As a PR professional, I try not to blatantly post about or talk about my clients on my blog or my Twitter account. How ethical would that be? But every once in a while, a client of mine does something SO COOL that I HAVE to share it with you all.

One of my clients, Scentsy (they make scented, wickless candle) has created a program to give back to local businesses. It all started out when they were celebrating their fifth anniversary and wanted to give back to the local businesses in their community, Boise. They gave their employees and their families in sum a total of $100,000 to spend at local family-owned buisnesses and held a shopping day this summer to spend the money. The program was such a success (you can see a video of some of the day’s events here), that Scentsy wanted to take the program to a national level — thus inspiring Contribute 2009, big help for small business.

What is Contribute 2009? The goal of Contribute is to inspire 100,000 people to take $50 and spend it at a locally owned business on or around October 12.  Or, looked at it this way:  100,000 people x $50 spent at locally owned businesses = a $5,000,000 economic infusion.  That’s huge.

So why am I sharing this with you? I’ve signed up to take the Contribute 2009 pledge and plan on spending $50 at a local Cleveland business next month. Why don’t you sign up? There are so many ways you can spend your $50 — but here are some of the places I’m thinking:

• a local food place (I’m thinking Angelo’s, Sullivan’s or Melt)
• a local grocery store (maybe even one with local food)
• a locally owned store (maybe Geiger’s for a new Vera Bradley bag, or Second Sole for some new running shoes)

I’m actually getting excited about all the local Cleveland businesses that I could spend my money on.

Anyone can take the Contribute 2009 pledge. Visit http://www.scentsycontribute.org/ for more information and to pledge to spend $50 to help small businesses on October 12. There’s also a cool tshirt you can buy if you like (you can wear it while you do your shopping – the cost of the shirt covers the shipping). So what do you think? Are you joining me and spending your $50 locally?