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In this week's Baking it Down Podcast - Episode 245 - Gimme Gimme Strategic Giving, it's the season of requests to donate, sponsor, and give to local causes, PTAs, and networking events.

It's all about strategic giving in January - and we're here to tell you - it ain't all bottom line blues when it comes to this form of marketing (you see that right there? We didn't categorize it as "selling").

🎁 First up - What is strategic giving?

Strategic giving is the opportunity presented to your bakery to partner with companies that move your business forward, while not necessarily generating income at the immediate start.

🎁 The benefits of strategic giving.

With every strategy, there are pros and cons - but for strategic giving done right, I think there are more positives than negatives.

• 🎀 Giving is good, makes you feel good
• 🎀 Support your customers

When it comes to strategic opportunities, consider your local audience first - they're likely connected to communities, causes, and PTAs - a win-win when you can support them and get exposure.

• 🎀 Reach people you wouldn’t normally reach
• 🎀 Cheaper than paying for an ad
• 🎀 Create relationships with new people
• 🎀 Showcase you working in your community (rally behind a like goal)
• 🎀 Get more orders

Strategic giving is marketing. In the same way you'd run a Facebook ad and spend money to acquire new customers, donating to a raffle can have the same effect - but the catch is it's a slow burn. 🔥 Patience is key with this form of marketing.

• 🎀 Break into an industry
• 🎀 Downside of strategic giving
  
  

🎁 Downside of strategic giving.

Like we said - what goes up must come down. With anything that has benefits, it could also cost you, and with strategic giving, that's build into the name. Because it's a gift, there's no guarantee of a return on your investment. But in another way - the return is the *feel good* feelings you get from supporting a cause or community.

• 🎀 You might not get any new customers
• 🎀 It impacts profitability

I like encouraging people to make a budget line item for strategic giving, that way it doesn't feel like a bottom line buster, 💸 but rather a marketing invoice you're paying through product (or monetarily if that fits your strategy).

• 🎀 Can leave you open to bad reviews
• 🎀 Loss of potential future opportunities

🎁 Creating a Strategic Giving Goal.

A wo-man with a plan! Create a giving goal, then create a marketing campaign around it. Do you want to use strategic giving to increase your social media impressions? Partner with a cause that's active on socials. Want to support a cause you vibe with? Find a charity that directly impacts that and partner there.

• 🎀 Do you want awareness? Social media?
• 🎀 Support a cause?
• 🎀 Last-minute opps

Using community groups to find quick strategic giving opportunities is a really neat (but also a lot of work) method of giving. Finding someone who dropped a cake and posted about it = offer them free cookies. Community groups are an amazing way to reach hyper-local customers.

• 🎀 Do you want to reach a new audience?
• 🎀 How many opportunities are you willing to take?
• 🎀 Maybe it’s just not the right fit for you right now.

🎁 How to turn down opportunities

You need to have a boundary around giving because it can get out of hand and burn the baker out real quick.

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In this week's Baking it Down Podcast - Episode 243 - January Task List, we're tryin' out a new(ish?) format + coming up with a list of ideas you can use to get your sugar cookie bakery headin' in the right direction this year.

Could you do all of these tasks? 🦸‍♂ Only after you finish saving Louis Lane from the high-rise fire. ⚡ But since we're not Superman (or woman), tackling just a few of these each month could just be that one thing that puts you over your competition.

And in the world of stiff icing and stiffer competition, 🤏 every little inch counts.

💡 We're just going to list out our list from the podcast so you can reference it, and I'll add my $.02 throughout.

• ⚡ Rollover tracking spreadsheets to 2026
• ⚡ Update CRM with December contacts
• ⚡ Create an outline of your content buckets for 2026
• ⚡ Schedule out January content calendar
• ⚡ Add December contacts to newsletter lists
• ⚡ Segment newsletter lists

💡 Segmenting a list means separating the list by contact category. So let's say you taught an in-person cookie class and had 10 people sign up, and then in December, you sold 15 custom orders. That's 25 emails, but segmenting them as "📝 List - Cookie Class Attendees" and "📝 List - Custom Clients" would allow you to send really targeted emails to them in 2026.

• ⚡ Stage quarterly newsletters now (as drafts)
• ⚡ Get inbox to zero

💡 New to "inbox zero" - it's paring down your inbox until there are zero emails. Then, each day, you get it back to zero. How? 📬 Deleting, archiving, replying, labeling, and unsubscribing. Let me tell ya - it's a battle, but booooy is it refreshing not to be overwhelmed by your inbox!

• ⚡ Set up inbox labels to manage inbox
• ⚡ Audit recurring expenses
• ⚡ Setup financial tracking software (YNAB)
• ⚡ Update website to reflect 2026 offerings
• ⚡ Audit website for dead or broken links
• ⚡ Update auto-responders in email and social
• ⚡ Update social media bios
• ⚡ Replace pinned posts on social profiles for 2026 timestamp

💡 If your pinned posts are already "up to snuff," it's still worth the repost for the 2026 timestamp. Your pinned posts are the first written date your audience sees when clicking to your social profiles. 📆 Having those say, "YES, I'M STILL HERE IN 2026," signals you're in this to win this, this year.

• ⚡ Lay out an in-person cookie class schedule
• ⚡ Audit supplies - packaging, business cards, bows, etc.
• ⚡ Purge expired inventory
• ⚡ Organize and purge product photos - label for easy search
• ⚡ Organize receipts and mileage logs for taxes
• ⚡ Create email templates for quick replies to inquiries

💡 Email templates are my Gmail JAM. You can easily create them by writing out the email as a template, the same way you would write a normal email (I write in ALL CAPS and [brackets] to know which info I'll need to update every time I trigger the template). ✍️ On the formatting bar of a new email, click the three stacked dots - then hover over Templates, and finally click Save draft as template. Now you can trigger that draft every time ya need it.

• ⚡ Create a list of active, local groups to market to in 2026
• ⚡ Audit pricing to ensure costs are covered + profit
• ⚡ Update Google Business Profile with 2026 hours + holidays