''Benefit Restaurant'' - Sustainable Giving

Our initiative is a new funding source for nonprofits. Donor-restaurants simply operate as usual, then calculate and contribute a percentage of their monthly sales. Beneficiary-nonprofits simply include the donor-restaurants in their existing outreach, then wait for the check.

The nonprofits, who know in advance that they will be receiving a percentage of sales from those restaurants, inform their stakeholders via announcements in their established marketing channels – newsletters, websites, email, Facebook, Twitter, etc.

There is virtually no friction, no waste in this process. No special events are staged, avoiding substantial associated time commitment, expense, and risk. No additional payroll, marketing, or other operating costs are incurred by either party in a Benefit Restaurant®-Beneficiary relationship.

On the contrary: Instead, valuable synergies are established. Beneficiary-nonprofits’ budgets improve with the infusion of new money. Nonprofit donor and volunteer bases grow as awareness of their missions rise among donor-restaurant patrons. Beneficiary-nonprofit stakeholders patronize donor-restaurants, whose revenues increase, further growing the nonprofits’ donations in the process. Virtuous circles are born and nurtured.

But that’s not all: Donor-restaurants’ existing customer bases are energized by the new philanthropic mission of their favorite restaurants, thereby increasing their visits, check averages, and referrals. And the diversity of social priorities comprising their customer bases is addressed by the restaurants directing their flow of funds to a different charity each month, thereby both addressing not one but a set of social problems and warding off “compassion fatigue”.

Benefit Restaurants commit themselves to a systematic form of cause-related marketing and, in so doing, become living community endowments for their beneficiaries.