What’s a charity to do when offered the chance at tremendous funds and resources to promote its cause? And what’s a good corporate social citizen to do when presented with the opportunity to link its business with a respected charitable product, service or fundraising event?

According to Imagine Canada‘s 2008 Corporate Community Investment Practices, Motivations and Challenges: Canada Survey of Business Contributions to Community (CSBCC), the anwser is to partner up.

The report, issued last November at a presentation to the Economic Club in Toronto, revealed that many large corporate social citizens are all too eager to give time, money and resources over to a charitable cause, and not just for self-serving reasons. Conversely, it found that charities can benefit tremendously from the related cause marketing associated with the partnership, and greatly increase the profile of their organization through the association.

Just the facts ma’am

Michael Meadows, Imagine’s senior manager for corporate citizenship, told CharityVillage that nonprofit/charity and business partnerships are “definitely good for the sector.”

“Companies recognize the significance of investing in their communities and our research (read the CSBCC) clearly demonstrates that fact,” he said.

The CSBCC, a study based on research of some 1,500 businesses with annual revenues in excess of $100,000 and another 93 “large corporations” with annual revenues of more than $25 million each, found the vast majority of respondents were huge supporters of the charitable sector.

“The survey asked corporations about the full range of support they provide for charitable and nonprofit organizations, including their donations of cash, goods, and services, support for employees who volunteer, as well as their use of sponsorship and cause marketing. It also examines the motivations that businesses have for their community investment activities and the challenges they face,” Imagine’s 2008 Annual Report states.

The report’s authors found that large corporations were more likely to “have very positive attitudes about charities and nonprofit organizations – far more positive than either the broader business community or the general public. Most (71%) strongly agreed that charities and nonprofit organizations generally improve the quality of life in Canada, and even more (79%) strongly agreed that businesses and nonprofit organizations can mutually benefit from collaborative relationships. Almost 8 in 10 (79%) agreed that most businesses would donate to charity even without financial benefits.”

The downside, however, is that while there appears to be strong support, corporations may be getting tired of numerous requests for their assistance; with the CSBCC reporting “38% of large corporations strongly agreed that too many charities are trying to solicit money for the same cause.”

Still, the amounts donated by the corporations were impressive, with a “median or typical value” contributions reported at $340,000, according to the study.

There are a whack of percentages and stats to view in the report, but one of the more interesting is in regard to large business taking a strategic view of volunteerism.

Let them go, and business will come

As opposed to what many might consider a historically “typical” method of corporate support for charities, i.e., throw money at them, Imagine’s CSBCC report indicates that the larger the company, the more likely it is to encourage employee volunteerism in addition to contributing monetarily to a cause.

“Most corporations (82%) reported that they support employee volunteering programs. This support included allowing employees to adjust their work schedules to volunteer (79%) or take time off with pay (72%), and organizing company-sponsored volunteering events (72%). The more employees that a company had, the more likely it was to support many of these initiatives,” Imagine found.

Those findings seem to jibe with one of the winners of Imagine’s 2009 annual Canadian Business & Community Partnership Awards: TD Bank’s Friends of the Environment Foundation and its partnership since 2002 with the Vancouver Aquarium in the “TD Great Canadian Shoreline Cleanup,” a volunteer event to remove litter from Canadian shorelines.

The bank’s foundation has been instrumental in creating an environmental event that, worldwide, is second only to one in the US. It’s a seemingly win-win situation for both charity and corporate citizen.

Mary Desjardins, executive director of the foundation, mentions that as of last year, nearly 63,000 Canadians registered to help with the cleanup, an unprecedented number.

“The model of the program is to engage community leaders to organize cleanups in their own communities; thus we are building community leadership, getting Canadians involved in environmental stewardship, and at the same time addressing an important environmental issue,” she says.

But surely TD Bank must be getting something out of this as well, right?

