I just got back from San Francisco where we had the first fund-raising gala for HairToStay, and it was a huge success!
HairToStay is a wonderful non-profit that raises money to fund scalp cooling treatments for women undergoing chemo. Scalp cooling prevents or reduces the hair loss that often comes with chemotherapy. Being able to keep their hair while undergoing treatment helps women maintain their identity, privacy, and a sense of normalcy and well-being, making it harder for the “Big C” to define their lives. This helps them stay motivated to fight the very hard fight of battling cancer.
In January of this year, Bethany Hornthal, the organization’s founder, asked me to be on HairToStay’s advisory board. Steve Reiss, the publishing director of Salon Today magazine, introduced me to Bethany at an industry event. We clicked right away. After talking with Bethany and hearing her story, I immediately said yes because the organization touched my heart. I believe very much that you do something when something means something to you.
Bethany sees fund-raising the same way I learned to see it – but she didn’t always. While working at another SF-based charity a while back, she became disillusioned. But, after talking with the director of that nonprofit everything turned around for her.
Her colleague told Bethany that her thinking about fund-raising was backward. Raising funds, he said, wasn’t just asking for a donation or taking something away from somebody. Rather, it was giving people the opportunity to receive a gift themselves.
“If you are truly passionate about what you are fund-raising for, then you realize that you are actually giving people an important opportunity to invest in something that could be very meaningful and impactful,” said Bethany. “In reality, the gift they are giving goes both ways. This mindset will change everything for you.”
From then on, this dynamic woman looked at raising money as a way to give people the opportunity to be part of something that feels really good AND makes a big difference.
I’ve always looked at giving back this way. At Maxime Salon, we supported many charities and participated in many causes.
Education has always been very important to me and Maxime teamed up with several organizations by mentoring their people. And I can’t tell you how much it gave back to Maxime, but our philanthropy didn’t end there. Today, I still mentor – working with business owners here in Cambridge and I get so much out of it!
At Maxime, our biggest support went to Medicine for Humanity. At the time, I’d been searching for a cause. Then, one day, a client told me what prompted the founder of Medicine for Humanity to launch the organization.
As the story goes, a Guatemalan woman had lost her child and went to her priest grief-stricken and crying. When he asked what was wrong, the woman told him.
“I only had a little money,” she said. “I had to make a choice whether to buy food for my family who were starving, or medicine for my baby. But since my baby’s fever wasn’t that high — and he’d been sick before like he was — I decided to buy food. But my baby got sicker and sicker and died.”
Horrified, the priest decided to do something about it, and thus began this wonderful organization.
I always wanted to give back to the children of the world because they are the future. So, when I heard this story, that was it for me.
This is how we gave: For every single service we performed at Maxime, every single day, we donated $2 to Medicine for Humanity. And every fiscal quarter we’d give them a big check.
We educated all of our clients about Medicine for Humanity and what we were doing. It excited them because they knew that they were giving, too, through us.
Giving is magical: It expands your world. When a business gives back, it draws people and resources to itself. Word of mouth spreads the news about what you’re doing, and suddenly people want to be part of it: They want to give more, sponsor your events, volunteer. It creates a viral effect that brings you more clients and even employees – good employees that share your vision.
All this energy creates a common culture of giving back and generosity that spreads throughout your company and personal life. And what’s so funny is that you’re not investing in any advertising, so both your public relations and profit margins are huge! You get more — and then even more! — from giving. The only PR we did was to send out press releases to media outlets when something big happened. Mostly the press found us from word of mouth. We were featured in all kinds of print and electronic media, and the whole thing just kept growing.
I always urge business owners to find a great charity that matches their values and team up with them. It’s an unbelievably fabulous win-win situation.
