How To Budget For Corporate Gifting

Budgeting is an integral part of every business process, and corporate gifting is no exception. Let’s face it, everyone loves receiving gifts. But how do you, as a business, know how much you ought to allocate as a corporate gifting budget? Here’s a quick read to help you arrive at just that.

Why create a budget for corporate gifting?

Let’s start by listing why you need to create a ceiling for your corporate gifting spend.

1. Ensures a smoother gifting process
2. Aligns all stakeholders involved
3. Makes gifting predictable

Here’s a more detailed look at why creating a corporate gifting budget is important.

1. Ensures a smoother gifting process

Knowing how much you have in hand to spend on corporate gifting makes it easier to choose what you can give away as gifts. It also makes it easier to split this budget to ensure you do justice in choosing appropriate gifts for all the recipients.

All of this goes a long way in ensuring that the gifting process is smoother.

2. Aligns all stakeholders involved

The corporate gifting cycle involves multiple stakeholders. First, you will need to know how many people you need to buy gifts for. You will need to talk to and haggle with various vendors to choose the gifts. Once you have shortlisted your gifts, you will need to get approvals from your internal stakeholders.

Then, you will need to customize these gifts, ensuring they all feature your brand logo, brand colors, and more. Finally, you will need to ensure the gifts are packaged in an aesthetically pleasing manner, and shipped out to be delivered to all recipients on time.

Having a corporate gift budget to work with will make it easier for you to align all these stakeholders more efficiently.

3. Makes gifting predictable

Every aspect of the gifting cycle, including planning inventory, shortlisting vendors, finalizing customizations, getting the gifts delivered, overseeing packaging and finally ensuring the gifts are shipped out in time to reach the recipients on schedule needs meticulous planning. A gifting budget makes it easier for you to work backward and make the process more predictable, ensuring you have all the bases covered.

How to budget for corporate gifts

Here’s an overview of what to consider while making a corporate gifting budget.

1. List occasions you would like to gift on
2. Understand the cohorts you will be gifting
3. Make a list of recipients
4. Calculate a realistic spend per recipient
5. Select the right gifts
6. Plan for inventory and logistics
7. Always plan for extra

Let’s break down each of these factors and discover how to arrive at a corporate gift budget.

1. List occasions you would like to gift on

A great place to begin is to decide when you’d like to send out these gifts. Are these for a festive occasion? Are they to commemorate a milestone, such as a product launch? Are they to celebrate your team’s performance? Is this for a client’s birthday?

Once you know why you’re sending out gifts, it becomes easier to plan what you ought to give and how much you need to spend.

2. Understand the cohorts you will be gifting

Next up, decide on the cohorts or the group that these gifts are intended for. For example, if you’re buying gifts for a client, you may want to consider how long you’ve been working with them, what their value to your business is, whether they’ve been consistently sending you to work, and if they’ve been recommending your services to others.

On the other hand, if you’re gifting employees, you may want to keep the gift budget consistent across the board to avoid favoritism, unless you’re rewarding performance.

3. Make a list of recipients

Making a list of recipients will help you arrive at how many gifts you need to order, and plan what kind of gifts you need to order. For example, if the gifts are for upper management as well as operational stakeholders, you will need to order different gifts for each level.

4. Calculate a realistic spend per recipient

Arriving at a realistic spend per recipient is more complex than just dividing your budget by the number of recipients. That might work if you’re buying gifts for an entire team. Otherwise, you will need to factor in the hierarchy, the value the recipient brings to your business and the nature of your business relationship with each recipient.

6. Plan for inventory and logistics

Always keep inventory and logistics while working on a corporate gift budget. Remember to budget for enough inventory for all recipients, for the gifts to be customized as well as packed attractively, and to ship the gifts out to reach the recipients in time.

7. Always plan for extra

Once you’ve arrived at your corporate gift budget, a good rule of thumb to follow is to add 15% to that budget. This is to cover unexpected expenses, such as damaged pieces, faulty customizations, and additional headcounts that you hadn’t accounted for.

At the end of the day, it is always better to be safe than sorry, as the adage goes.