Any major company is expected to pass the buck to charity — Wal-Mart, No. 1 on the Fortune 500 list, is also one of the top contributors to charity. Would consumers refuse to buy from a company that didn’t care about charitable causes? Probably not, but at the end of the day, giving back to the community helps turn a profit.

When a company donates to a charity, it improves its name brand and increases exposure through a lot of free advertising, such as the enormous press Apple received about its (PRODUCT) RED iPod.

By donating a percentage of its profit to charity, a company can increase sales. And it’s a good segue to marketing — instead of just advertising its yogurt, Yoplait can tout its breast cancer efforts on the airwaves.

On a moral level, it makes sense to give back. But even from a self-centered, strictly monetary perspective, community service offers a strong return on investment.

Community service on a resume affects hiring decisions, and graduate schools pay attention to community service involvement. Even as a minor factor in graduate school admissions, the difference in lifetime earnings, according to the U.S. Census Bureau, for a bachelor’s degree ($2.1 million) versus a doctoral degree ($3.4 million) or a professional degree ($4.4 million) largely speaks for itself.

And leadership skills in a volunteering role are very comparable to managerial experience in a paid position — except the volunteer position is probably easier to get.

At an organizational level, community service is crucial to a group’s image and name brand. As someone who’s completely unaffiliated, I’ve always respected the Greek system as probably the strongest networking and leadership-development model in college. But even if fraternities and sororities are just another type of on-campus club, their community service hours alone would be more than enough to justify their existence.

Across the board, community service is a way to improve reputations, develop leadership skills and better career prospects. Logically, compassion makes sense — everybody’s essentially in the same boat, so why not do someone a favor? Ethically it’s great. On an emotional level, volunteering improves one’s quality of life.

And the most cutthroat, me-first capitalistic perspective says yes, donate your time to a charitable cause. It’s likely to increase your market value to your next employer, give you networking opportunities with like-minded individuals and add something beneficial to your resume. You don’t directly make money from community service hours. But in the end, the rate of return is comparable to a job.

Reach Matt at matt.culbertson@asu.edu.