The Spirit of Giving

A few years ago, Mike McCarron slumped in a boardroom chair and started to vent. Business had been good at his company, MSM Transportation, and he’d wanted to set up a program at the Bolton, Ont.-based trucking company where he and his employees could do something charitable for the community.

But corporate philanthropy was becoming more work than it was worth. McCarron wheeled around to the man next to him and griped about how it seems that 10 cents out of every buck actually gets to the people you’re trying to help, while the rest is soaked up by executive salaries and office leases. “Fortunately,” McCarron recalls, “the guy I was talking to was Rick Gaetz.”

Gaetz, president of Vitran Distribution Systems, a trucking and logistics firm based in Toronto, is the founder of the Stephanie Gaetz KEEPSAFE Foundation, established in memory of his eight-month-old daughter who drowned in a backyard pool in 1993. The group teaches parents how to prevent accidents, which, you might be surprised to learn, cause more deaths among Canadian kids than all diseases combined. If MSM wanted a charity to sponsor, Gaetz would be happy to oblige.

The ensuing conversation blossomed into a mutually beneficial partnership. For the past three summers, MSM has organized a golf tournament, raffle, and auction raising $300,000 for Gaetz’s foundation. Each year, during the wrap-up dinner, when McCarron hands over one of those oversized ceremonial cheques, Gaetz and his wife Barbara explain how the funds will be used, and express their gratitude with grace and warmth. Charities that promote preventive causes are a tough sell: making sure parents do up all the right straps on the car seat lacks the appeal of a cancer cure. Yet after dinner, folks come forward with stories about children who wandered out of sight “for just a second,” and the Gaetzes listen compassionately to every one.

The Canadian trucking industry is flush with caring, generous people who know that hard work is the price to be paid for giving. At a time of year when everyone from the United Way to the second-chair trombone player in the high school band is looking for a stocking stuffer, here are a few lessons McCarron can share about charitable giving.

1. Choose your charity wisely. Interview the people who manage the organization about how it is run, how the money is spent (especially what percentage is devoted to administrative costs), and what programs would benefit them most. What are their objectives? To raise money? Encourage people to volunteer? Educate? All of the above?

2. Include your employees. Encourage (don’t require) them to participate. Ask what charities they’re already involved with-there may be a group close to their hearts, doing great work quietly, that you’d like to support financially or through some sort of in-kind donation. Avoid fundraisers around the holidays when cash is in short supply, and encourage volunteerism. “A lot of our employees don’t have the wherewithall to write a cheque,” McCarron says, “but their work really makes a difference.”

3. Leverage your business relationships. “I have no problem strongarming people onto the golf course for a good cause,” McCarron says. “If someone wants to give me hockey tickets, I tell them to take the money and give it to our charity. I actually switched suppliers once because the rep always seemed to have plenty of freebies for me but wouldn’t help with our fundraiser.”

4. Talk to your accountant. If you’re a very small company or an owner-operator, it may be more advantageous to claim any gift you give under your personal income tax. When your gifts rise above $200, your rate of deductibility jumps, too. And the rules are complex if you want to make claims on gifts of inventory or of used equipment.

5. Choose a cause you’re truly passionate about. “It’s tons of work organizing our event,” McCarron explains. “I dedicate myself and my assistant full-time for a few months. Our employees put in a lot of personal and work time. From a pure return on investment for MSM, there’s no way to justify it. But we’re helping a friend. We’re helping kids. There’s real value in how that makes us feel about ourselves. We float on air for weeks afterward.”

6. Finally, if you’re going to leverage the goodwill of being associated with a charitable cause, you’d better deliver when the time comes. If you commit, your help will be counted on.

Have a safe holiday and a prosperous new year.