With the Christmas season just around the corner, it’s nice to acknowledge your suppliers/business partners and say thank you for another year of great service. But what corporate gifts can you send that avoid the usual cliches of Yule logs and festive hampers?

We’ve highlighted a few alternative corporate Christmas gifts to consider, all of which send a positive, charitable and community-minded message this holiday.

Ideas for positive Christmas gifts

Christmas may be a time to ‘drink, eat and be merry’, but it’s also a time to think about our local and global communities as well. Doing something helpful and worthwhile, that reflects your company’s core values, is a good thing to factor into your corporate gift ideas.

Here are a few alternative gift suggestions to get you thinking:

• Make a donation to your chosen local charity – you may well have a selected charity that you already raise funds for as a business. One way to help spread the love is to make a donation to your main charity, on behalf of your supplier/partner. This helps to demonstrate your values and raise awareness of the charity’s cause.
• Buy Christmas dinner for the homeless – many homeless charities will offer food and accommodation for homeless people over the Christmas period. Paying for 20 Christmas dinners on your supplier/partner’s behalf can make a huge difference for those people that find themselves with shelter, food or family at this time of year.
• Choose a practical gift for a global charity – all charities need cash donations, but increasingly there’s a desire to provide specific funding for a practical or life-changing gift. It might mean funding a water pump project, buying a goat for a family, or paying for vaccination and inoculations. By funding one of these projects for your supplier/partner, you help them have a meaningful impact on the world stage.
• Sponsor a sports person or team – sport can be an essential part of the local community, but it’s difficult for amateur sports people to find the funding they need. Sponsoring a local athlete or sports team helps them to train, compete and hit their sporting goals. And by adding your supplier’s/partner’s name and logo to their kit they also get some additional brand recognition as well.
• Adopt an animal at your local zoo or animal shelter – homing and caring for animals is an expensive business. If your supplier/partner has an interest in nature, then adopting an animal on their behalf is one way to make Christmas a little more special. Some organisations will even send regular updates about their adopted animal, keeping your stakeholder in the loop with what’s going on with the animal and the organisation.
• Donate money to a green charity or organisation – climate change is a gigantic challenge and something humanity can only overcome through cooperation. Why not donate to a sustainable cause for your supplier/partner and provide funding for a tree-planting project, or recycling initiative – anything that helps the global community cut its carbon footprint, reduce pollutants and fund regreening and rewilding projects.

Talk to us about the tax impact of gifting

Donating to charitable organisations on behalf of your suppliers/partners is a brilliant way to demonstrate your core values as a business and share some festive cheer over Christmas.

Giving donations to charity is also tax deductive in most circumstances, so you’ll be able to deduct these charitable contributions from your end profit for the year. It’s worth talking to us about any planned gifts, so we can advise on the tax outcomes.