How to Grow Both Your Business and Its Impact on the World

In my experience, culture crushes strategy every day. But you need both to succeed. Founders who forget about core values and focus exclusively on revenue often run into problems in areas like brand loyalty. Talent acquisition and customer retention become much harder when people don’t have a compelling reason to believe in your business.

But you can’t afford to get lost in the clouds, either. The best core values in the world won’t make you successful if you don’t have a solid business strategy. So how can you, as a busy founder, dedicate the right amount of time and energy to both of these important areas?

For Roof Maxx — the company I started with my brother Todd to restore asphalt shingle roofs across North America with an innovative plant-based solution — the answer was finding the right nonprofit partner. This increased both the impact of our work and our brand reputation while allowing us to keep expanding our dealer network and delivering results for customers.

Here’s how we found the right opportunity for our brand, and how you can do the same for yours.

Related: How You Can Identify and Optimize Nonprofit Partnerships

Key lessons I’ve learned from traveling

Travel is an essential part of my life. Back in my early twenties, I met one of my future best friends on a trip to the Netherlands, who had spent the previous four years backpacking around the world.

In the following years, I joined him on numerous adventures. I’ve now been to nearly 100 different countries and have cumulatively spent more than five years backpacking.

Those journeys taught me skills that have served me as much in the boardroom as they have on the road: how to feel comfortable in unfamiliar environments, orient myself quickly and trust my gut when assessing potential opportunities. But my travels have also taught me about the things I take for granted as a business leader in America and how my work can make a greater difference.

A defining moment in Mexico

Several years ago, on a trip to Mexico, I met a young boy in Cancun named Miguel. He would go to the tourists at the open-air market near my hotel and sell little string bracelets that he made by hand.

I bought one the first time he approached me. After that, I’d see him whenever I passed through the plaza, and we’d make friendly conversation using the limited amount of English and Spanish we could both understand.

Miguel was bright, cheerful and enterprising. It was easy to assume he was happy and comfortable. But one night, while returning to my hotel later than usual, I noticed a group of homeless children huddled under a doorway for warmth on a sheet of cardboard. To my shock, I recognized Miguel among them.

I reached my room and eventually managed to sleep, but this encounter lingered in my mind. It was a window into the hardship so many children around the world face on a daily basis.

It also hit me on a personal level. Miguel and I were both entrepreneurs. We had the same name. Many of the different opportunities we had been afforded in life could be chalked up to an accident of birth. Todd and I had presented a brave face to the world years prior, when our first roofing company was on the verge of bankruptcy — but this wasn’t two grown men running a struggling business in Ohio. This was a child courageously facing down a kind of adversity I would never understand.

That day, I decided I needed to do something to help. Later, when we started Roof Maxx, we knew that it needed to be about more than providing roof restoration treatments for homeowners. We would also commit to making life-changing differences for young people in the communities we served.

So in 2024, Roof Maxx partnered with The Dave Thomas Foundation, a nonprofit charity that finds permanent housing for foster children in North America. This did more than satisfy my personal desire to make a difference; it gave our customers a way to participate in the same work. Today, any homeowner who uses our product also helps a child in foster care find a forever home.

Related: How to Know When You Should Partner With a Nonprofit

Aligning with the right nonprofit partner

Roof Maxx was able to give The Dave Thomas Foundation $283,000 during our first year of partnership, and we are now their largest supporter outside of Wendy’s International. It’s a relationship we’re immensely proud of, but also one that makes sense for us.

Our product is about helping everyday people preserve and maintain their own homes, so it’s fitting that our nonprofit partnership expands access to secure housing. Our customers are already thinking about the roofs over their own heads. When they learn they can also help provide homes for children in need, it makes them feel that much better about using our product.

Here’s my advice for setting up your perfect nonprofit partnership: Start by choosing a cause that is deeply important to you personally — this makes all the difference when communicating your mission to customers, recruits and other stakeholders. Then, contact an organization that is doing meaningful work in that area. Finally, provide your customers with opportunities to become active participants. The easiest way is to donate a portion of proceeds from each sale to your partner organization.

This creates a win-win-win scenario: It empowers your partner and your customers to make positive change, it attracts new business for your company and it creates measurable benefits for the communities you all serve.

So stop thinking of nonprofit partnerships as optional. The right one can give you the ability to grow both your business and its impact on the world.

Related: How I Built a Business That Helps People Feel Good About Doing the Right Thing — and Why You Should, Too

In my experience, culture crushes strategy every day. But you need both to succeed. Founders who forget about core values and focus exclusively on revenue often run into problems in areas like brand loyalty. Talent acquisition and customer retention become much harder when people don’t have a compelling reason to believe in your business.

But you can’t afford to get lost in the clouds, either. The best core values in the world won’t make you successful if you don’t have a solid business strategy. So how can you, as a busy founder, dedicate the right amount of time and energy to both of these important areas?

For Roof Maxx — the company I started with my brother Todd to restore asphalt shingle roofs across North America with an innovative plant-based solution — the answer was finding the right nonprofit partner. This increased both the impact of our work and our brand reputation while allowing us to keep expanding our dealer network and delivering results for customers.