Many local businesses want to do good in their local neighborhoods, but they don’t know where to start. Here are some community outreach ideas to spark your creativity during this holiday season.
What Are Community Outreach Ideas For Local Businesses?
- Give away 5K in turkeys
- Food gift cards for first responders
- Contact your local church and partner with their programs
- Facetime with the elderly at a nearby home
- Post on social asking if anyone knows a widow that needs some help
- Help the poor by doing a free service
- Partner with other local businesses and do a social media giveaway
- Offer your services to another local business for a discount or free
- Contact your kid’s school to see if there is anything they need
- Volunteer at your local library
- Go to your shopping center neighbors and ask what their needs are
These are some ideas we’ve heard from clients and members at church in San Diego of needs. I know local businesses can make a big difference in your community. I’m sure there are a bunch more so if you have more ideas, leave us a comment.
Community Outreach Ideas:
I know this pandemic has been so rough for local businesses. We are watching the news and hate hearing that we are in purple. You can’t see family members unless you use binoculars to see them waving from their New Mexico Presbertian hospital window. Hiking trails are closed unless you are a resident so have an NM license or NM car registration.
Even though things suck, you can make a difference with these community outreach ideas!
Give Away 5K In Turkeys
Wash N Go Laundry in San Diego started doing this 5 years ago. This event has grown every year where they’re fellow shopping tenants donated BBQ, jumpies, and discounts on their services. We sent our video crew out to capture the event a couple of years ago.
They weren’t able to do this event obviously but they still made a difference in their community.
Food Gift Cards For First Responders
While we are keeping safe, first responders take care of emergencies. Continuing on with these community outreach ideas, I first heard about it at Torry Pines Church.
These first responders were quarantined in a hotel.
Not only did they need help with paying for the hotel but they needed meals to be delivered.
This church in San Antonio gave over $1 million in gift cards to first responders.
That’s so inspiring, right?
Contact Your Local Church and Partner With Their Programs
The Rock Church in San Diego is where Robert and I started thinking of community outreach ideas. We went through their 1-year long discipleship school 6 days a week from 9-1 PM and helped the local community 2 days a week and on breaks set up our own programs to help.
Here is a great list of community partners. Scroll through to see which group would line up with your local business. Not all on this list are religious organizations.
Facetime With The Elderly At A Nearby Home
If you are an introvert and or just don’t like talking on the phone keep scrolling to read more community outreach ideas. But if you are extroverted and like meeting new people Google “assisted living facilities” and you’ll find a list of homes.
Call and tell them about your idea. Or you could make a social media post and list out the day and times you plan on doing this event.
You could even get your employees or customers involved too.
If you get push back then you can still bring your community together and they can all call a relative they haven’t talk to in a while.
You can give some talking points or questions to ask so it doesn’t feel so awkward like…
- I’d love to hear how you are doing now.
- Or start off by saying what you remember of what they were doing last.
- Make sure you mention where you know them from.
Avoid talking about anything awkward or difficult from the past.
I can remember going to assisted living centers as a kid to sing with my choir at Christmas time or to volunteer playing games. But with the pandemic things are just more strict so post your idea on social media then find the assisted living center to partner with.
It shows that you are really serious.
When your event is over do a debrief call with everyone who participated and record it on zoom so you can capture the stories.
Next, have your marketing manager write a blog post about the event. Many times news stations are looking for people doing good so you may get a phone call and spot on the local news.
Post On Social Asking If Anyone Knows A Widow That Needs Some Help
These are great community outreach ideas if you have a home service business. Women tend to outlive men and in many traditional homes of older adults, the husband handled everything to do with the landscaping, cars, and handyman work.
“According to the 2010 census, there were more than 11 million widows compared to three million widowers in the United States. About 700,000 women become widowed each year. Over 10 years, that makes 7 million widows (plus those who lose partners to whom they were not legally married). The 2020 census may well reflect a wider gap. And women are more likely to remain single than their male counterparts. Older men who outlive their partners are 10 times as likely to remarry as older women — 20 percent verses two percent.” – Suddenly Single
Community Outreach Ideas For Home Services:
- Landscaping – pull weeds & plant some flowers in the spring. I remember going with a group of 10 to clean up a backyard that wasn’t taken care of for over 10 years so get a group together of customers to make it more fun.
- Cleaning – I love how Cleaning For A Reason partners you with local house cleaners and you get 2 free 2-hour cleanings. Make it a good experience and you’ll get referrals or new clients.
- Window Washing – power wash just the exterior windows or their driveway.
I’d love to hear what some more of your ideas are. Comment below.