“There are many Canadians and groups working tirelessly to tackle environmental challenges and improve the health of our planet. To encourage and boost their efforts – and show TD’s dedication to the environment – we give to a wide range of environmental projects in the community through donations, partnerships, and the tremendous volunteer efforts of many environmentally-minded employees. The TD GCSC is another way that we can give back when it comes to the environment,” Desjardins answers, before continuing, “Initiatives, like the cleanup, increase employee pride, loyalty, and engagement. It can also deepen the loyalty of our customers, who want to deal with a company that is a responsible corporate citizen and gives back to the community.”

When asked for disclosure on how much funding they set aside for the annual cleanup, Desjardins stated the foundation “prefers not to disclose this figure.”

A similar request for an interview with Telus about its partnership with the B.C. Red Cross Call Centre – another of Imagine’s award recipients this year – was rebuffed by its representatives. The centre received a boost from Telus in 2007 via technological upgrades to its disaster management telephonic infrastructure.

A third award winner this year, the SaskEnergy, Salvation Army & Saskatchewan Institute of Applied Science and Technology‘s Home Energy Efficiency Project (HEEP), partnership exists to “improve the energy efficiency in the homes of low-income Saskatchewan families, especially during challenging winters. Families benefit with lower energy costs while learning about simple and inexpensive home energy efficiency options. Program partners and other community volunteers come together to perform energy efficiency upgrades in low-income homes in both urban and rural communities throughout Saskatchewan. The Share the Warmth program has helped 974 families to become more energy efficient. The program goal is to help 2,500 Saskatchewan families by the year 2010.”

Here’s a 4:23 minute video courtesy Imagine Canada, displaying how this business-nonprofit partnership is essential to a segment of the Saskatchewan populace.

 

 

Most would agree, the potential results of viewing a “feel-good” video like this on would-be donors is large, both for the project and for SaskEnergy’s corporate image.

But for all the goodwill, money and energy expended on such projects, the CSBCC report does have a cautionary message for budding good corporate citizens and their community investment plans.

Strategically speaking…

The survey makes clear that corporate entities need to do their homework before jumping into cause marketing and related activities.

“Many [large companies] may not have fully adopted elements that are representative of a strategic approach to community investments. Only 39% reported that they had written policies, and only 27% reported that they measured the benefits of their contributions,” the report reads. Additionally, this lack of procedural guidelines should be a warning to nonprofits seeking able business partners.

The CSBCC found that companies who, in fact, had “programs, written policies, and the measurement of benefits” of community investment activities, were more likely to support the nonprofit sector.

“In addition, many companies reported difficulties measuring the impact of their contributions on the community and on their businesses, and relatively few measured impact at all,” the survey states. “In order to maximize the benefits they seek, businesses may need to be more strategic in their approaches, which may mean investing in the development of knowledge, systems, and infrastructure.”

Buzzkilling corporate virtuousness?

Despite all the good that business-nonprofit partnerships can do, David Vogel, a prominent US political scientist, argues in his 2005 book The Market for Virtue: The Potential and Limits of Corporate Social Responsibility, that while many companies have done well by transforming themselves – often not solely for profit-motivated reasons – via corporate social responsibility (CSR), it is too facile an argument that this phenomenon is akin to a sea change in corporate mentality.

“[T]here are important limits to the market for virtue. The main constraint on the market’s ability to increase the supply of corporate virtue is the market itself. There is a business case for CSR, but it is much less important or influential than many proponents of civil regulation believe,” Vogel writes. “CSR is best understood as a niche rather than a generic strategy: it makes business sense for some firms in some areas under some circumstances. Many of the proponents of corporate social responsibility mistakenly assume that because some companies are behaving more responsibly in some areas, some firms can be expected to behave more responsibly in more areas. This assumption is misinformed. There is a place in the market economy for responsible firms. But there is also a large place for their less responsible competitors… Because CSR is voluntary and market driven, companies will engage in CSR only to the extent that it makes business sense for them to do so.”

Still, Vogel acknowledges in his preface that “for those who believe corporations cannot behave more responsibly in the absence of more government regulation, I hope to show that they are unnecessarily pessimistic.” Imagine is scheduled to release a companion report to the CSBCC this year. The contents of which should prove interesting to those following this subject.

Andy Levy-Ajzenkopf is president of WordLaunch professional writing services in Toronto. He can be reached at andy@wordlaunch.com.

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