Jay Sachetti joined Jeff O’Brien, partner at Husch Blackwell and Dyanne Ross-Hanson, president of Exit Planning Strategies talked about the market for mergers and acquisitions, exit planning opportunities for companies that don’t end up for sale and how companies can maximize their eventual sale price during an early October panel at the first Upsize on Tap event at Summit Brewing Co. in St. Paul.
When the state Legislature passed a law requiring employers to provide paid leave and safe time for employees, Justin Bieganek started hearing differing details from friends, colleagues and peers.
Doris Rubenstein,
PDP Services:
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in**@*********es.com
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TIMES ARE TOUGH. Profits are hard to come by. You’re grateful that you’re still in business and making a go of it. But, you’re still keenly aware of the personal and financial hardships that many others are suffering. What do you do when a charity comes to you with an outstretched hand?
The request can take numerous forms: A customer who buys over $100,000 in products each year asks for your company to sponsor a hole at a charity golf tournament for $2,000. An employee of long standing approaches you to pay the costs for one of the buses that will take her daughter’s band to Pasadena for the Rose Parade. The battered women’s shelter down the street from your building requests a donation.
What’s a business owner to do? Your reaction to each of these scenarios can result in a positive or negative effect on the company’s bottom line.
Consider the case of the golf tournament. What questions should you ask yourself when responding to this request? Do we have $2,000 to donate? If not, what amount do we have? How important is this customer to us? How much do we depend on this client for referrals? If we give this year, will they expect us to do it every year? Which charity will benefit? How much of that $2,000 will be tax-deductible? What will our company receive as a result of the donation? Will there be media coverage that will give us positive visibility? Are there other sponsors with whom we might want to do business in the future?
With all these questions, there is still the issue of who will represent your company at the tournament, time factors, and other issues internal to your company that you may have to address.
Let’s look at another of our case studies: the employee request. It raises another whole set of questions. Is this the first time this employee has asked for the company’s support, or has she asked you to do other projects, such as allowing her to take Christmas wreath orders from other employees for her son’s Boy Scout troop? Will the children of other employees be involved in the trip as well? While the band will get great national exposure, what kind of exposure will your company get nationally or locally? And don’t forget to check the tax-exempt status of a public school band, too!
What started out as a simple request turns out to be a project with implications for personnel, finance, and the marketing and advertising departments.
As for the battered women’s shelter, what does that have to do with your office supplies business? Think again. As you look at your employees, you realize that 80 percent of them are women. Your human resources staff has posted flyers from the shelter in the lunchroom already, asking for contributions of hotel soaps and shampoos for the shelter. Could it be that your employees might need to use the shelter some day?
A little bit of altruism tempered with enlightened self-interest might not be such a bad thing when it comes to keeping valuable employees. How can you address these situations so that they become win-win for all involved?
Here’s how one Minnesota company tackles the issue of good corporate citizenship. The company, a high-tech firm in the Twin Cities suburbs with some 200 local employees and another 50 in five locations around the country, recently developed a plan to deal with donations and volunteerism. This is how they might address the scenarios described above:
Golf tournament: If the client is one with whom they’ve established a “preferred client” relationship, they will honor the request to a maximum of $2,000. If the charity is one of those on the company’s own priority list, they’ll up the maximum to $3,000. If neither of these criteria is met, then they will make a token $100 donation to the charity in the client’s name. This way, preferred clients are rewarded and further cultivated, priority causes get support, and all customers get a positive response.
Band sponsorship: The company agrees to donate $500 if four other local businesses do the same. The company will donate an additional $100 for each $100 donated by the employee or other employees for the project. The band must agree to put a sign on the bus with the logos of the sponsors. This way, the money can be disbursed from the advertising and marketing budget.
By issuing a challenge to other potential donors, the money they donate is leveraged several times. All of this is contingent on the condition that the employee has not requested donations from the company in excess of $100 in that fiscal year already.
Battered women’s shelter: The shelter is on the company’s priority list, but the company’s charity review committee agreed to conduct a volunteer effort on the shelter’s behalf that doesn’t involve direct cash contributions. Working with the shelter’s development staff, volunteers from the company will make fundraising calls from the company’s customer service center after hours for one week. This should raise far more than the token donation they requested in the first place, save the shelter the phone costs, and give employees a meaningful and enjoyable experience together especially with the pizza they’ll provide for the volunteers!
The company is able to comply in one way or another with all of the various requests put before them because they have a corporate citizenship plan. The plan allows them to prioritize the projects they consider for support, allocate finite financial resources, and address the various constituencies seeking donations.
The outstretched hand seeking donations will return. Two things can happen then. They might want the palm greased again. Or, they may extend it in sincere appreciation of the generous and constructive way you gave the help the charity needs, while supporting the interests of your customers, employees and neighbors.
