Giving Back to Your Community

Say my name.

Any startup, business or individual can benefit greatly from giving back to the community it belongs. You might not even consider it, or you might think there’s not enough time, but the truth is that there is always time to give back, and it’s one of the most organic ways of creating an authentic buzz for your brand.

Stand out, show that you care, and others will follow.

If you can afford it, why shouldn’t you do it? Looking through this list of startups who’ve given back to the community in recent years makes you think about the amount of good that a single startup is able to do, even if it’s something as small as sharing a sandwich with another person.

We overlook it, but small things like that make the biggest difference in how someone sees you and what you stand for.

What about non-monetary ways of giving back? Are you involved in the open-source movement? How about getting on GitHub and starting to help out the many open-source projects that could use your help? Here are a few ways you could be helping out your fellow developers:

  • Try the code, use it, utilize some tests, see what can be improved, improve it and share it back.
  • Look for grammatical errors in documentations, fix them, improve the terminology, go as far as adding any additional documentation necessary.
  • Have a look at the most common project issues, either help to fix them, or at least help to verify them.
  • Be as straightforward as possible, help someone answer the hard questions.

the end result should be clear; you get to improve your own learning abilities, and also make new relationships based on what you’re doing for any particular project. Giving away your time for free sounds awful, but when you’re doing it for a good cause, there usually are good repercussions.

1. Connecting with your community

Not only does giving back encourage your team to work harder and happier, it helps you to connect with all the surrounding communities of the causes that you support. Getting to know these people and their long-term goals can help you to establish a long-term support strategy of your own. It helps you to build truly authentic awareness about your brand, and respect at the same time.

There’s so much variety in the ways we can help others, you could become a mentor to someone to help them build their dreams and help others, or you could become the host of an themed event within your area, to help bring together like-minded people for a good cause.

2. Solving real world problems

There is so much good that can be done in this world. We’re seeing poverty levels like never before, more and more people are being denied even the basic necessities for life. It doesn’t even have to be about people directly either, help to solve problems in areas where others are trying to create an environment that has charitable values; we just think that our little donations and support won’t help, but it’s the very foundation upon which many charities work under.

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3. Gives your brand a good reputation

As mentioned, brand awareness is a nice asset to have. True, one should focus on establishing his business as sustainable first, and then begin to invest in giving back, but whenever you do — remember that you’re only creating more good reputation for your business, and your team. Philanthropy is still a new thing for a lot of people, but we’re bound to see more of it as transparency becomes to emerge.

The thing to keep in mind is that online reputation management is one of those things that works better if you implement it before you actually need it. — Neil Patel

4. Creating a striving environment

Your company, business and/or product usually depends on the quality of talent that you have working for you at any given time. Keeping high-quality talent these days requires more than just a higher paycheck and less hours, in fact — more and more creative people are looking for exactly that, creative environments where their skills are being put to the test in the best and highest way.

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Giving back is all about loyalty and the display of high values, things that don’t go unnoticed by the average top talent worker. We highly recommend looking into establishing a solid strategy for a way to give back to your community, even if in a small way at first. The first steps are the ones that count the most.

Salary, retirement plans and vacation benefits are high on the list of why those great employees took the job, but they are not reasons enough to keep them in your employ for the long haul. Job satisfaction will increase your employee retention rate. — Amber Thomas

5. Giving back is a great thing to do

In any way you look at it, giving back is never going to go unnoticed. A simple and heartfelt thank you can go a long way for yourself, and your co-workers. Perhaps if we all had more time on our hands, we would consider investing more of our energy into such activities. Hopefully some of these outlines and tips will give you the necessary boost in courage to challenge yourself in giving back as much as you can.