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No matter the scale of your business, it’s valuable to find ways to give back to your community—and to partner with other small businesses or nonprofit and charity organizations—during the holidays or year-round. Supporting your local community is a meaningful way to engage with your customers and employees, and show them the positive impact of their ongoing support.
This holiday season, try simple steps to launch an effective, achievable giveback strategy. Consider asking your customers to contribute to a charitable fundraiser and keep them updated on how their giving benefited local organizations. Or, donate your business’s time, money, or resources to a worthy cause by partnering with a local charity or local nonprofits and community centers.
Enable donations on your website
Local businesses and nonprofit organizations have faced many ups and downs in recent years. Fundraising on your website can be key. Whether you’re asking for a monetary donation to support your own staff or asking customers to support a cause that’s meaningful to you and your brand, encouraging customer donations is an effective way to lend a helping hand to your community members this holiday season.
With Squarespace, you can add a donation block to your website, which allows donors to make contributions directly on your website. Customize the text and design of your donation button and offer incremental donation amounts for customers to select. If you want to give users the option to include a note or dedication along with their donation, you can also add a custom form to your donation block.
Have more of a following on social media? Create a link in bio with Bio Sites and add it to your social media profile. On Bio Sites, you can add a link to fundraise for any cause. Then point your followers to it in posts and stories.
Read the full guide to collecting and asking for donations
Organize a volunteer event
Consider activating your customers and local community by planning your own giveback event, like a food or clothing drive or local park cleanup. If you’re organizing in-person volunteer opportunities, like shifts at a local food bank or a volunteer day at a community garden, use your website and Acuity Scheduling so people can easily sign up to join. Visitors to your site can check dates and times that work best with their schedule, and fill out customized intake forms or other required paperwork ahead of their volunteer day.
If you have a physical location for your business—even just a stand at local farmer’s markets—you can use the space to collect non-perishable donations for a food pantry or collect much-needed items for other local initiatives.
If you intend to connect your audience with more volunteer opportunities in the future, use Member Sites to gate a section of your website for your volunteers. This will give you a central location to share volunteer dates and times, new charity or fundraising events, and other important information. Building a membership site now can streamline event coordination and communication going forward.
Loop in your customers
Inboxes are packed with promotions during the holidays, so make your business stand out by communicating with your audience about your giveback efforts. Leverage Email Campaigns to send branded emails that update your audience on the impact of their donations, or connect them with your business’s volunteering opportunities.
Use your brand’s social media to share out volunteering opportunities and donation links, too, so it’s easy for your audience to find them anywhere. Use Bio Sites to collect links to all of your giving options on your profiles. Even if you’re not working directly with an organization, you can make posts shouting out some of your favorite organizations and link out to where followers can make a donation or volunteer their time.
To raise awareness on your website, add an announcement bar that drives visitors to learn more or participate. No matter your mode of communication, sharing your efforts may inspire other businesses and community members to follow suit and carry out their own acts of kindness.
Partner with other small businesses
Consider teaming up with other local businesses to maximize the impact of your giveback efforts this year. Whether that means raising more money or reaching more potential volunteers for a shared cause, you can double your impact through a strategic partnership.
Tailor your partnership to the products and services both businesses offer. For example, you could create a co-branded gift box and donate a portion of the proceeds, launch a series of free community exercise classes, or plan a larger scale community volunteering event by calling on both of your audiences to donate their time.
This post was updated on October 23, 2023.