Who knew spam mail could be worthwhile? Chipotle has a way to make the inbox-stuffing junk emails into support for our schools. They announced their email program “No Junk” this past Friday. All you have to do is forward your junk email to their designated address, nojunk@chipotle.com. For every 100,000 emails, the restaurant chain will donate $10,000 to nutrition non-profit The Lunch Box.

Junk to Replace Junk

The Lunch Box (www.thelunchbox.org) is an organization dedicated to making school lunches healthy. The non-profits offers menus, tools, tips and activities to improve the quality of food served to students. The online organization has gained national recognition and helped children and communities in California and Colorado.

We all get plenty of junk emails. Now, instead of clicking ‘delete,’ just click ‘forward’ and pass them right along to Chipotle, at nojunk@chipotle.com. The company actually wants to receive spam – and lots of it. They are hoping to get 500,000 junk mail messages by August.

Beneficial Backlinks

Not too long ago, we posted about ways to boost your page rank by diversifying your backlink sources. This is a big problem for many affiliate marketers, webmasters and online entrepreneurs.

Remember, search engines see backlinks as references, so if your multiple backlinks are coming from the same source, they’re probably not helping you as much as you’d like.

Backlinks from directories, forums and article sites are great, but it’s a good idea to branch out. One of the ways to do so is by reaching out to a charitable organization.

If you’re involved with a charity already, go ahead and send the webmaster an email explaining your connection to the organization, and ask for a link. In exchange for a link to your site, you’ll include a link to theirs. You can also offer your services in exchange for a link.

Get Inspired

Or you can do like Chipotle did, and brainstorm a partnership. You don’t have to donate $50,000 like the restaurant has; you can donate your connections.

Maybe the organization needs help raising awareness about their fundraiser – you can offer to dedicate a newsletter to the issue, all they need to do is post a press release (which you could even draft) a news brief or a notice on their site about your company lending a hand.

If the organization is well-established and large, you might need to offer more than the one newsletter. Think of some ways that you can help the charity of your choice, make a list and give the organization a call.

Customers pay attention to charitable companies. To be blunt, it can boost your business as well as your backlinks.

So take note of Chipotle’s example, forward your spam, and start planning your own way to get more out of giving back.