Corporate Giving

SDG Biocom Presentation November 2007: Corporate Giving Overview (large pdf)

San Diego Business Journal Corporate Philanthropy Supplement 2007

Pros and Cons of Corporate Foundations

Making the Case: Corporate Giving Statistics

Resources: Websites and Studies

San Diego Case Studies: Measuring Your Community Investment

Framing Corporate Philanthropy: Making the Case to Stakeholders

San Diego Business Journal Corporate Philanthropy Supplement 2007

San Diego Business Journal, San Diego Grantmakers, and Volunteer San Diego worked together to launch this special supplement on local corporate philanthropy. Published on May 28, 2007, the piece highlights the contributions of current corporate giving and employee volunteer programs and will hopefully inspire more companies to get involved. To download the supplement (large pdf), click here. If you would like to receive a hard copy, contact us.

Pros and Cons of Corporate Foundations

What are the pros and cons for having a corporation set up a foundation in addition to or rather than doing thoughtful corporate giving?

Pros:

• They can pay matching gifts out of the foundation and won't have to follow up for acknowledgments from nonprofits for IRS purposes.
• A company-sponsored foundation can in some cases (depending on how it's set up) insulate management from criticism about funding decisions.
• For IBM, which has both a foundation and a corporate giving program, the foundation money was used exclusively for IBM's support of public education reform initiatives. Corporate giving programs throughout IBM's major sites allowed local management to make the decision as to what was right for their communities and their own public relations needs. So the corporate program gave them much more flexibility and did not require the strict adherence to a specific giving strategy. Having both is ideal where there are several sites.
• A corporate giving program is much more flexible, and can be changed at the management's whim in terms of what to fund and to what extent.
• One issue is whether or not it is going to be endowed or a pass through foundation. Some corporations use the foundation as a tool to: 1)fund items they normally would not fund for political reasons; 2) to get outsiders on the Board or employees - thus helping with company loyalty,; 3) to support an employee matching fund; and 4) as a buffer and one stop shop to refer grantseekers to.

Cons:

• There is no privacy and the corporation is subject to the private foundation disclosure laws. Also there is no ability to co-mingle marketing and philanthropy dollars giving the corporation much less flexibility in its giving.
• The rules and regulations on private foundations. Corporate foundations are subject to pay out, public disclosure and self-dealing rules and other rules that all private foundations are bound by. The self-dealing especially can be problematic for corporate foundations. If for example a corporate foundation buys a table at a charity fund raising event it cannot send corporate employees to sit at the table without technically violating the self-dealing rules. These kinds of situations can be handled by having the corporation buy the table, not the foundation.
• The hassles of setting up and maintaining any kind of private foundation: filing incorporation papers, keeping records, filing 990PFs etc. There's no reason, however, why a company-sponsored "foundation" can't take the form of a donor-advised fund at the local community foundation (or other public charity). The Polaroid Foundation, for example, is really a component fund of the Boston Foundation.
• A corporate foundation would need its own bylaws, staff, regular grant cycles, giving guidelines and mission. They also follow a 5% payout rule.
• A corporate foundation has the same rules as any foundation of giving only to 501 (c)(3) groups or exercising expenditure responsibility. A direct corporate gift can go to any type of entity since it is a marketing or promotion type of expense.
• With any foundation you have extra paper work. Also corporations may not want to have to publicly disclose where their contributions go, which is required of a foundation but not a corporate giving program.

References

• Why Corporate Foundations Make Sense, Dottie Johnson, 1985, for the Michigan Chamber of Commerce
• When Corporate Foundations Make Sense, John Coy, 1994, COF, p. 5-7.
• Organizing Corporate Contributions: Options and Strategies, Kate Dewey and Sylvia Clark, p.4-5.

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Making the Case: Corporate Giving Statistics

According to a new survey on corporate community involvement released by Deloitte & Touche, and conducted by Harris Interactive, who interviewed a nationwide sample of 2,169 U.S. adults...

