However, businesses, because they are accumulations of individuals – owners, employees, vendors, customers and all their families – all united in a common cause, common set of relationships and organized to accomplish -- have a far greater capacity to give time, money and emotional energy than individuals.
Whereas an individual may have a certain income, the company typically has a multiple of that income. Whereas an individual may have a spiritual gift, the folks who make up the company have a multitude of spiritual gifts among them. Whereas an individual only has a certain amount of time and emotional energy to give, the company has many more times that amount of time and energy.
In short, you can do a whole lot more with the assets and capability of a company than you can as individuals. For example, one person may be able to donate a half day on a weekend to working at food bank. The company, on the other hand, working as a single entity, could create the food bank. One person may be able to donate to the cost of a surgical procedure for a child in a developing country. The company, on
the other hand, could send the doctor to do multiple such surgeries.
Understanding that, a more precise question then emerges: How can we use our special attributes of consolidated time, money, spiritual gifts and emotional energy to give in ways that allow us to have a special and greater impact?
I suspect that very few business owners and executives have ever asked that question. There are lots of reasons for that. But, more important than analyzing the past is planning for the future. The important thing is that you are here, now, and you have the question before you.
Before you jump to solutions, let me suggest that you first give thought to a process for identifying answers to the question. So, instead of you, personally, coming up with the ideas for answers, suppose you could harness the assembled power of the people in your business to develop possible answers.
How would you go about that? What would that process look like?
I suspect it would have these 9 Elements:
1. Prayer. What a meaty issue to take to God. “Lord, guide us in developing a focus for our giving of time, money and emotional energy. Show us where we can have the greatest impact with what we have.” The Christians among the group should make it matter for prayer before you begin and during the whole process.
2. Education. You’d need to decide what the folks needed to know before they were equipped to brainstorm solutions. Very few people have an informed idea of ‘spiritual gifts’ for example...[Click Here To Read The
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