As a senior manager for Marriott Individual Incentives, Peggy Whitman spends her days helping clients reward their employees with the gift of travel. Along the way, she's learned that this practice can be rewarding in more ways than one.

Take, for example, the trip she put together for her own team a few years ago. Convening in Greensboro, Georgia (an hour east of Atlanta), the event brought together 30 people, including employees from the U.S., the U.K. and Hong Kong. As part of the event's teambuilding focus, the group worked with the citizens of a nearby town to restore a community park that had fallen into disrepair.

They built picnic tables, replaced broken fixtures and planted new vegetation—and learned to work together in ways they never had before. “The team had been working in silos,” says Whitman, “and doing something for the common good put everybody on the same level. It wasn’t just good for the local community; it was good for us, too.” Call it corporate citizenship, giving back to the community or “volunteaming”—it’s still a pretty powerful incentive.

Just and Justifiable.

Clearly, these are challenging times for business travelers. Between the tough economy and tight budgets, travel costs are being monitored more carefully than ever. And the scrutiny has only gotten more intense in the wake of the famously lavish retreats thrown by financial companies last fall. Is it any wonder, then, that many businesses now feel they need to justify every trip their employees take?

Incorporating a “give-back” program can help, whether employees are attending conferences, coming together from remote offices or being rewarded through an incentive program. As Alan Ranzer, Managing Partner of Impact 4 Good a socially conscious corporate teambuilding company, puts it, “making an investment in the local community via give-back programs is a great way to say, ‘we are continuing to travel and have meetings, but we’re doing so responsibly.’”

How? By building time into the agenda to clean a local park, work at a food bank or build bikes for underprivileged children. The options are essentially endless; programs can be tailored to fill a full day or just a few hours, and activities can be held on-site or off. In fact, many resorts and hotels are discovering that such programs can be a valuable tool when pitching event planners and business groups.

Community Connections.

“There's such a broad range of teambuilding activities,” says Sue Stephenson, vice president of The Ritz-Carlton's Community Footprints program. “We've just found that including something that helps the local community really connects people to the location they're in.” To foster that connection, the company came up with the idea of VolunTeaming, which, as the name suggests, is designed to benefit local communities while boosting employee camaraderie. From preserving the gardens at Alcatraz to feeding the homeless in Washington, D.C., the benefits go far beyond your average ropes course or trust-fall exercise.

The challenge is finding the right program—“So many people just say ‘Ugh!’ when they hear the word ‘teambuilding’,” notes Ranzer—which is why it's important to choose activities that are attuned to both employees' abilities and a company's core values. If it's fun, too…so much the better.

Creative Collaboration.

Just ask Cathy Dougherty, director of the Beckman Coulter Foundation, the philanthropic arm of Beckman Coulter—a manufacturer of biomedical testing instruments, systems and supplies. During a February event in Dallas for 100-plus managers from throughout North America, she and Ranzer organized a ballroom event in which teams competed to build model cars—one solar-powered, the other from recycled materials—for a local school. Beckman Coulter also donated additional solar-car kits for classroom use.

“Our company's main focus is science education, as well as becoming more socially responsible toward the environment,” says Dougherty—so the project's focus on recycling and alternative energy was a natural fit. “The employees were all engineers,” she says with a laugh. “You can't imagine how excited they got building those cars. And when the kids came in to help race them, it provided a good heartfelt end to the event, and brought our management team together.”

Done well, community-focused teambuilding is a win-win-win situation. Obviously, the community wins, whether it's by way of a cleaner park, help for the homeless or support for local schoolchildren. And companies win by boosting team spirit and employee morale. “If you compare higher salaries vs. philanthropy,” says Lucy Eisele of Integrity Incentives “the companies that walk the walk by giving back have the most loyal employees.”

And, of course, employees benefit. “It's more than just camaraderie,” says Eisele (who organized the Marriott event in Georgia). “Afterwards, people say, ‘look what we accomplished. Look at what we can do!’ That's an amazing feeling.”

“Without question, it's what people remember,” echoes Stephenson. “The meetings may blur together with other meetings, but the sense of doing good and making a contribution truly lasts.”