Once you’ve found a charity, there are many ways you can help. Just listen to the charity and your customers to find out their needs. Here are 5 ideas:

• Have a fundraiser and give a portion of the night’s proceeds to the group
• Offer to cater the group’s organizational or board meetings or allow them to meet in your restaurant during off-peak times
• Think about the MDA and their paper shamrocks – sell paper cutouts and hang them on the wall with the customer’s name
• Involve your customers – ask them to make monetary donations and match them
• Host a drive – blood drives, clothing drives, food drives, etc.

Some other restaurants that participate in charity partnerships are:

• Pizza Hut started its own effort with R.E.D. (Read Every Day) which encourages, with parent and teacher involvement, reading in pre-school and kindergarten-age kids
• Virginia-based Paisano’s is raising money for a little girl in their community that has a rare form of cancer
• Hungry Howie’s Pizza out of Michigan raised $100,000 for the National Breast Cancer Foundation, Inc.

Check out the QSR Magazine site for more info and ideas.