• 72% of employed Americans would choose to work for a company that supports charitable causes when deciding between two jobs with the same location, responsibilities, pay and benefits.
• 92% of Americans think that it is important for companies to make charitable contributions or donate products and/or services to nonprofit organizations in the community.
• 87% of Americans believe it is important for companies to offer volunteer opportunities to its employees.
• 73% say that workplace volunteer opportunities help companies contribute to the well being of communities.
• 61% think that they help to communicate a company's values.
• 58% believe that workplace volunteer opportunities improve morale.

Bureau of Labor Statistics- Volunteerism Stats

Points of Light: 47 of the Fortune 50 companies mention the volunteer activities of their employees on their website

Vera Works Inc: 82% of Fortune 500 companies have formal company supported employee volunteerism programs. Among the Fortune 500 companies, the average expenditure of company employee volunteer programs per employee is less than $15.

The Center for Corporate Citizenship at Boston College: 83% of the 200 companies with revenues of at least $500 million surveyed reported managing a formal volunteer program

Walker Information: In 2003, 36% of all US workers report that their employer provides a formal employee volunteerism program. Up from 7% in 2001.

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Resources: Websites and Studies

BoardSource

Business for Social Responsibility

Center for Corporate Citizenship at Boston College

Chronicle of Philanthropy

Committee to Encourage Corporate Philanthropy

Conference Board

Go Volunteer (Canada)

Idealist.org

Independent Sector

Network for Good

Nonprofit Management Solutions

Points of Light

Volunteer San Diego

Volunteer Match

World Volunteer Web

Resources

Cause Communications
This 501(c)3 was created to help nonprofits cut through the communications clutter by using the same marketing tools Fortune 500 companies use to raise market share and revenues. By using these same tools, nonprofits are able to reach people with messages that get results.

Cause Communications Communication Toolkit—a guide to navigating communications for the nonprofit world
This book can help nonprofit newbies, veterans, and anyone in between find the resources they need to wage more effective communications campaigns. This comprehensive guide offers practical information in virtually every area of communications—from how to develop and budget a communications plan to what tools you need to help raise awareness and funds.

Center for Corporate Citizenship at Boston College Community Involvement Index

Center for Media and Democracy
The Center for Media and Democracy is a nonprofit organization that works to strengthen democracy by promoting media that are "of, by and for the people" - genuinely informative and broadly participatory - and by removing the barriers and distortions of the modern information environment that stem from government- or corporate-dominated, hierarchical media.

Committee to Encourage Corporate Philanthropy
The Committee to Encourage Corporate Philanthropy is the only national forum of business CEOs and Chairpersons with an agenda exclusively focused on corporate philanthropy.

Cone, Inc. Corporate Citizenship Study

Conference Board. Corporate Volunteer Programs: Benefits to Business.

Corporate Citizenship Company. Valuing Employee Community Involvement.

Corporate Volunteer Coordinators Committee of New York City. Building a Corporate Volunteer Program.

The Foundation Center
Communications for Social Good
This paper by Susan Nall Bales and Franklin Gilliam, Jr. examines foundation opportunities and techniques to leverage social change goals through the use of communications media. The authors introduce the latest perspectives from communication theory and practice to help grantmakers promote more effective communication strategies among their grantees and within their own organizations.

Hitachi Foundation & The Center for Corporate Citizenship at Boston College. State of Corporate Citizenship in the United States.

Independent Sector. Giving and Volunteering in the United States.

New Century Philanthropy
Communicating Corporate Philanthropy
New Century Philanthropy newsletters are posted and distributed to over thirteen hundred CEOs and over five hundred government officials and other constituencies. Each issue highlights different perspectives, offering insight and research of other organizations supporting corporate philanthropy. This specific issue deals with Communication.

