The first concern has to be to make sure that the charity is one where the community will respond. Special days where a percent is given to a fund for police and fireman widows will work in many a small town.

The second concern is what to take the percentage from. For special "one day" offers, it is best to take the percentage off of all sales that day. Most customers are able to relate to such an offer.

When running a longer term campaign, one idea is to take a percent just off of the customers who present a loyalty card. That way, those customers can relate more to their efforts helping the community. Again, advertizing is important where you show how much money was raised to date.

For larger organizations, customers often want to be able to select which charity their percent goes towards. That requires a bit of organization and technology to be able to track the sales to those customers and identify how much goes to each charity.