The following is a guest post by Mike Shanks of PropertyGuys.com
A few years back when I first bought my PropertyGuys.com franchise I wanted to get connected in town, but I also wanted to give back to the community. I did some investigating and ended up joining a local service club. It seemed like a great way to achieve both of my goals, and to be honest it did. Sort of. You see, I realized that as someone without a lot of local connections to pull on for fundraising, I was a bit of an odd man out in the service club. The club itself was made up of some amazingly generous people with wonderful connections in the community. This long standing service club had a storied tradition in the community for putting on great fundraising events and writing some great cheques for some worthy causes.
As a new entrepreneur and father of a young family, cheque writing wasn’t what I was looking for. I didn’t have those deep pockets, nor connections to them. What I did have was passion, work ethic, and a desire to show my kids how to do good in your community.
So I started to look for ways I could give back to the community that didn’t involve writing cheques or asking others to do so. What I found was there was plenty of ways that I could give back with my time. Everything from picking up litter on a public trail or road side to sitting on a not-for-profit or charity board to coaching and mentoring others in your areas of expertise to organizing families (including mine) to assist with sorting food at the Cambridge Self Help Food Bank. Sometimes the best thing you can give someone is an introduction, because you may not be the best person to help them. There are plenty of ways to give when you don’t have the financial means. This is just one of the appealing pieces to the Givesome strategy. I may not have a bunch of money to write a cheque, but I sure could give up one chai latte a week or have one brown bag lunch a month or use the toonie in my pocket right now. A simple toonie CAN impact a life. Givesome not only helps you do that, but they show you how.
The true power in giving isn’t in the size of the cheque you write, it’s in the fact that you helped someone who needed it.
