How to organize a charity event to support your Employer Branding
Companies across the world struggle to run efficient Employer Branding activities and constanlty improve them. One of the great ways to create a favorable company image is hosting a charity event. The naysayers will tell you that you try to combine a noble purpose with not so noble branding goal. However, it’s possible. Events, that emerge from the true needs of the society, are not a cold calculation of the profitability but a way to support those looking for help. Supporting Employer Branding is a secondary benefit. In this article, I’ll show you how to organize a charity event and support your Employer Branding.
Hosting a charity event to boost Employer Branding activities
It’s already a well known fact that events are one of the greatest methods to deal with Employer Branding. Recently, we even dedicated a whole e-book to this subject – “10 event essentials to boost internal Employer Branding” – that is a source of vast knowledge about the use of events in Employer Branding activities. They give perfect opportunity to create bonds and interactions with a brand. Also, to present its approach towards employees’ community (and people in general) to the wider audience.
Even better support for Employer Branding activities is hosting a charity event. It’s not only serving a noble purpose but also it’s enhancing a Corporate Social Responsibility policy of the firm. This way, a company by helping others uprates its image. Win-win situation, wouldn’t you agree?
So, how to organize a charity event?
Hosting a charity event is a similar task to hosting any other type of event. There are always some steps that need to be covered in order to make an event a success. However, you need to remember not to force applying all of event organizing tips as they may not fit the specifics of the charity ones.
Promotion and employer branding activities need to be handled in more delicate and subtle way to not outshine the main purpose of the event. Generally speaking, you need to go through basic steps and have in mind the profile of your event.
First of all, find a corresponding purpose for your charity event
I won’t surprise you saying that to organize a charity event you need to find an organization or charity goal that will be the beneficent of the party, will I? That’s rather obvious. Search through charities and foundations, find one that is close to your company’s heart and cause, and try to establish cooperation.
The goal of the event can be for example rising money to educate children on skills they may need in future. Connect what you’re good at, and have knowledge about, with the core purpose of the event. If you think about it, there’re many ways to connect charity work and your company. Just look at some Employer Branding examples in charity related events and get inspired.
For instance, Intel Foundation chose to provide disaster relief and support. Also, Bill Gates established his own foundation whose goal is to help people from both developing and well-developed countries to have an equal chances for self-growth. On the one hand it’s supporting an important issue, but it also works as a personal branding action. So you see, just find an inspiration and get your charity goal.
Choosing the right purpose for your happening is the first and vital thing to set while you’re hosting a charity event. It will be the core of actions and agenda points. The mission you choose determine how will you shape the event!
How to find the right purpose?
If you decided that hosting a charity event will boost your Employer Branding and you’re going for it, you should make sure that the purpose also fits your Employer Branding target. After all, you want to plant your Employer Brand image in your present and potential employees’ minds, so the charity goal needs to be appealing for them.
Imagine, you’re launching a huge fundraising party that supports kids in Africa. The purpose is noble, but is it close to your Employer Branding activities target hearts? Probably, they’ll appreciate it, but maybe what really concerns them is that local kids need to get access to better educational programs? This discrepancy weakens the strength of employer branding transmision,.
To avoid such situation make sure that you know what the receivers of your Employer Branding activities really care for. Examine their needs and psychological links to discover whether they care for the global issues, such as hunger or global warming, or rather day-to-day problems of their local community. Based on the results of this analysis set your charity event goal.
Next, find a good venue for your charity event that supports Employer Branding activities
While speaking with our clients I learned that an inspiring venue can work wonders and significantly increase attendees’ opinion of the event. It may be surprising but the space can also work in favor of your brand.
What characterizes the right venue is, firstly, that it can fit your whole estimated audience. Crowded places often make attendees nervous and irritated, so this won’t help both the charity cause and your Employer Branding activities.
Speaking of the Employer Branding, you can try to make a venue work in your favor. It surely can help you amplify the message you want to give to attendees. Also, it may illustrate your approach to employees and the atmosphere in the company’s ranks!
For example, your team is a bunch of sporty people and your company policy is rather informal one? Organize a picnic! Because why not, this way a wider audience will experience your company culture and you’ll get extra points for rising more money for a foundation. After all, people are more willing to spare a dollar when they’re relaxed!
