Earlier this week the U.S. Chamber of Commerce Foundation Corporate Citizenship Center’s conference The Impact Equation: Stronger Business, Greater Results, Better World gathered business and non-profit leaders committed to sharing innovative solutions on how to achieve positive change in communities in the U.S. and around the world.
This year’s event focused on results. As the Corporate Citizenship Center’s Executive Director Marc DeCourcey put it, “In today’s world, companies must ensure that every dollar spent is meaningful, that every employee volunteer opportunity is worthwhile, and that every investment shows a return. Companies must ensure that their work is driving measurable, lasting impact.”
Great speakers – including Arthur Brooks, President of the American Enterprise Institute, Stan Litow, President of the IBM Foundation, and Carolyn Berkowitz, President of the Capital One Foundation – emphasized that point throughout the conference. The focus on results was also reinforced by a study presented by Global Impact, Giving Beyond Borders: A Study of Global Giving by U.S. Corporations, showing that effectiveness in producing results is by far the most important factor influencing corporate partnerships with non-profits.
Here are a few other highlights from that report that I found particularly interested from the Center for International Private Enterprise’s perspective centered on international projects:
- The outlook for international giving in the next fiscal year looks promising: more than 86% of companies that gave internationally plan to increase (19%) or maintain (67%) their budget size in this area.
- Asia and the Pacific attracted the most attention from companies that donated internationally in the last fiscal year, with a majority (70%) giving to this region. At the same time, nearly 60% of the surveyed companies made charitable contributions to almost every geographic area around the globe.
- Companies seek a match between their business mission and philanthropic passion. The top two goals identified for giving by the surveyed companies were “supporting the company’s mission and values” (95%) and “giving back to the communities where the company operates” (91%). The alignment between a nonprofit’s mission and a company’s philanthropic focus not surprisingly ranked as the most important deciding factor for companies (77%).
- Top three areas of charitable giving included education, disaster relief, and human services.
- Host country factors influencing companies’ foreign charitable giving include: needs in local communities (78%); business operation/financial performance in a host country (52%); capacity/ accountability of local nonprofits (48%); preferences of local employees (41%); preferences of local executives (33%); relationship with local government (22%); customer relations in a host country (22%); and economic, political/regulatory environment in a host country (19%).
- Evaluation of philanthropic initiatives is increasingly becoming data-driven, emphasizing measurement and assessment of long-term, sometimes intangible impact of giving.
This is definitely good food for thought. What is the advice to non-profits that work internationally, then? The takeaway from both the report and the conference seems clear: leverage your capacity for partnership-building with corporations by using your knowledge of a country’s social dynamics and close connections with local stakeholders. And show impact!
Anna Nadgrodkiewicz is Director of Multiregional Programs at CIPE.
