If you’ve been following me for a while, you know that I tithe 10% of my income to people, places, and institutions that feed me spiritually.

Several years ago, I took tithing a step further at one of my events, by challenging myself and everyone in the audience to donate to the eWomen Network Foundation. To my surprise, we raised more than $120,000 in only three days!

That was when I discovered the magic of “lift as you climb.” If you lift others as you’re making strides in your own pursuits, you will actually climb higher and faster in whatever you’re working on…for many of us, that’s our own business. That’s been proven to me over and over again as I’ve continued to enjoy my own exponential growth.

And when you give your attendees the opportunity to give, you and they will experience it too. Giving at your event will enable them to get more, and then, guess what? That will inspire them to give themselves more of you and your teaching.

You’ll climb higher and faster if you lift others as you make strides in your pursuits

What began as an experiment has become a cherished business practice. We now choose a beneficiary for all of our events, and to date have raised more than $500,000 for projects we believe in.

If you’d like to follow in my footsteps and use your reach to raise money for an organization or cause that you care about, it’s very important that you heed these three points when deciding whom to support:

1. Select a beneficiary that matches your values and who will click with your audience.The main reason that we’ve been able to raise so much money is that we choose beneficiaries that are not only dear to my heart, but are a good match to the demographic of our audience. We attract a majority of women, many of whom are moms, so most of our beneficiaries help kids. We’ve supported foster kid programs, a “say no to drugs” type of program, facial reconstruction for children, helping children in Africa, and currently, children’s dental work in different countries through Global Dental Relief, pictured above.

2. Do your due diligence.Your reputation is on the line, so you want to make sure that the money is going to be used well, and that the organization is established. I look for a staff of three to five people, and make sure that they have a specific use for the funds. That shows they’re established enough to know what they need, but, also, being able to picture how their money will be used, opens people’s hearts and wallets. For instance, they may be helping to raise $18,000 to buy an ambulance to take people who live out in the bush to a more centralized area or donating $72 to educate one child for a year.

3. Is your beneficiary ready to receive?Our beneficiaries process the donations themselves, but some groups are not set up to handle that. So you need to make sure that they’ve confirmed with their merchant that they can process, say, $60,000 from 40 different people in one week. If they’re not set up for that, there could be dire consequences for them, but getting that information will also tell you if they’re ready to receive from your event.If an organization fails to measure up to these standards, but you believe in the cause, by all means, send out a donation request to your personal database, and/or write your own check. But when you’re putting the group out there for your audience to donate to, you want to make sure that it has a track record with results on the ground that you can show.

For more secrets of how to support beneficiaries with your business, as well as how to stage profitable events, check out Event Profit Secrets.