Fundraisers to experience 'shop floor' CSR at International Fundraising Congress
Howard Lake | 26 June 2007 | News
Delegates at the International Fundraising Congress in Holland in October are to be taken on site visits to two European clothes companies to experience their corporate social responsibility (CSR) policy in practice. Congress organisers the Resource Alliance are planning the visits as part of an intensive one-and-a-half-day masterclass session which they say is the first of its kind.
Delegates to the ‘CSR – Alive!’ session will visit both Kuyichi Europe and one of Kuyichi’s major competitors, Levi Strauss, to see their CSR policies in operation. Delegates will then visit the international aids charity that both companies support, Dance4Life.
The masterclass session is being organised by Tony Myers of the University of Calgary and Zoltan Valcsicsak, senior manager of community affairs at Levi Strauss Europe, to help participants better understand how and why companies practise CSR.
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“Although we have been saying this for years, fundraisers still do not spend enough time in really getting to know how companies operate,” said Myers.
“The secret to fundraising is sometimes found, not in the CSR policy of a company, but in fully understanding their industry sector – how it works, where the value is, where the blockages are, and what the impediments to profits look like. Then, and I suggest, only then, are we in a position to seek a corporate partnership.”
Zoltan Valcsicsak said: “There is still a huge gulf between how companies practise CSR and how non-profits think they practice it – and to be honest there is not much excuse for such a gap.
“We want to bring CSR ‘alive’ for all those participating. We want them to see corporates in action, see CSR in action and see the nonprofits applying their CSR dollars in real programme environments.”
The two-day session is part of a change in emphasis of the International Fundraising Congress over the past few years towards a forum for developing thinking on fundraising.
Alan Bird, Resource Alliance’s events director, said: “This is the first time the IFC has featured such an intensive, and long, single issue session. We’re effectively running a mini-conference on CSR inside the main congress.”
He added that the Resource Alliance wants “to ensure that the IFC is seen as the most important forum for challenging accepted thinking about fundraising in the world.”
Other sessions at the 27th IFC, held in the Netherlands from 23-26 October, include:
• Examining global giving trends among children and young people
• The importance of benchmarking for nonprofits
• Trends in European grantmaking
• Understanding global fundraising markets
• The potential of long-form DRTV.
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About Howard Lake
Howard Lake is consultant editor of UK Fundraising. He founded the site in 1994 and successfully sold it in 2022. As director of Giving X Ltd he is exploring growing giving on a massive scale.
He is the founder of Fundraising Camp and co-founder of GoodJobs.