Random acts of kindness ideas for businesses

Giving back is known to boost community spirit, improve employee morale and even increase sales. Why? Because people value social responsibility and more people than ever are taking kindness into account when they shop or look for a new role. In other words, it does some good and makes everyone feel warm and fuzzy in the process – and who can argue with that!

If your business can spare some time, money or even products, it could really make a difference to people’s lives and bring your community together. And the act of randomly giving will also make you feel good too, so it's a win-win!

Here are some random acts of kindness ideas for your business.

1. Offer volunteer days for employees

Volunteer days involve the business setting aside a couple of hours or days each month for employees to volunteer at a local charity. You could either let your employees pick the charity they want to volunteer at, or you could select and vet a range of charities yourself for employees to pick from.

As well as providing much needed help, employee volunteering can do wonders for productivity, retention and attracting new talent. It’s makes employees feel more empowered and is also a great team building experience.

Some ideas for volunteer days your company could offer include:

• Planting trees
• Working in a community garden
• Volunteering at a care home
• Going to a school careers day to chat about what you do
• Cleaning up rubbish in your local community
• Helping out at your local homeless shelter or food bank

2. Give to the community

Depending on what your business does, there are several ways you could give to your community.

If you’re a service-based business, you could offer your services pro bono or for a discounted price. If you’re a subscription-based company, you could offer a certain amount of months for free. And if you run a retail business, are there any products that you could donate to people in need or give to loyal customers for free?

Some other ideas include:

• Cafes and restaurants could donate food
• Hairdressers and barbers could offer free haircuts and shaves
• Artists and crafters could teach new skills in free workshops
• Retailers could donate clothes or useful products

3. Donate to charity

If you’ve experienced strong profit margins this year, many businesses choose to donate a certain amount of their revenue to charitable causes. This could be between 1-5% and would make a big difference to an organisation’s valuable work.

4. Offer an apprenticeship

You could help a young person learn new skills and see what the world of full-time employment is like, or help someone who wants a career change to upskill themself, by offering an apprenticeship.

Gov.uk has useful resources on their dedicated Apprenticeships site that you can use to find an apprentice as well as a hub of information.

Or, you can read our guide to employing an apprentice.

5. Reward your employees

Rewarding your employees doesn’t have to mean offering a bonus – although there’s nothing wrong that! There are a number of things you can do that your employees will no doubt appreciate. It could be:

• Organising an awards ceremony with fun prizes
• Giving them an extra day off
• Organising a team dinner or a day activity
• A hand written note expressing your appreciation for their hard work
• A gift box
• A funny thank you video from you and other senior members of the team, your clients or your favourite customers

You don't need to wait around for big events to do any of these things – part of the point of random acts is the surprise element and being kind just because.

6. Support fellow small businesses

You can catch your competition off guard by supporting them yourself – this may well be entirely unexpected and usually dissipates any tension.

There are so many ways to uplift other businesses and shine a spotlight on their products or services.

You could:

• Give them some love on social media
• Leave reviews about their custom or product
• Do a ‘spotlight of the week’ display in your store by showcasing their products (with their permission, of course)
• Offer a discount to those who show a receipt from another local retailer

7. Organise a fundraiser

Fundraisers are great team building exercises that raise money for good causes.

From night running to shaving your head, there are so many ways to raise money. You could join a fundraising event that's run by a charity or create your own fundraiser, such as a team sports day, an auction or something even more creative. For instance, Superscript created an esports tournament called Unbound, where we invited other insurance companies to play online games in teams.

Some charity events that you can sign up to include:

• A coffee morning or sponsored head shave for Macmillan cancer support
• A glow night walk for Alzheimer's Society
• Grow a mo for Movember
• Christmas Jumper Day for Save the Children
• Race for Life for Cancer Research UK
• Wear pink for Breast Cancer Now
• Wear your best denim for Jeans for Genes day

As an added bonus, you could match all donations raised by the staff.

8. Offer discounts to key workers

You can show gratitude to frontline workers and those making a positive difference in your community by offering a special discount. Some groups you could offer this to are health, social and home care services.

One way to do this is by registering with Blue Light Card, which offers high street and online discounts to anyone in the Blue Light community such as NHS, emergency services and social care staff as well as those in the armed forces.

9. Host an event

If you have a retail or office space, you could use it as a place to bring people together. Some ideas to do this include:

• Hosting a launch event for a new business
• Showcasing the work of local artists
• Holding a talk or interview about a topic of interest
• A games or quiz night
• A storytime session or crafts workshop for children

If you don’t have the physical space or something is preventing you having an in-person event, you could host something virtually.

10. Partner with a charity

Partnering with a charity is about more than just donating money. Those who partner with charities make it their mission to become actively involved in the chosen charity’s mission. You should choose a charity that shares your social and sustainable goals.

Depending on the charity, this could mean organising regular days that your employees can help out, creating a programme together, donating a portion of your products or service time to the charity or sharing assets.

Go forth and be kind

Any act of kindness – no matter how big or small – will no doubt make someones day. The world could always use more of it, so any act of giving you do won't go unnoticed.

We hope we’ve given you some ideas of how your business can spread some kindness throughout the year – the more there is in the world, the better it will be!

You may also like:

• How to become a more sustainable business
• How to create an LGBT inclusive workplace
• Employee rewards that are better than bonuses