Corporate Philanthropy: The Evolution of The Species

While reflecting on this topic and after reading many different opinions on the topic I believe that Corporate Philantrophy has a very important role in the development of the non-profit sector in both efficiency and effectiveness.

Individuals and foundations tend to be very reactive in terms of funding needed NGOs and other non-profit organizations usually reacting to letters and other types of requests. Continuing donations are more times out of habit than oon a continued trust link between donor and beneficiary based on simple but objective performance criteria. This is exactly where I think that Corporate Philantrophy can play an important role.

In today's society and due to the inequitative power of the various social stakeholders not all have accesss to the same resources and iinformation. Therefore I believe that Corporations are in a key position to effectively leverage on superior management resources in order to better assess resource allocation for NGOs and or foundations. This has sometimes not been the case in most Corporations leading to a continuous destruction of value for the entire society by not allocatiing effectively resources. This failures have probably lead to today's critiques of CSR and other jargons used in defence of uncounsicous giving and other social actions.

I believe that in the future philantrophy will be reformulated in order to respond to an increasing awareness and control for the use of Corporate resources specially money/cash flows. As a result, I think that the next step is to evolve to a more strategic type of philantrophy where Corporations will share other, and perhaps, more valuable resources such as specific skills or abundant human resources. Through Public Private Partnerships a better and more efficient system of Corporate Philantrophy will be in place that has higher chances of creating a win win situation for both parties hence catalysing the interest of the private sector and other stakeholders.

In order for this transformation to take place I think that the key is information, information and information. Only with a wide and in depth information available about needs and past performance of NGOs will the market become more efficient and effective both in its use of resources and in the social impact it will achieve. Only through the use of this information will organizations be able to make more rational decisions and initiatives.