Start the Year Off Right - What are you doing to give back?

© laufer - Fotolia

We make a living by what we get. We make a life by what we give.
Winston Churchill

Getting involved in charities in your community isn't just about passing the hat and raising cash. Often, it's about you making the effort and establishing a reputation for giving back. There's nothing that will help build your reputation faster than to be involved in charitable events in your community.
 
This isn’t rocket science and it's hardly revolutionary, but in all honesty, for most photographers, especially those new to the industry, the concept hasn’t been in their thought process.  I get it - you're buried and just trying to get your business off the ground is taking up all your time, but think about this...

You're looking for your community to be good to you. So, what are you going to do to be good to your community? 

People like buying products and services from companies they perceive as giving back.  You can’t just sit on the sidelines and watch life go by. You need to be directly involved and that doesn't necessarily mean with your camera.

As we start out this new year think about things you can do to give back:

• Develop a promotion that ties in with a local or national charitable event. For example, you might want to announce all or a portion of every sitting fee going to a particular community campaign.
• Build a promotional day, week or even month where all proceeds or a portion go to a local charity.
• Volunteer to help non-profits in your community. This might not involve photography, but your donation of time.  Often, just being involved will put you on the map as somebody who cares about the community.
• Work to bring other photographers into the campaign. Nothing helps build a more positive competitive spirit more than a group of people working together for a common cause.
• Donate your services to events and groups of people who simply need photographs. Two of my favorites are: NILMDTS and HeartsApart.org  Each of these organizations involve your skills in portraiture and they both need help. 
• As you get more involved in your community, use your blog to help spread the news about upcoming events, fund-raisers etc. 

Looking for more ideas? Check out this post from last year by Corey Schwartz. It's one of the best projects I've seen to get involved in a community. Plus, it brought together dozens of other artists, had great publicity value and created a product that would continue to create revenue, in this case for the children's hospital. Think of it as blue print for a giving back project that could be applied to other institutions and events.

Remember too...There's no such thing as a gift of giving back that's too small. What's important is simply doing something.

“If you wait until you can do everything for everybody, 
instead of something for somebody, 
you’ll end up not doing nothing for nobody.” 
Malcom Bane