Remember cutting little coupons “Box Tops for Education” from the tops of General Mills cereal boxes? Sending them to school with your kids? Do you remember their excited expressions when the end of the school year came and they heard the announcement, “You helped raise $5,000 for our school!”?

This simple fund raiser, supported by General Mills, used the power of a large audience to increase a single school’s funds. What if you could transfer that strategy and use it on an audience of millions? What could you accomplish then?

Here’s the thing, the power of the internet comes from the enormous size of its audience. Using social media is an smart way to gather that audience easily and make big change in the world – or just the local community. There is already a strategy that uses the internet to do so. The Donate-a-Dollar campaign focuses on the concept that each audience member can do a tiny amount, and a mass quantity of people doing so adds up.

Here’s the idea: there are 750 million active Facebook users. If even 1 percent of those users donated $1 to a particular cause, that would total $7.5 million.

As a small business, you have the opportunity to support causes that are relevant to your community. The local food bank, a state-wide disaster relief fund or a low-income elementary school might be on the top of your list. (more…)

Courtesy of Master isolated images / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

The first thing that popped into my head when I asked myself this question is the golf community. I grew up in a family where”golf is just what we do.”  Some families go to concerts or enjoy seeing movies together.  My family decided to follow me out to college after I decided to go out of state, because they just fell in love with a golf course that just happened to be minutes away from the University of Arizona’s campus – so much for getting away!  In all seriousness, the exposure my family has given me to the game is something I can never thank them enough for.  Golf has taught me many important values such as respect, honesty, and sportsmanship. (more…)

Almost everyone knows the movie Field of Dreams.

The story of a struggling farmer who starts hearing voices telling him “If you build it, he will come.” At the voices’ urging, he plows under his corn field and builds a regulation baseball field. The “ghosts” of the 1919 Chicago White Sox, and eventually the main character’s late father, suddenly “just show up” to play there.

Many people think that community “just happens” in much the same way. People with the same views and ideas naturally just find each other and suddenly you have a community. Sometimes this may be the case. But most of the time, there needs to be a lot of planning and strategy behind the scenes. (more…)