Help The Poor By Doing A Free Service
A few years ago Wash N Go Laundry had a problem, people would wash and dry their clothes then NEVER pick them up. Each location was piling up almost 100 pounds a month of clean laundry. These were nice quality.
We heard about a church ministry helping Serian Refugees so we partnered both organizations together till they had plenty of clothes for everyone they were helping.
So we kept listening for what other organizations needed clothes and found another church ministry that partners with 9 other non-profits.
You need to LISTEN for problems and think about how your local business can help solve them.
Partner With Other Local Businesses and Do A Social Media Giveaway
At Social Media Marketing World this year, Stacy Tuschl shared about how to do this and talks more in detail about it in this blog post.
She said,
“A lot of people say organic marketing on Facebook is dead, but Stacy’s still seeing results with a specific strategy that involves partnering with businesses that naturally complement hers for contests and giveaways. To illustrate, a hair salon could partner with a nail salon and a massage studio.
Each business contributes a prize of equal value and mutually publicizes it on their social media accounts. Not only does this tactic put your business in front of a warm audience that already loves a specific service that complements yours, it can quickly grow your online audience.”
Take a look at who promoted contests or giveaways in your local area.
If you are in San Diego search:
- #sandiegobusiness
- #sandiegosmallbusiness
- #shoplocalsandiego
To set up a whole 12 days of Christmas is a lot of work since it’s just around the corner but this will help you to think about what you will do next year around holidays and giveaways.
Offer Your Services To Another Local Business For A Discount Or Free
I was interviewing real estate agents since I need to sell my mom’s house and when one heard that we do the marketing they asked if we’d be open to doing a trade. I declined but it made me think that there are so many businesses that you can trade services with.
- Photographers can trade with a social media agency to get 30 days of content in exchange for a 1-hour photoshoot and 10 edited photos.
- A retirement financial planner can trade 1-hour strategy session with an accountant for reviewing your books and showing you where you can make some changes to save more on taxes.
- A dentist can trade Invisagln to a marketing agency in exchange for copywriting a sales page for Invisagln.
We don’t typically do trades but over the years we’ve had dozens of local businesses ask us if they couldn’t afford our services. We’d take credit for part of the setup fee and give it away when we saw a need.
We’ve given:
- Quensetta dresses
- Limo services
- Printing T-shirts, hats, sweatshirts for churches and ministries
- Yacht sunset cruise
Contact Your Kid’s School To See If There Is Anything They Need
If your kids attend a public school in San Diego,
“Currently, nearly 30,000 volunteers work in a variety of capacities in the San Diego Unified School District.
These volunteers – parents, guardians, grandparents, business/community partners, community members, the military, K-12 and college students, senior citizens, and others – represent the economic, social, racial, religious a
Volunteers act in a variety of capacities, including tutors/mentors, provide assistance in the classroom, participate as senior exhibition panel members, participate on business/community partnership advisory boards, assist in the main office, in the library/media centers and with fundraising efforts for school foundations, scholarships, and field trips.” – Volunteer Opportunites
nd educational backgrounds within the San Diego community.Here’s another website where you can check out opportunities. Keep scrolling till you see the teel button “check it out”. I’m seeing mostly needing help with meal distribution at elementary schools.
Volunteer At Your Local Library
See the whole list for the city of San Diego here.
Here are some community outreach ideas for these local businesses:
- Graphic Design Agency – assist with newsletters and other promotions
- Recruiting Firm – conduct intake interviews
- Real Estate Agent – you are like matchmakers so you could help with assessing the progress of current or departing volunteers
Then whenever there is an election you can volunteer for that too.
Meet with your employees and see what they’d be interested in. Then make a plan to help out quarterly or yearly.
Go To Your Shopping Center Neighbors and Ask What Their Needs Are
Unless you are in OB and on the planning committee then I’m sure you don’t even know the names of all your neighbors. If that’s you then start off by making it a goal to meet with one of your fellow tenants each month.
You’ll get to know them and get to know what their needs are.
Next, you can surprise them by meeting some of their needs over the following months.
Make sure you never GIVE to GET. This is the wrong mindset. GIVE just to GIVE.
Next Steps
We used to do a YouTube video series on how local businesses are doing good. We’d film a video no charge and rank it on YouTube. We will pick 10 brick and mortar local businesses in San Diego that share their story in the comments below will get a free 30-second video for your website on whatever you want to highlight and we will get a video on how you are doing good to inspire more local businesses to do good.
Share this blog on social or email it out.
Things are tough during this season but I know local businesses can help.
