Since 2011 we have given a percentage of our profit to charities, we didn’t know what CSR was, it just seemed like a good thing to do.
It started with me choosing charities which I love and giving them a percentage of profit (this has been mostly Médecins Sans Frontières), but last year we decided to support local charities. We thought it would help us feel more involved in our local community, which is often difficult as so much of our work and meetings are global and online.
Last year we wrote 3 cheques, and got to go and meet Emmaus in Dover, Pilgrims Hospice in Ramsgate, and have an open invite to the Kent Air Ambulance (still a bit of a shock that the Air Ambulance gets no government funding!)
This year we’ve upped it to a simple metric, 1% of turnover goes to charity. Why the increase? It’s nice to give more, and 1% of turnover is a very simple metric. We also hope that other businesses may see this and be inspired to give more.
We sit down once a year, and look at our P&L as a team, and then decide who to support with donations. It’s fun, and much more involving than just doing profit share. It’s great to go to work and think that as well as delivering great service, we can make a difference to some local people as well.
Alongside our 1% of turnover to charity pledge, we also support charities who need to use our secure collaboration service to manage events and projects. We’ve helped Crisis at Christmas do this using Projectfusion since 2010.
It would be lovely to hear how other smaller companies implement CSR, and of course if you work for a charity, and need a project collaboration solution, let us know!
Here are the charities we supported last year.
http://www.emmaus.org.uk/dover
http://www.pilgrimshospices.org/
https://www.kssairambulance.org.uk/
http://www.crisis.org.uk/