Beyond Cash: 20 Things to Consider Donating to Nonprofits

When companies donate to nonprofits, it’s usually one of three thing: the products/services they sell, volunteer hours or cash. Pharmaceutical companies donate medicine and law firms donate pro bono legal services – and almost all donate volunteering and money. Businesses, however, are also trove of other assets that can also be repurposed for good. Below are 20 examples.

Donating Items (beyond the company’s commercial products/services)

• Furniture or computers being retired
  
• Waste that can be converted into good (e.g., Caesars Entertainment donates partially used hotel soap to be sterilized and donated to families at high risk of infectious diseases due to poor hygiene)
  
• Marketing, sales or other department-specific competencies
  
• Unused office, warehouse, cargo or other space
  
• Surplus cafeteria food to hunger organizations

Offering Space as a Communications Tool (used for marketing, education, etc.)

• Parking lots (e.g., one automotive shop on a major road offers it to nonprofits to hold fundraising car washes)
  
• Elevator walls, floors, sides of buildings, backs of chairs, bathroom mirrors, cubicle dividers and other building surfaces
  
• Keycards
  
• Presentation cards
  
• Backside of presentation cards
  
• Sides of vehicles
  
• Placemats

Sharing Internal Programs and Processes

• Including nonprofits in bargaining with vendors to help (for example, Timberland includes its key nonprofit partners in its negotiations with telecommunication and health insurance firms to secure lower prices for them)
  
• Offering unfilled training spots to nonprofit staff or others (Aetna)
  
• Making internal management tools available to nonprofits, such as a job candidate interview template or a meeting facilitation guide (IBM)
  
• Extending internal mentoring programs to external individuals, such as nonprofit staff or first-generation college students (Timberland)

Shifting Operations

• Renting office, retail, manufacturing space in marginalized areas to support their economic growth
  
• Reducing carbon footprint, plastic production and solid waste
  
• Hosting beehives (that employee volunteers can manage) to help counter colony collapse disorder
  
• Giving better shelf space to minority-owned brands

You get the idea. There are an infinite number of novel contributions companies can make to charitable causes! What might your business contribute?