Remember: hosting a charity event needs a plan
Having a plan is one of the first event organizing tips, that’s pretty obvious for every event organizer. There’s no difference when it comes to charity events. Although there’s always a possibility that something unexpected comes up in the process, there’s no way not to think through everything in advance.
Speaking of planning, it’s good to mention a dedicated event-planning software that is available for event organizers. Platforms, like Eventory, provide a whole ecosystem of tools needed to coordinate every aspect of the organizational process. It lets you maintain an effective communication between members of the team, control the progress and the tasks already done and so on. This way you can minimize the possibility of errors on the way. Also, good organization and automation of the events increase the satisfaction level of the attendees. It’s a good way to keep track of everything what’s going on!
A charity event should be entirely buttoned up given that it serves a bigger purpose than just a promotion. Failure of the charity actions means that your Employer Branding activities fail too, so make sure that you covered these matters:
#1 Agenda
It is the core of the event. Make sure that it is properly entertaining for your attendees, but also have in mind that the attractions can’t drag their attention from the main goal. What you should do is to smartly arrange attractions. You can carry with subtle branding actions but remember that undivided audience’s attention should be focused on the charity aspect.
While preparing you need to remember that the purpose of the event needs to stay in the centre all the time. The ideas on what charity event can look like are numerous. You can think through what kind of activities connects with the issue you support and go for it. You’ll find examples of marathons (often organized by large companies), fundraisings, happenings and so on. You decide what fits the best.
#2 Promotion
This point applies not only to promotion of the event itself but also to your Employer Branding materials during it. The latter refers to promotion materials you will place around the venue as well.
Let’s start with the promotion of the event. Well planned one can assure you will get to the right audience. This way the attendance at your event will be high and as a result you get a success at charity action and Employer Branding efforts.
When it comes to planning promotion of your brand at the event remember that the focus should stay on the charity purpose. Charity events aren’t place for the direct brand promotion. Place your promo materials wisely. Freebies, gifts for attendees – everything can be branded. However, forget about using large company stands in the middle of the venue. This way the promotion will appeal as an aggressive one. This will do you no good. Being subtle is the key here and can still give you the effectiveness you’re looking for.
#3 Sponsors and partners
Make sure that you’ve got support covered as well. Partners can provide an additional source of audience and promotion hype. It will increase the chances to succeed in terms of charity goals and reaching the wider audience with the message of the event.
Also, cooperation with other sponsors can get you extra money. You will no longer need to think how to organize a charity event at the lowest cost possible. Instead, you can just go for it and create a top party that will be remembered. Those efforts will reflect on your Employer Brand, be sure of it.
A wider group of companies and people engaged in hosting a charity event also works good for its credibility. It’s no longer just you who thinks that there’s need to support a certain issue. It’s now a group of people who want to make a change and that resonates with the effects of the whole event.
#4 Time margin
Another important thing when you’re hosting a charity event (and pretty much every other one) is to leave an additional amount of time for every part of organizational process. As I mentioned before – unexpected things are happening all the time (after all, this is why event planner was named the 5th most stressful job!). Therefore, have some spare time at each stage of preparations to prevent a catastrophe.
List all the things that may go wrong, so that when the error occurs you know how to deal with it. Just be prepared for different options and your charity event will be fine. Quick reaction is vital when it comes to real-time events and having in mind that a problem may occur helps to act immediately.
What’s more, when you have everything under control you present your company as a well organized and ready to deal with unexpected problems. Your Employer Brand will surely benefit from it.
Which Employer Branding goals can be supported by hosting a charity event
While events in general are useful when it comes to improving a brand’s image, charity events can make wonders. It’s because they generate the positive attitude and general pro-human behaviour.
There are many examples of what is set as a main aim of the actions while planning the Employer Branding strategy. The most common are probably:
- to create a loyal community around the brand and increasing its awareness,
- to increase brand’s publicity and credibility,
- to create a positive brand connotations,
- and so on.
Creating a community around a brand through charity events
Events give a possibility to present, in a real-time, company’s policy and values. Charity character, and general positive atmosphere of helping that goes with it, tone up the whole message. It’s hard not to notice the obvious perks of implementing live meetings with the audience to the Employer Branding Activities.
