Being socially responsible doesn’t mean paying lip-service to problems. It means caring enough to try to help lessen a problem. You may not perceive the impact of what you do to be large, but that’s not the point. A small effort can make a huge difference in the lives of others.
I learned this lesson many years ago and I will never forget the moment I did. This is a personal story that hopefully demonstrates how we can all make a difference if we try.
Care Enough to Help
Thirteen years ago, Gary Eisenstein and I were chatting about helping some community organizations in need. At the time, I was building my online marketing agency, Metamend, and Gary was building his web design firm, Falcon. We were commenting on the challenges that so many great contributors to the community faced with regard to a lack of online presence. Rather than just talk about it, we decided to help some worthy organizations by building and promoting their web presence. We enlisted the assistance of Natasha Dilay and a few others to bring additional perspective and community insights. Unwittingly, we became “socially responsible.”
As a first step in the project, we qualified which types of organizations we would assist, agreeing that at least half of the projects should benefit children. We undertook a lot of projects, but a camp for deaf children and Victoria’s single parent’s resource centre are especially memorable for me. The latter demonstrates very clearly how doing the right thing sometimes has completely unforeseen results.
A Small Contribution to a Large Problem
At the time we learned of it, the single parent resource centre was as an organization that focused on supporting single parents with children to help them overcome the challenges they faced being newly single. Many families that dissolve do so unexpectedly and sometimes one parent is left abandoned, as are their children. Overnight, these parents become the sole caregiver and they are often unprepared to deal with all of the issues they will have to face.
The problems that newly single parents face every day are staggering. I’ve never had to face those challenges myself, but it’s a problem I care about as a parent because the impact that abandonment has on children can be so profound.
The resource centre helped newly single parents find housing, provided counseling, and also helped them find work. But when we encountered it, they had little to no Internet presence and recognized that they were unable to reach a large number of stakeholders who were searching for this exact type of support.
We made a small contribution to the problem; we built the organization a web presence and promoted it. They told us that it helped, that they were able to reach more parents in need, and could access more resources to assist them.
Knowing that we had helped was enough. But then came a surprise…
Unexpected Results
Just over one year after we published the site for the resource centre, I was asked to speak about the project to a local group of business people. We weren’t actively promoting what we had done. Rather, we wanted to recruit more participants to help us assist more organizations.
In the year since the initial project was completed, the Metamend team had grown considerably. I sent out a note letting everyone know that I was going to speak about the prior year’s efforts, and what we planned to do going forward.
As I was preparing to leave, a fellow who worked with us walked up to me and just said “Thanks.” I had no idea what he was referring to so I responded with a “You’re welcome, but I’m not sure why?” Minutes later, my jaw hit the floor, the memory of this quick conversation is forever burned into my brain.
“As you know, I’m a single parent. What you don’t know is that, just over a year ago, my wife emptied our bank account and abandoned my daughter and me. I had just lost my job. I didn’t even have enough money left to buy food for my daughter, or pay rent, and I didn’t know what to do. The single parent resource centre saved my daughter and helped me get back on my feet. They also helped me find this job.”
I had no idea.
As an entrepreneur, I never considered this initiative to be an obligation under the umbrella of “Corporate Social Responsibility”. I just considered it the right type of thing to do. I was fortunate to have the skills to be able to help an organization that I believed would be able to make a difference in the lives of others.
Since our contributions, the single parent resource centre organization has changed and evolved to a new level. Today, The Victoria Single Parent’s Resource Centre continues to make a laudable contribution to the community. I am honored to have been able to provide them assistance.
You never know how a small contribution may impact others.