Five steps to create a charity project that also benefits your business

Last year, my Ukrainian colleague described a case study of a charitable initiative aimed at reducing mortality in small, remote communities. Here’s what happened: to make medical care more accessible, the organisation caring for local residents' welfare purchased expensive diagnostic equipment for rural clinics. However, it had no real impact. In fact, the equipment wasn’t even unpacked, as there were no qualified specialists available to operate it.

Only after conducting research did it become clear: the real cause of mortality was that the paramedic arrived too late to patients due to transportation issues. So, they bought him… a bicycle. After that, the mortality rate dropped sharply.

For businesses, this example illustrates a common risk: investing in large-scale solutions that seem helpful but are unrelated to people’s real needs. As a result, a company spends resources on impact projects that fail to influence its reputation or stakeholder perception.

Below are five steps to help create an initiative that benefits both people and business.

Align charitable initiatives with business goals

Your charity project won’t gain managerial support if it doesn’t contribute to achieving business objectives. For example, strengthening your employer’s brand, improving employee retention, or expanding the market by reaching a new audience.

This isn’t about cold calculation, it’s about whether your CSR efforts will be effective. When business goals and social initiatives reinforce each other, the project gains resources and stability, while the business benefits from reputational value and a deeper connection with its audience.

Here’s an example. For the past three years, I’ve been working at a company that produces pet food. Back in 2003, when it was just starting out in Ukraine – where the central office is now located – less than a quarter of pet owners fed their cats and dogs commercial pet food. The rest relied on bones and leftover human meals, a diet far from healthy. Today, about 80% of pet owners choose prepared pet food. Why? Because the company consistently invested in educational initiatives on animal health and welfare, promoting proper care and responsible pet ownership.

This is a win-win model: pets receive balanced nutrition, while pet owners save time and don’t have to worry whether their animals are getting the necessary nutrients. Beyond that, the entire pet care sector benefits, as a stable demand develops for a range of quality care products, not just food.

Focus on the root cause, not the symptoms

For an impact project to truly work, you need to identify the point where your efforts will yield the greatest results. Remember my example with the bicycle? If you choose a direction for help based solely on intuition or good intentions, you risk endlessly addressing the consequences rather than the underlying cause.

Take stray animals, for example. You could build new shelters, but that alone doesn’t solve the problem. The root cause is uncontrolled reproduction. The most effective solution is sterilisation – whether targeted or widespread – combined with educational programs for pet owners and animal welfare volunteers.

Identifying the root cause requires serious effort: conduct in-depth interviews, use field research methods, and apply sociological tools. Don’t rely on assumptions – ask the beneficiaries themselves what concerns them. Their answers can reveal problems you might never have anticipated.

Act ethically and honestly

Failing to adhere to ethical standards – such as using images that violate beneficiaries’ privacy, inappropriate wording that might offend part of your audience, an overly harsh tone of voice, or excessively self-promotional messaging – can undermine trust in your initiative.

That’s why it’s crucial to involve non-profit partners. They help ensure you represent the problem accurately and that your campaign doesn’t come across as exploiting someone else’s suffering. These nuances can be hard to spot from within a business, while professionals who work with beneficiaries daily can recognise them immediately. Experts with years of experience in a specific social area know best which issues require priority attention and can guide you on where your efforts will have the greatest impact.

It’s also important to avoid any form of greenwashing, where declarations don’t match actions: fewer flashy slogans, more concrete results and real impact.

Prepare for the long haul

In a charitable project, everything should operate as efficiently as in a business. This isn’t about one-off acts of aid driven by compassion – it’s about systematic work with standardised processes, clearly defined roles, long-term planning, and regular reporting. It’s also essential to have a system for sharing knowledge and best practices.

Without structure, a charitable project can descend into chaos. I witnessed this during the first year of the full-scale war. In Ukraine, numerous charitable organisations emerged – many managed to secure resources and tirelessly support people, often pushing their limits. Some continued to grow but failed to establish an effective organisational structure and formalise workflows. As a result, teams burned out, and some organisations had to close.

The lesson is clear: your project should not rely solely on enthusiasm. It will achieve long-term impact only if it has structure, discipline, and focus.

Establish a results evaluation system

Charitable projects are always a long-term endeavour. For instance, achieving lasting changes in human behaviour can sometimes take five to 20 years. Naturally, businesses cannot wait that long for outcomes, so it is crucial to track not only the final impact but also the intermediate successes.

I recommend continuously seeking correlations between actions and outcomes, as they are not always immediately obvious. Test your hypotheses starting with the negative assumption – that no connection exists. Combine qualitative and quantitative KPIs, and be sure to link them to business interests: talent acquisition, reputation, and loyalty. If people within the company ask, “Why are we doing this?”, it indicates that the project’s value has not been clearly demonstrated.

Don’t neglect output metrics either. For instance, if you’ve created an educational guide on the basic needs of animals, the number of views isn’t just a figure in analytics – each view represents a chance that another animal will receive better care.

A genuine impact project is a long-term investment. When it’s embedded in a company’s DNA, it translates into real change for society and opens new opportunities for the business.

Alina Smyshliak-Boroda is the director of reputation management and CSR at Kormotech, an international company with Ukrainian roots that leads the domestic market and is among the world’s top 55 pet food manufacturers.