One of the goals that employers set before starting the Employer Branding actions is to create a community around the brand. It’s the human resources aspect that goes along with increasing brand awareness. They want to attract people, who could fit the holes in their team and would be a long-lasting addition to the crew. Companies want to communicate their standards, values to create its image. This way, they make sure they draw attention of prospects who share the same ideology.
In the perfect world, it creates a stronger relationship between the potential candidates, people attracted to the brand and the company. Later, this works as an extra advertisement – those who enjoyed what the brand presented spread the word about it’s employer brand even further!
How hosting a charity event helps in creating a bond ?
Again, charity profile of the event tone up the message organizers communicate. A noble purpose of the whole undertaking produce a positive attitude in attendees. Therefore, they perceive an event and Employer Branding efforts better.
It’ll be a no surprise when I say that using a charity event helps to warm up a brand’s image in the people’s minds. The same goes with the Employer brand. At the charity events attendees identify a good cause with the organizer and so they project this image on the whole brand and employees. This way, charity engagement automatically supports Employer Branding.
More publicity and credibility
Engaging and helping with the local problems is a statement itself. Through such actions companies can visibly boost brand awareness, not only across the target group but even wider.
Increasing brand awareness is one of the main goals of Employer Branding activities. With all this comes an issue of publicity. Whether the word about the company can spread easily without taking any action and how credible it is perceived. As an example I can, once again, mention Bill Gates’ actions or show you Salesforce which takes part in social initiatives and shares it on social media.
What is more, through charity activity a company can gain new real-life ambassadors. Is there a better guarantee of the firm’s genuineness than a word of an eyewitness?
How hosting a charity event can help with publicity and credibility?
Once again, charity events project a positive aura on the company. This assures that the perception is highly likely to be a positive one too. When it comes to brand awareness, charity parties are usually well publicise, so are the sponsors of the event. This way, not only the brand is advertised to the wide audience but also the tone of the mentions are favoring.
Then, there’s a matter of credibility. Sometimes it happens that charity events can have a bad fame, because of possible frauds. However, a majority of the fundraisers are seen as well organized with a proper background that really supports the noble cause.
This gives a company opportunity to endorse its liability and present the brand as a trustworthy. Organizing a charity event, which is well publicized, lets a company stay transparent and appeal as genuine and worth to engage with.
Positive brand connotations
Now, you probably already noticed that I like to stress out the point that hosting a charity event can transfer a mass of positive feelings towards the brand. If you think about the aims of Employer Branding activities first to come up with is making a brand look good and attractive. Combining these two together you’ll notice that there’s no better way to support this goal but with a charity events.
How hosting a charity event can help?
To support a noble purpose is one of the best ways to improve the company’s Employer Brand. Choosing a proper foundation or supporting a common problem may give an impression that the company works for something more than just a profit.
Going even further, serving a common cause can boost the perception of how your company treats its employees. After all, if you present a company as a philanthropic one, how can it not support its own teams?
Helping others outside is connoted with healthy corporate culture. This way your Employer Branding activities will not go to waste, but will be making your image even more positive! It also creates a bond between your employees as they unite in a common cause. It resonates both outside of the company and within.
Wrap up
Employer Branding is not an easy thing to deal with. It acquires a smart idea on how to present the value of the company and its policy to the current and potential employees. It goes without saying that events provide an opportunity to do so.
They give you a space to present how the relationships look like in your company and what it cares for. To make it look even better, make sure that the event is not just a promotion fair – hosting a charity event is a great option to support Employer Branding activities doing something good at the same time. While thinking how to organize it, firstly, decide on a purpose that will correspond both with the firm’s profile and the preferences of your Employer Branding target group.
Then, follow all the steps required to organize an event. Plan everything ahead – this will save you time and some stress. Also, remember to leave a time margin for unexpected problems. Decide on venue, which will let you fit all the attendees and will work with your image. Next, engage some sponsors and partners who will give the event some hype.
Remember that the event is about the help and noble cause. Don’t push it with the promotion of your brand. Make it subtle and the charity event will help you create your Employer Brand with great effects!
Do you have Employer Branding examples of using the events to boost brand’s image? Share them with us!
