Corporate Responsibility in Poor Economic Times

By: Virgil Huston

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I was going to be more specific with today's blog, but my sister-in-law had emergency surgery today and came out of the operating room a couple of hours ago after 8 hours of surgery (she is in ICU but doing OK). So, I had to postpone my delivery of Acqal's quarterly check to a deserving nonprofit organization. That will happen next week and I will let you know who and why we selected this particular organization.

We started Acqal in October, 2008, in the midst of a recession. We didn't know how bad the economic climate would be when we decided to form the company, but we went ahead. All of us, Michael, Nicole, and me all believe that corporations should do what they can to support worthy nonprofit organizations. It is part of corporate responsibility to give back to the community and support good works.

So, we set aside a percentage of our gross revenue to go into a "Charity" account, to be distributed once a quarter. None of us are making the salaries we would like to have at this point (this is a start up, after all, and only six months old), but we felt that we should start setting aside for charity immediately and not wait for some time in the future when we are rolling in money.

Today, I was to have given a check to a local nonprofit in Augusta, GA. Since we have an office here (North Augusta, SC, actually, a mile from the river and Augusta, GA), we felt that supporting a local group was appropriate. And, let me tell you, it wasn't easy to decide, there are so many worthy causes in all different areas, from medical (we have the Medical College of Georgia here and a huge medical community) to social to cultural to issue oriented think tanks to environmental to etc., etc., etc.

Beyond this charitable donation, we also support the TYPO3 Association and community. We are members of the TYPO3 Association, which is not free, and just donated 500 Euros to an effort to hire a fundraising expert for the TYPO3 Association. This will eventually lead to the hiring of a full time marketing person for TYPO3. Hopefully, this will be a good investment for us, yet we are one of only a few companies who have donated, so we could easily have avoided it and reaped the benefits. No one forced us to join the Association, either.

Personally, I believe in karma, what goes around comes around. It is the right thing to support the good works others are doing.