About
The Benefit Restaurant™ Project went “live” on September 1, 2009 when The Elephant Walk in Waltham began committing 4% of its sales to charities and nonprofits.
The Benefit Restaurant™ Project [BRP] was founded to grow the pool of funds available to nonprofit social enterprises. BRP does this by securing commitments from for-profit restaurants to distribute a percentage of their revenues to registered nonprofit organizations.
BRP a meta-project. Rather than targeting a specific social need, we reinforce the support system for nonprofits generally – particularly those committed to positive social change. Our project produces rather than consumes capital, thereby strengthening and stabilizing the broader nonprofit sector.
Scalability is a cornerstone of our project: Any restaurant can be a Benefit Restaurant™. And there are a lot of restaurants. We seek to mobilize and leverage the large percentage of overall economic activity that restaurants represent – locally, nationally, and globally.
Our Project conserves resources – human and financial. Participating restaurants need only sell, prepare, and serve food and drink, while beneficiaries need only focus on their core mission. Neither precious money nor time is wasted by the Benefit Restaurant™ funding process.
Our approach is granular, and durable: Over time we will engage a large number of smaller businesses, and require that their commitments be predictable and sustained.
We create synergies. For example: Benefit Restaurants receive promotional support from beneficiaries and their stakeholders. Beneficiaries enjoy effective, recurring outreach support from Benefit Restaurants. Each beneficiary stakeholder becomes a potential Benefit Restaurant™ customer. Each Benefit Restaurant™ guest is exposed to information about the beneficiary and their mission, and through their restaurant patronage automatically becomes a supporter of that beneficiary. That virtuous circle is complete.
Lastly, Benefit Restaurants commit a percentage of their revenue, not profit. Sales are relatively predictable for most businesses, including restaurants, but profits are more fickle – and of course, sometimes nonexistent. Hence, beneficiaries get support they can count on.
Please read our FAQ pages to learn more about our approach to broadening and strengthening the support of our nonprofit sector, and thereby helping cure our some of most stubborn and critical social problems.