Charity, volunteering, and social actions are an integral part of modern business, and therefore PR strategies. Nevertheless, it is with the promotion of charitable projects that companies have the most questions. Oddly enough, these errors are located at different poles of the content plan. Someone publishes press releases even about insignificant one-time donations, and someone does not talk about their good deeds at all, because he believes that it is immodest.
Why we need to talk about charity projects
- Creating a positive image of the company and strengthening the personal brand of the first person. Charity is good and hard to argue with.
- Strengthening the HR brand (“if a company is engaged in charity, then most likely it is a responsible employer” – for potential employees; “we are proud of the company in which we work” – for the existing team).
- Relay of good deeds. The audience learns about people and foundations who need help, about ways to help, and is also included in this work. The point is not that they will take an example from you, because you are great, but that many really do not always understand where to start. You do not set an example for them, but share a work case.
How to talk about charity projects
- Focus not on the fact of assistance, but on solving the problem
Not “we transferred money for the needs of the children’s hospital,” but “the children’s hospital has new equipment, and now they can perform procedures demanded by patients that were previously unavailable.” In both cases, we are talking about the same thing, but the message is completely different.
- Personal stories
Saturate the information space with real human stories and fates, it always attracts attention. Moreover, these may be the stories of the benefactors themselves – representatives of the company who joined the projects – why, how it changed them.
An important exception is case of diseases, especially sick children. Here you need to observe maximum privacy and delicacy! PR on tears is unacceptable!
- Bees vs. honey is excess
It is important that charitable projects overlap with the main profile of the company, or at least do not go against it. If a company is a “sponsor” of a social problem that it is trying to fight through charity, it looks stupid and cynical. Tobacco companies cannot participate in lung cancer programs, and alcohol manufacturers cannot fight drunkenness. Under no circumstances. If you want to fight, close the business.
When launching charity projects, try to find the intersection between what you are already doing and what else can be done. Charity should be an organic extension of your business.
- Don’t try to abstract
A significant part of charitable projects may be of business interest to the company. No need to pretend that this is not. Honest recognition of its benefits will strengthen the image of a socially responsible and forward-looking company.
Of the major examples: social projects of Rosatom in nuclear cities – financing of educational, educational, cultural, infrastructure programs. The message: yes, it is important for us that nuclear cities develop so that people do not strive to leave them, but high-paying work alone is not enough for this.
- Sincere collaboration with unconditional influencers
A good way to talk about your projects is to do it in partnership with a large charitable foundation or a person whom the audience trusts. But! This cooperation should not look like an attempt to cling to someone else’s fame. You have to bring real benefits to the project that only you can give.
Example: Nizhny Novgorod designer Olga Parle, during arrival of Nick Vuychich in Nizhny Novgorod, sewed a shirt for him. Therefore, she drew attention to the problem that Vuychich himself promotes – the lack of adaptive clothing for people with disabilities.
How not to talk about charity projects
- Do not try to get on the agenda
An attempt to get into a trend, to react to an event “in the moment” always looks insincere and irritates. People themselves know that if grief has happened, then you need to accept it, realize it. You can send a donation to the victims of the disaster immediately after it happened, but tell about it later so that information about your good deed in the news feed does not mix with photos from the scene.
An example of an unsuccessful case is the fall in Tesla shares after the seemingly noble impulse of Elon Musk. The head of Tesla has proposed several ideas for evacuating schoolchildren who are stuck in an underwater cave in Thailand. The whole world followed the fate of the children. Musk suggested using a compact mini-submarine based on the Falcon launch vehicle, brought it to Thailand and arrived himself. The submarine did not fit for these purposes, the children were saved in a different way, and their coach reacted rather sharply to the billionaire’s gesture (he offered to shove it in one place). A public skirmish began, Musk then apologized and deleted the tweets, but the damage to the company’s reputation was done.
- Do not mix what is incompatible
You should not combine (and if you combine, then very carefully) charitable and commercial actions, for example: we brought a new product to the market and did a good deed in honor of this. Charity in the service of commerce is ugly.
Tip: the best option is if the company is engaged in charity on a regular, systematic basis, and you are just as calm, without strain about it. With understandable examples that can be adopted, and eradicated interest in the people you help.
By Irina Gushchina, regional head of the Union of PR Specialists of Russia, co-founder of the PR agency PR Group