Has anyone ever secretly picked up your lunch bill or paid for your coffee in the drive-thru line? Think about how such a small, kind gesture makes you feel and the ripple effect it creates, as it often inspires you to pay it forward to others.
That’s the amazing thing about “Doing Good”—the theme of this month’s issue of NAWBO ONE. Whether your action is small or large, and done by you personally or professionally with your team of employees, every good deed has the potential of positively impacting another, another and another.
In this issue of NAWBO ONE, we have ideas for how to implement a good corporate citizenship initiative in your business as well as how you can combine social responsibility with holiday gift giving this season. We also asked the women business owners featured how and why they give back. Just a few of the benefits include:
- Personal satisfaction
- Enhances and expands relationships
- Better company image and recognition
- Increased sales and customer loyalty
- Greater ability to attract, engage and retain talent
- Builds a strong company culture/workplace environment
- Encourages personal and professional growth
Meanwhile, as part of NAWBO, we are all provided with an incredibly unique opportunity to do good every day—for ourselves, our businesses, our communities and our world. This might mean mentoring, referring business or providing valuable resources to other women business owners, like NAWBO members and partners do every day. Or it might mean helping to further women’s entrepreneurship globally, like NAWBO delegates did during recent trips to Nicaragua, Rome and India (you can read about those trips in this issue!). Or it could mean giving to the NAWBO Institute for Entrepreneurial Development to bring more educational opportunities to more women business owners across the U.S. to help them grow. It truly amazes me all the ways we do good together.
Lastly, I want to take this opportunity to thank all our staff, national and chapter leaders, members and partner organizations for all the good you do for NAWBO and the incredible women entrepreneurs we represent—you are what makes this organization so great and what makes us want to be even greater in the year ahead. Have a happy and healthy holiday season, and we’ll see you in 2018!
—Kathy Warnick, 2017-2018 NAWBO National Chair