The Importance of Philanthropy in Entrepreneurship: Breaking Things Down

After graduating from the University of Maryland in 2011, Alexander Dillon started Blackbridge Capital – a successful investment firm – just a year later. He would start several other successful companies over the next few years, including a restaurant with his childhood friends. He managed to do all of this before he reached the age of 32 years old. With that, he’d turned what many would consider a dream into a reality.

All of this is to say that Alexander Dillon knows how to be an entrepreneur, and he wants to take the lessons he’s learned along the way and use them to help as many people as he can. Indeed, this is a theme you can see throughout his career as he is heavily focused on supporting growing businesses with capital and leadership resources that they may not otherwise have access to.

Throughout this time, he’s also emphasized one of his major passions: philanthropy. But charitable giving isn’t just a hobby for Alexander Dillon. He believes that it’s an integral part of being an entrepreneur for many different reasons, all of which are worth exploring.

Why Giving Back is the Most Powerful Asset of All For Entrepreneurs

One of the significant reasons why philanthropy is essential in entrepreneurship is that many new business owners, in particular, don’t overthink. It can help significantly improve employee culture and engagement.

Think about it – employees (especially top-tier ones) want to work for businesses that have the same ideals. They often live in the communities they work in. Therefore, every time they see an entrepreneur go out of their way to give back to the community, they see more than just another employer. They see values that they can believe in and align themselves with. This makes them more engaged with their work, which inevitably goes a long way toward improving the quality of their output.

Philanthropy is also a great way to improve an entrepreneur’s standing within said community. Most people want to prioritize doing business with only those organizations that they trust. What better way to build trust with a population than to support community events, to give charitably to causes that make things better, and to show how invested you are in the world around you?

Philanthropy and sponsoring local events is also a great way to get the word out about a particular business. Most people have tuned out traditional advertising by this point as they’re already being bombarded by it on all sides, all day long. But when you even do something as simple as sponsoring a local youth sports team or giving to the education system in an area, you get your name out in a way that people admire and respect. The importance of this cannot be overstated, especially for newly launched businesses.

In the end, Alexander Dillon hopes that more young entrepreneurs can understand and acknowledge the true value of philanthropy in everything they’re doing. One of the most important assets that any business has, regardless of industry, is the clients and customers they work with. The people who live and work in the same communities that they do.

Therefore, those entrepreneurs are intrinsically tied to those communities themselves. When one part of the community succeeds, the whole thing does – which is why a healthy approach to philanthropy for a business owner ultimately creates a mutually beneficial situation for everyone involved.