Corporate foundations should tie in with their company's corporate responsibility strategy
Howard Lake | 19 July 2007 | News
Corporate foundations need to align their activities with their company’s corporate responsibility strategy so the social benefit is improved and their independent charitable status is not compromised.
This could result in full integration of the foundation’s activities into various elements of corporate responsibility (CR) including engagement with wider stakeholders such as customers, suppliers and employees, says a report from the Charities Aid Foundation (CAF). Foundations need to have confidence to fulfil their statutory obligations and their clarity of purpose creates the flexibility and opportunity for alignment.
Examples of this include Waitrose, whose Foundation helps to improve the welfare of farm workers in South Africa who produce fruit sold in Waitrose stores.
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Russell Prior, executive director, company services at CAF said: Our research demonstrates that foundations continue to bring value to corporate giving programmes in many different ways. As corporate responsibility and community investment become more integrated into general business practice, it is particularly interesting to note how some companies are using the foundation model and making the most of the benefits that come with that, tomanage a core part of their strategic CR programme.
CAF believes that foundations need to improve the way they communicate their purpose, objectives and activity both to their parent company and other key stakeholders outside their organisation.
The report is available to download from CAF’s website.
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.