Why We Give Away 10% (And Why You Should Give Something)

We give ten percent of our profits to families in need in the Birmingham area. It says so on our promise page, and I want to explain why, because it’s not a marketing line and I’d rather you understood the reasoning than assumed it was one.

“When I make it” never arrives

Almost everybody says some version of this. Once things settle down. Once we have a cushion. Once this quarter clears.

The trouble is that a business never feels finished. There’s always a slow month coming, a piece of equipment about to die, a customer paying late. If your rule is “give when it feels comfortable,” you’ve written a rule that can never trigger, and you’ll be seventy years old still waiting to feel comfortable.

The fix is to make it a percentage instead of a decision. A percentage of a small number is a small number. That’s the point. You build the habit when the stakes are low, and then the habit survives into the years when the numbers get bigger.

Why it goes out in bad years too

This is the part people push back on, and it’s fair to push back.

If it only happens in good years, it isn’t a commitment. It’s a bonus. And a bonus is the first thing to get cut, every single time, because there’s always a reason.

Ten percent of profit is self-limiting by design. In a lean year, ten percent of a lean profit is a small amount, and it should be. The commitment scales down with you. What doesn’t change is that it happens.

Where this comes from

I’ve had a stretch of real hardship in my life. Not the inconvenient kind — the kind where the number in the account is the first thing you think about in the morning.

What that period taught me is how enormous a small amount of help is when you’re in it. A few hundred dollars at the right moment isn’t a few hundred dollars. It’s a month of breathing room, and breathing room is what lets people think past Friday.

So when this company started making money, the question wasn’t whether to give some away. Money that just sits there isn’t doing anything. Money is only worth something when it’s moving toward something that matters.

What this does to the business, honestly

I’m not going to pretend this is a growth hack. It costs money. That’s the whole idea. But a few real things happen.

• It settles pricing arguments. When part of your margin is already committed to somebody else, gouging gets harder to justify to yourself. It quietly keeps you honest.
• It makes profit feel like a means. Profit stops being a scoreboard and starts being fuel. That’s a healthier relationship with money, and it makes the slow months less frightening.
• It attracts the right customers. Not many people pick a web designer because of a giving pledge. But the ones who mention it tend to be the ones who care how things are done, and those turn into long partnerships.

You don’t have to copy our number

Ten percent is our number. It doesn’t have to be yours, and I’d rather you pick something you’ll actually keep than something impressive you’ll quietly abandon in March.

One percent counts. Free work for one nonprofit a year counts. A standing Saturday counts. The number matters much less than whether it’s automatic, because automatic is what survives a bad quarter.

And it doesn’t have to be money. Some of the most useful giving I’ve seen around the 205 is a tradesman doing a repair at cost for somebody who couldn’t have paid for it, and never mentioning it again.

The part that surprises people

Running a business is mostly unglamorous maintenance. Invoices, email, the same problem you already solved twice.

Having one piece of it pointed at somebody else changes the texture of the whole thing. It gives the slow months a reason, and it makes the good months mean something more specific than a bigger number in an account.

That’s the honest sell. It won’t grow your revenue. It’ll make the work feel like it’s for something, which turns out to matter more over sixteen years than I would have guessed at the start.

Tired of the runaround? Let’s talk real numbers. Call (205) 236-2239 or email [email protected]. No twenty-part forms, we promise.