Why Moving Companies Need a Charitable Partner
It’s very simple: doing good is good for business. People like doing business with organizations that give back.
Patagonia donated all $10M of its Black Friday sales to environmental causes and recently planned to take on President Trump to prevent the government from rolling back environmental rules issues under Obama’s administration.
Bank of America recently partnered with Kiva to promote women’s entrepreneurship around the globe. The partnership matches, dollar-for-dollar, what Kiva’s citizen lenders provide to women entrepreneurs on Kiva.org.
Coca Cola has been working with the World Wildlife Fund since 2007 to help conserve freshwater resources. From contracting over 1 million tons of sustainable sugar worldwide to protecting 350 hectares of forest in the Pasablen River basin in Gautemala, Coca Cola realizes that water is essential to nature, and essential to Coca Cola. Therefore healthy freshwater is crucial to business.
If these stories tugged on your heartstrings, you know that doing good is good for your soul. But, we keep hearing that it’s good for business. How so?
Millennials thrive (and buy) socially
A recent Cone Communications study shows that 70% of millennials will spend more on brands that support causes. With millennials representing $2.45 trillion in spending power (yes, trillion!), corporate social responsibility should be on your mind, movers!
Employee morale
Working with a charitable partner allows companies to boost employee engagement across the board. People like working for companies that have a good public image. People also like working for companies that are in the media for positive reasons. And, happy employees = better output. Nearly 60% of employees who are proud of their company’s CSR activities are engaged at work on a daily basis.
On top of general employee morale, think about the the positive workplace environment you’re building with a socially responsible team. Instilling a strong sense of culture in CSR from the top down will help to create a positive and productive environment. You need to prove that you care about your employees and your community, outside the walls of your offices and your trucks.
Have you ever run a contest at your company? If you have, you know the extreme lengths employees will go to if it guarantees a win. This past holiday season, we hosted a food drive to benefit Move For Hunger. We gamified it, and before you knew it, huge shipments of razors, cartons of diapers, pallets of cannned corn, and family-sized packs of popcorn started rolling through our doors. Our team got creative because there was a prize – pride! When pride is on the line, creativity shines! You should want to inspire this in your team. Here’s a pic of just some of the items we collected!
Stronger marketing
If you think about it, with such a focused business, there are only so many things you can market. Your solid reputation, your reviews, your staff and crew, your technology, etc. Eventually, you need new things to talk about, as any business does. By partnering with a charity, you not only do all the good we just discussed, but you also give your company the opportunity to have a stronger public image and increased media coverage.
The media can pick up good and bad stories – oftentimes, in our industry, the bad attract more attention than the good. So, give them more of the good! Build relationships with your local reporters and tell them the wonderful things your company does to build a better community. They will eat it up!
You’ll be able to better differentiate your brand. Standing out used to be a primary reason for engaging in socially-responsible behavior, but now it’s so commonplace that it’s nearly expected. Imagine you’re choosing between Pepsi and Coke: the flavor is exactly the same, yet one offered sustainable packaging and the other didn’t. Most consumers nowadays will think twice about that decision. Use CSR to set yourself apart.
There’s also an opportunity for your CSR activities to actually help you innovate your own products. Think about this: imagine you launch a green campaign to spend a bit more money on a more energy efficient truck. In doing so, it’s highly likely that your green initiative and your energy-saving goals lead to a cost savings in your fleet costs. Look at that – doing good led to cost savings, a better product, and a brag-worthy talking point for your sales team.
Build your community
This should go without saying, but actually supporting your community and helping is probably the biggest driver of business success.
You have an incredible asset: you have trucks. Do you know how many charitable folks in your community need trucks? They need something you have. If you’re not ready to start your own CSR initiatives, piggyback on someone else’s! If a triathlon needs to move parts of their setup, offer to help. If a big company is donating books to a local library, offer to transport it. If your town goes through a natural disaster, chances are trucks and storage space are in high demand – jump right in there!
Not only are your trucks an asset to the charitable partner, but they’re an asset to you as well. They’re fully branded. Without sounding too self-serving here, helping out in a time of need also means more eyeballs on your brand. And, the kind of eyeballs you want – the ones that associate your brand with doing good in the community.
Success stories
We’ve met a lot of moving companies over the years. But, something we didn’t anticipate was the amount of good being done by moving companies across the country. It’s incredible. Here are just a few of our friends that not only do good, but put it to work on their websites.
Hilldrup promotes both sustainability and community efforts on their website.
Shleppers was there for NYC during Hurricane Sandy and 9/11. This one hits home for us <3
Mesa Moving does a ton for the community, but we love the idea of wearing sneaks on Friday in exchange for a $1 donation, which is matched and donated by Mesa at the end of the year.
Brandon Moving & Storage hosts Fill-a-Truck in honor of Move For Hunger.
As for Updater…
We couldn’t possibly tell you that you should launch a CSR campaign without doing it ourselves. We’ve officially partnered with Move For Hunger, just like many of you.
From hosting food drives to running 5Ks to even having a member of our team on the MFH board – we’re committed. We’re in the moving industry and, therefore, want to show the world that the moving industry is full of incredible people doing incredible work.
Here’s a quick video about our partnership with Move For Hunger (you should make one too!), including awesome aerial drone shots, footage of a truck pull in the rain, and more.
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