As I travel around the world, speaking in BNI Regions about the BNI Foundation and our flagship program, Business Voices, I am becoming absolutely convinced that the foundation can be a force for business growth and more referrals in the Chapters.
- Being a part of the BNI Foundation amplifies your brand in your Chapter AND in your community: we are at the point in our social milieu that it is simply expected for a business to be involved in charitable/philanthropic service. Making certain your brand or company is engaged in outreach gives you a leading edge with your prospective customers, as well as creates raving fans out of your current clients. Think about it—when you are shopping for anything, say teas, water, or even jewelry, the brand that lets you know right up front on their packaging and advertising that they are involved with social causes of some sort is the one you are statistically most likely to choose. When you get involved with the BNI Foundation at the local Chapter level, you have a turn-key outreach program at the ready. You are joining thousands of other business professionals who are working together to be a positive presence in children’s educational programs! This sets you apart in your community and gives your business great visibility.
- Relationships between members grow stronger and go deeper when you get involved with the BNI Foundation’s Business Voices projects. As you work together outside of the weekly Chapter meetings on the outreach projects so needed by the schools and educational organizations who benefit from our time and talent, the bond between Chapter members grows faster. We’ve seen this dynamic over and over. And this is true for your Chapter and it is also true for cross-Chapter relationships. When several BNI Chapters work together on a project, all of the members find they are strengthening their relationships, and that translates into more business by referrals as the members get to know each other at the heart level. There is just something quite special about serving children, schools, and educational organizations as a group. It’s a powerfully effective way to forge close ties and strong bonds with each other.
- We are filling the BNI pipeline with new members coming up from the next generation! This is a by-product of the work we are doing to improve the educational experience for the youth of our communities. When we first started our Business Voices program, I intuitively knew that our work would help to prepare all of our companies’ future employees by ensuring that their educational backgrounds were as strong as they could be. What I have come to see more and more clearly is that we are familiarizing these same young people with the concepts of business networking and the identity of BNI. My husband, Dr. Ivan Misner, laments that we are not teaching business networking in colleges and universities. But why wait until college or university? As we have seen in numerous situations, there are BNI Members who have come to us as a result of learning about business networking and BNI through our outreach programs to youth. This will only be magnified as more and more Chapters and Members get involved in Business Voices and the life-changing work of the BNI Foundation.
So, what can you do to include the BNI Foundation in your Power Team? Learn more about Business Voices at www.BNIFoundation.org under the Take Action tab. Reach out to your BNI Director to get help to include the BNI Foundation in YOUR Power Team today. Let us know if you would like one of our Business Voices coaches to work with you. We’re here. We’re ready. And we’re more than happy to help.
