Guest Blogger Maya Laurent of Such Great Heights Photography is sharing with us how to help your senior models give back! Check it out below!

Have you noticed this generation of teenagers seems to be much more involved in their community? Whether it’s volunteering at the local humane society or heading out on a missiontrip each summer, the high school students are looking for ways to impact the world around them. This is a wonderful opportunity for you to embrace this idea of giving back and make it a part of your model program.

To make your models feel involved on a personal level, allow them to pick the charity they would like to donate to. At Such Great Heights, the charities range from the local children’s hospitals and humane societies to very specific organizations that each model has a reason for wanting to donate. This provides another opportunity to

get to know your models on a different level too. Finding out what their passions are and the stories behind those creates another connection with the senior.

Communicate to your models how they can raise money for their charity. The easiest idea is to give a certain amount of money to their charity when they send referrals to you who book a session. This gives them another reason to talk about your photography business as they tell others to use you. In fact, they might be more likely to

talk about you because you are helping them give back to something they truly care about.

 

Create blog posts for your models from their senior sessions and give an incentive to donate to their charity for the number of blog comments they receive. This drives more traffic to your website for their friends to explore your site, as well as communicates your desire to give back.  You might give an amount for each comment or for reaching a certain number of comments.  Communicate this on social media when you share the blog about how others can help the model raise money by commenting. You could do the same with the number of likes on Instagram if you want to drive traffic to your Instagram feed.

In order to track the number of donations, have some kind of tracking sheet to keep on top of the amount raised for each charity. You will most likely have some charities overlap with your models. Pick a couple times per year that you send the donations and make notes of the

donations sent in your tracking sheet. Send your models notes when you donate to let them know how much they’ve helped raise and the total sent.

A giving-back program helps you give back and involves your models in the areas they feel strongly about and giving them a tangible way to take action. There’s no better feeling than sending out checks and making online donations to a variety of charities your models have picked. Grab this idea and start incorporating it into

your model program to make a difference as a company.