If the quote, “doing well by doing good,” sounds familiar, it’s because it’s from Benjamin Franklin, a notably successful entrepreneur.  He promoted the idea that doing good for your community is a profitable way to do business.  As an online business, you have to ask yourself, “what is my community?”  –and how can you be seen by the community as an upstanding and ethical company?

If you’re starting a business online, your community is really the world—or at least the part of it that visits your website.  The point is, it’s not defined geographically.  So, while it probably wouldn’t hurt to sponsor a local youth sports team, adopt kennels at the animal shelter, or buy advertising in an area museum’s or theatre’s newsletter, you have to think globally as well.

Doing this is a little different than the kind of philanthropy you can do in your local neighbourhood.  You can’t really donate to a worthy cause and then boast about it on your webpage!

Instead, you can do something that actually costs nothing.  You can update and edit your web page through your website host, so you can use your page to embrace philanthropic causes that you’d like to point out to your customers.  At the moment, providing a link on your page to donate to earthquake relief in Haiti would be an easy choice.

You could also choose to promote topical causes related to your business.  If you’re selling children’s educational materials, you could provide links for people to donate to organizations that work with autism, abused children, or childhood learning disorders.  If you’re selling women’s wear, you could direct your customers to sites that support breast cancer research or women’s rights issues.

This may cost you some time, but it doesn’t cost you any money, and it makes your business look good.  If you’d like to up the ante, you can offer to donate money yourself.  You can advertise, for example, that 10% (or some other amount) of your profits from a particular item will go to one of the charities you’re promoting.  This could even be temporary or seasonal.  You could, for example, advertise that you are contributing some percentage of the sales of one or more items to food and shelter programs during Christmastime.

The choices and level of commitment are all up to you, but, whatever you do, it will improve your company’s image.  This isn’t going to benefit you in the same direct monetary way that a keyword ranking tool or getting involved in the affiliates business does, but you want to promote your business from as many angles as possible.  This is an easy, low maintenance way to do it.

The fact is, many companies give to worthy causes as a regular part of doing business.  It helps their staff feel that they are working for the good of the community as well as for a profit.  It also helps to show the company is a good light, as an organization that gives back to the community.

It shouldn’t feel mercenary to paste links up on your website just to make your business look good.  If you’re choosing causes that you really care about, you’re doing good.  If that also happens to help you do well, that’s all the better.

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