Companies' community investment policies are "complex and opaque"
Howard Lake | 6 October 2004 | News
Voluntary organisations find companies and their community investment policies complex, opaque and difficult to penetrate, according to research commissioned by Charities Aid Foundation (CAF) from the SMART Company.
The research was launched at the CAF Corporates and Communities Conference and based on a series of interviews with community leaders from across the UK.
The research confirms that company donations, sponsorship and gifts-in-kind are an important source of support for voluntary and community organisations. Yet there remains considerable misunderstanding and cynicism between the sectors.
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The research, entitled “Getting engaged: Achieving closer working relationships between companies and local communities”, reveals that the community sector doubts the motivations of companies that become involved in local community issues, believing that such activities are simply a ‘fig leaf for companies to hide behind’. Rather than supporting ‘harder’ issues, such as drugs, young offenders or asylum seekers, community leaders think that corporates are most interested in short-term, ‘softer’ funding opportunities that will provide them with positive media coverage.
Accessing details of opportunities is still difficult, it would seem. Many community leaders believe that companies fail to communicate the type and level of CCI they offer, leaving them heavily dependent on personal contacts to find out what support opportunities are available.
The research adds that community leaders acknowledge that they don’t always present themselves in the best light, treating business as ‘the enemy’ and producing substandard business plans which fail to articulate their vision and purpose.
Despite this lack of understanding between the company and voluntary sectors, community leaders are generally positive about corporate involvement. Far from feeling like ‘inefficient money grabbers’, the community sector believes it has a lot to offer companies in terms of specialist knowledge on diversity, community issues and best practice in return for business expertise.
Copies of the research are available from
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.