Donations to Charities

We get many solicitations from various charities wanting a donation or an auction item for their charity event. We support several local charities, including the Boy Scouts, the Girl Scouts, and the YMCA. We love to help when we can, but we just simply cannot donate to everyone.

TELL CUSTOMERS WE CAN’T DONATE

Please tell anyone asking for a donation that we already have charities that we work with, and our budget is figured out for the year. Do not say that you’ll see what you can do and then tell Marketing that someone wants a donation. That just sets us up to disappoint the customer if we then say no. So just tell them up front that we can’t do it.

EXCEPTIONS

That being said, we can make exceptions for two circumstances.

• For a REALLY good customer who buys a significant amount from us regularly – not just someone who bought a $2K watch from you last year.
• If the customer is considering buying something RIGHT NOW and you feel strongly that committing to give their charity some kind of donation will make them feel obligated to make the purchase. (If they ask you after the sale, then you would just say no – because at that point there isn’t any advantage to creating a feeling of obligation for reciprocity.)

CSW FOR EXCEPTIONS

If you feel that you have one of these exceptions at hand, please submit a CSW to the COO for approval. We typically donate a gift card for a COH instead of cash or merchandise to the charity.

Make sure to include all the necessary data in your CSW like when the event is, name of charity, how much the customer has spent with us, the proposed donation amount and how much you would like to personally donate along with the company donation.

REPEAT DONATIONS

Even for charities that we have donated to every year, a CSW needs to be submitted to the COO for each new year, so that we can review in present time the relationship and benefit to the company for making the donation.

EMPLOYEE PERSONAL CHARITIES

As a rule, the company isn’t able to donate to the personal charities or fundraisers of employees. However, employees are welcome to ask coworkers to donate or buy merchandise being sold to raise funds.

KEEP A RECORD

Marketing is to keep a record of all donations made each year, including who submitted the request, and what was donated. Marketing is involved because donations are a public relations matter.