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Making the most of charitable activities

As responsible businesses, our clients are often to be found organising, participating or running a range of community-based or charitable events as part of their annual activities.

At Kava we like to get involved in charity work too. Much of what companies do day-to-day is about profits, ‘the bottom’ line, sales, marketing or client management, so it’s nice to spend some time out doing something to benefit others.

This builds employee pride and internal engagement, but it’s also a good opportunity for some PR activity – and we wouldn’t be a marketing agency if we didn’t point out the branding benefits of sharing your charity work!

Let’s use a recent example. Our client, Bennetts Cranes, is a Gloucestershire-based business. The women in the company, who work in a range of roles from director to administrator, decided to form a team to run the Race for Life for Cancer Research UK – particularly poignant as one of the team had battled cancer, and won.

The money they raised collectively was going to be matched by Bennetts to double their total figure and so we encouraged them to share their fundraising pages on social media so people could donate. We wrote a news article for their website and shared across social media for a period of a month.

We organised a press photographer to be there on the day, to take the photos at the start of the race. These were later shared on Bennetts’ LinkedIn, Twitter and Instagram feeds.

The team had already bought pink Race for Life t-shirts and tutus, but they wanted something with the company branding. So, we designed and supplied branded Bennetts caps for each team member to wear on the day. It really brought the team together and made them stand out in the sea of pink.

The team raised over £7000 for Cancer Research UK – a fantastic achievement.

Here are a few tips if you’re doing some charity or community work in your business:

  • Think ahead and plan out any potential PR activity in advance
  • Get branded material or clothing made ahead – t-shirts, caps, banners etc.
  • Talk to your local newspapers or industry publications about whether they can cover your event
  • Take plenty of photos – even better hire a professional photographer to take them for you
  • Share, share, share! Share your hard work, before, during and after, on your website and on social media