Corporate good: why a business needs charity

The owner of the international marketing company Amillidius, as well as another 10 business projects Elvira Gavrilova told our publication how business and NGOs can be useful to each other, how to recognize an unethical charity, and which problems are most difficult for funds to raise money for.

A journalist by education, PR specialist, CEO, and owner of the international corporation Elvira Gavrilova created a charity project that helps to raise donations through online auctions.

What does charity give to business?

Often the first goal is to expand the target audience. People who are interested in social projects, who separate garbage or engage in intellectual volunteering are a large and active audience. But few brands are talking to this audience so far. When smart and cool social business projects appear, it leads to new users. It’s good for both marketing and long-term revenue.

We have a global difficulty in evaluating the effectiveness of business participation in social projects. Few people can count, whether this project is socially effective or not. In many cases, a business takes part in a short promotion that attracts the new audience. Our project has a different approach: we try to make social projects infrastructural, like a business: long-term, measurable, and, preferably, prolonged.

You mentioned intellectual volunteering. Why companies may be interested in the intellectual volunteering of their employees?

The point is that, in addition to cool and interesting tasks, a good office, and employment benefits, people need something else. And this “something else” holds people inside the company stronger than many other indicators. It’s really true – a person, helping someone, feels satisfied. It may be expressed in a donation, or maybe in solving a problem that will help. It inspires. You do exactly what you are used to, but it solves an important social problem.

A driver or motivator may be a desire to understand the problem. For example, I know nothing about bullying. When you get involved in working on a product that helps victims of bullying, you will find out things that used to go completely parallel. I mentioned bullying as an example because there are a lot of such topics. You will see that there may be not enough medicine, it turns out that it is better to conduct lessons for orphans, and not to collect gifts for them together with your office.

And, besides, it’s a communication. I really enjoy it because while working on products, I meet incredible people whom I would never meet otherwise.

What was the main problem with adult assistance funds raising?

It is believed that an adult should cope on his own. He has to get as many connections so that there is always someone to pull him out. We tried to explain that illness is a loss of social connections. People try to stay away from an ill person as far as possible, far from everyone succeeds in collecting money “from the closest”. We also tried to say that, saving an adult, we return an economically active unit to operation. We have changed the situation to such an extent, that adult fees are now in second place in our project.

What does your project give corporations, including in terms of monetization?

It’s the profit, we can generate through social marketing. Besides, it’s an extension of the audience, increasing loyalty.

There are already many foundations and their communities, we work with.