. Our concept of thanksgiving harkens back to the fall of 1621 when the Pilgrims and Wampanoag Indians celebrated the colony’s first successful harvest.

Thanksgiving Holiday

William Sydney Porter, known by his pen name O. Henry, cherished Thanksgiving as uniquely an American institution. He wrote, “There is one day that is ours. There is one day when all we Americans who are not self-made go back to the old home to eat saleratus biscuits and marvel how much nearer to the porch the old pump looks than it used to ... Thanksgiving Day ... is the one day that is purely American.”

The feast may be at your house, the home of your adult children, the grandparents or in-laws house or just a gathering of friends. Aside from overeating, we revel in remembrances of blessings and the warmth of friendship and kinship. Giving thanks is a healthy exercise in gratitude, the essence of all Thanksgiving celebrations.

A prayer written by Jonathan Sacks, chief rabbi of Great Britain, is instructive: “I thank Him for all the defeats and failures that make leadership so difficult, because the hard things are the only ones worth doing, and because all genuine achievement involves taking risks, making mistakes, and never giving up.”

Learning through Experience

True leaders thrive on challenge. If you have challenges, with your family or at work, be grateful that you have a family and a job. Challenges are learning experiences. They make you stronger and a better person. If you are not challenged, life will be boring, and you will not grow. Challenges are energizing, viewed through a lens of gratitude.

Being grateful for your innate gifts and talents can help turn negatives into positives. Some of the best things in your life grew out of a negative circumstance.

Power in Gratitude

Gratitude is a powerful emotion, appreciation for what we have, not resentment for what we lack. In a consumer-oriented society, pop psychology and media messaging pushes us to focus on more, more, more. Is your glass half-full? Or half-empty?

This Thanksgiving, look at your vexing challenges and contemplate what you are learning, how you are growing, how you will be strengthened, how you will advance in character and wisdom.

The mosaic of humanity is filled with tales of both happiness and sorrow.  Shelter, food and life itself are blessings for which we should say a prayer of gratitude as we join those we love and care for at the table on November 23^rd.

Gratitude makes you focus on what truly is important. That is the real Thanksgiving blessing.

What you do think it really means “to be rich"? Some people live by the balance sheet, some die by it. Others don’t even know what a balance sheet is. How do you define wealth for yourself?

Our feelings about wealth stem more from our life decisions and social circles than from the numbers we see on our statements.

Feeling wealthy means feeling you have enough, of wanting what you have rather than being consumed with what you want.

Is Money Supporting or Driving?

Acknowledge who you are and your limitations. Most folks just hang out with smarter people, but instead of trying to learn from them these folks try to prove they belong.

This concept continues with money. Feelings of wealth correlate to our surroundings and the proverbial Joneses in our lives.

If you simply want to feel wealthy, hang out with people poorer than you. If you want to feel poor, keep trying to live the life of folks wealthier than you.

Wealthy people can teach us a lot.

Your first challenge, however, comes in recognizing those who are truly wealthy versus those projecting an image of wealth. You must stop showing that you belong and instead understand how to turn money into a supporting element of your life rather than the driving force – whether you’re worth $100,000 or $10 million.

Best intentions often turn sour.

We move from a modest neighborhood to a high-end community and find ourselves falling from feeling wealthy to feeling extremely uncomfortable overnight. More living space, a better school district or a safer neighborhood may motivate the move.

But in the old neighborhood, we provided our family with everything friends and neighbors provided to their families. In the new neighborhood, however, extras are now basics. Social pressures surrounding community outings, kids’ class trips, sports and extra-curricular activities exceed those in our previous life.

If we set unrealistic expectations for ourselves and our financial lives, we never reach true wealth. A certified financial advisor can help you with finding a realistic perspective of where you’re at and what your goals can be, without the emotions that often skew our view.