OnPhilanthropy
Corporate Philanthropy: PR or Legitimate News?
Why doesn’t corporate social responsibility get more press coverage? What’s so complicated about covering corporate social responsibility, and in particular, corporate philanthropy? What’s interfering with increased attention from the press? Read about corporate philanthropy in the press in this OnPhilanthropy article.

OnPhilanthropy
Email Deliverability: Make Sure It Gets Through
Ensuring that your organization’s emails reach the intended recipients is critical for effective email marketing. There are many ways an email can be derailed on its journey from your organization to targeted constituents. A filter could misclassify it as spam before the constituent ever sees it; constituents could misinterpret it as spam and delete it; or, constituents could simply overlook it in an inbox clogged with junk email. This article contains helpful hints to increase your organization’s email deliverability.

OnPhilanthropy
Four Steps to Better Online Communications
This article contains four practical ideas for maximizing your nonprofit’s ability to disseminate vital information via the Web.

OnPhilanthropy
Smart Tailoring for Corporate Pockets
ICP became curious about how corporate giving programs’ communications efforts differ from foundations, as well as how a grantee or potential grantee could tailor their report to adhere to these differences. By adapting your report to fit the corporation’s stakeholder communication needs, you’ll give the grant reviewer a better idea of what goals you accomplished during your grant cycle. Additionally, this clarity might help the grant reviewer see if there are any additional synergies between your organization and the corporation. The better the match, the greater your chances to secure funds in their future grantmaking cycles. ICP made recommendations about when you are writing a proposal or report for a corporate grant, and they are compiled in this article.

Points of Light Foundation. Developing Excellence In Workplace Volunteer Programs: Guidelines for Success.

Rochlin, Steve. Making the Business Case for Corporate Community Involvement.

Volunteer – The National Centre. Evaluating Corporate Volunteer Programs.

Worldwide Initiatives for Grantmaker Support
Report on Communication Strategies and Information Technology
Formally created in January 2000, WINGS evolved out of the recognition that grantmaker support organizations need a forum in which to discuss the variety of common issues related to their support of grantmakers worldwide. WINGS serves as a meeting place for those engaged in building the institutional infrastructure to support philanthropy everywhere in the world. This report gives information about communication strategies and information technology.

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Measuring Your Community Investment

PowerPoint Presentation

Sempra Energy, San Diego National Bank and Petco
January 25, 2005

For our third session of San Diego Grantmakers Corporate Series programming a panel discussion of business colleagues Molly Cartmill, Sempra Energy; Kristy Gregg, San Diego National Bank; and Shawn Underwood, Petco explored the tangible benefits of corporate giving and discussed how giving programs are structured to support your business strategy.

Program Description:

Do you have measurable evidence that your company's community involvement programs contribute to your company's competitive edge, strategic goals or bottom-line?

Can you justify their value-added benefit to senior management?

How do corporations measure investments in their community? What’s the incentive for giving?

If it has value, you can measure it. If you measure it, you can prove it has value. For corporate grantmakers this can be accomplished by:

• Determining the bottom-line value of your company's community involvement efforts
• Determining which programs contribute the most value
• Evaluating incoming requests for dollars, in-kind contributions and employee volunteers.

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Framing Corporate Philanthropy: Making the Case to Stakeholders

PowerPoint Presentation

Program Description:
Understand how to frame your communications to create the image and support you need for successful internal and external corporate philanthropic support for your company. Why do strategic communications matter to corporate philanthropy? How can you move public will in a direction to better leverage corporate community investments? Join us for an insightful and provocative discussion on why and what you communicate to the public and in the boardroom.

Frank D. Gilliam, Jr. PhD, Director, Center for Communication and Community, UCLA, Associate Vice Chancellor, and Professor, Department of Political Science. Frank has taught with former Vice President Al Gore at Columbia University, Fisk University, and Middle Tennessee State University. He is a political commentator for KCAL-TV News in Los Angeles. He is also co-author of “Communications for Social Good,” a publication of the Practice Matters: Improving Philanthropy Project.

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