The case for charity
Plenty of companies give to charity, but when Majestic
started the Majestic Realty Foundation in 2002, Roski wanted the company to do more than just write a check every
year. Instead of giving blindly, he wanted to use the company’s resources to help build strategies for nonprofit organizations and help with management initiatives. The idea was
basic enough: Don’t just give to charity, make an impact in
the community where you work. To that, Roski says you have to think of how your work will affect the community
and be sure to consider strengthening it wherever possible.
“I’ve always felt it’s critical to think in the long term in the
deals that you’re doing on a day-to-day basis, to think about
what you’re doing and what you’re building.” he says. “Our
growth pretty well depends on not just growing our business but growing in the cities and communities that we’re
involved with. We’ve always been committed to building
long-term relationships with our business partners, and I
think fostering solid partnerships with stronger communities kind of creates a foundation and you can really continue to grow.”
That brings Roski back to the evolution he made to start
the Majestic Foundation instead of just pouring more money
into local charities. Roski says the fact of the matter is
you’re probably going to be giving to a charity anyway, so
you might as well help that investment along as you would
any other. By taking a more active role in the process, you
might find that Roski’s theory about building a stronger
community will help grow your company.
“We’ve always been involved in the community, and we
wanted to take basically a more active role than just passively making donations and stuff like this, so I founded the
Majestic Foundation and that really gave us the opportunity
to actively work with the different nonprofits and to make
a real impact,” Roski says.
“Most business do try to contribute and give back to the
communities that they are in. And, as we became more and
more active in that side of things, we thought that we could
take that next step and provide some guidance and maybe
some business principles to help nonprofits accomplish
their goals, so it’s just the next step in an evolution.”
