5 Ways Your Small Business Can Contribute to Charity Online

Being small shouldn't preclude your business from supporting worthwhile charities. In fact, not only are charitable contributions tax deductible, but they're also a great way to help your company become better known for giving back to the community. Even if you're cash poor or tight on time, your small business can do its part to better the world with each of these five ways to contribute to charity online.

1. Social Actions
Whether you want your small business to volunteer time, donate money, or sign a petition, you can start your search for good at Social Actions. The site has a database of 20,000+ actions, with detailed descriptions, that will help you find the right cause for your company to make a difference. You can even find the tools you need to promote the social good you're doing across the Web and get others involved.

2.  Givvy @ Work
Once you start to create a company culture around giving back, you're ready to inspire the rest of your team to do the same, and Givvy @ Work can help you do just that. The site will help you create an online campaign site for your company that you can use to encourage and inspire team member donations for good causes.

You can use Givvy's site to select from over 1.4 million nonprofits and support multiple charities of your choosing. Since you can also fully brand your company's campaign site, and receive reports of giving by employee and charity, Givvy @ Work offers a free, painless, and measurable way to help your small business make a big difference.

3. Make-A-Wish Frequent Flier Miles
Given that small business team members frequently travel to close deals and meet with clients, you probably already have plenty of frequent flier miles to spare. Why not put these to good use and make someone else's wish to travel come true?

Using the Make-A-Wish foundation, you can donate your AirTran, American Airlines, British Airways, Continental Airlines, Delta, Northwest, United, and US Airways airline miles to someone who needs them more than you. Each airline is slightly different, so make sure to reference the details provided on the Disney/Make-A-Wish site.

4. StopPovertyNow
If money is tight, but your heart is big, a $10 donation to StopPovertyNow will only get you a single pixel of a pixel-rich photo, but the idea is that if enough people donate $10 the image will be completed and together all the donations will amass to one large lump sum. 

Donations go to the Grameen Foundation and help local organizations in extremely poor parts of the world provide women with loans to start their own businesses. Each donation also lets the donor upload their own photo and message, such that mousing over a particular pixel will display your custom message to page visitors.

5. Giving Zone
If you want to do more than just donate your company's frequent flyer miles, Giving Zone lets you harness the power of all those credit card points and rewards your small business has accumulated, on top of your miles, for good. 

Giving Zone has a number of programs that will pull at your heart strings without depleting your company bank account. Your points and miles can do great things, like grant a soldier's wish, help build dental clinics in Liberia, get troops and their families free flights, and raise funds for bricks to build communities.