Corporate foundations: The giving will go on

The global financial meltdown may have shrunk corporate profits, but corporate foundations vow to continue with their CSR efforts.

“More than ever, this is the time for corporate social responsibility to manifest itself,” Marilou G. Erni, executive director of Petron Foundation and chairperson of the League of Corporate Foundations (LCF) during the league’s recent general assembly.

The global financial crisis indeed puts CSR to the test as it seeks to reconcile budget cuts with the need to continue giving to communities.

“This crisis, while depleting bottom lines, will also create a host of social problems – people will be unemployed and children will be forced to quit school, for instance. Add this to the already existing problems that we have been trying to address via our CSR efforts and definitely CSR should continue. In fact, the crisis may present an opportunity for greater social responsibility,” Erni adds.

Gavin Power, Deputy Director of UN Global Compact, said: “Development assistance and investments in public-private partnerships are crucially important in difficult economic times to safeguard against deterioration in vital environmental and social systems that could further exacerbate economic problems.”

Dan Songco, president and CEO of PinoyMe Foundation, which provides microfinance loans to enable poor Filipinos create and maintain microenterprises, says that corporate foundations have the opportunity to provide the link so that small enterprises can jump to entrepreneurship, which is a step towards breaking the cycle of poverty.

“While microfinance has provided an opportunity to save people from the poverty trap, there’s still a lot to be done. We need to push the envelope, and the corporate sector can help a lot in this regard,” Songco says.

The LCF’s stretegy for the next year centers on its 3 Cs: Continue, Consolidate and Communicate. Corporate Foundations will continue on giving to the less privileged and make their operations more efficient (lower costs) and more profitable (better financial results for its interventions).

Corporate foundations will consolidate operations by doing more with less resources and focusing on programs that will bring about significant social and environmental impact.

LCF stalwarts also agree that they will have to be more creative for them to be able continue their programs despite budget cuts.

“One way to go about this is to align CSR programs with the principal company’s business objective”, Erni says.

Communication is an integral part of the strategy. The LCF leadership emphasizes the need to communicate what it is doing to be able to create a ripple effect. They also plan to establish a two-way channel with stakeholders and advocate to the entire business community.

The League of Corporate Foundations is a membership organization comprised of over 70 operating and grant-making corporate foundations and corporations practicing Corporate Social Responsibility. LCF is an acknowledged enabler of practice-based, holistic CSR in the Philippines and the Asian region.

CSR is founded on the premise of doing good while doing well. For committing to continue CSR efforts despite these hard times, the LCF is in fact saying that doing good shouldn’t stop when one isn’t doing well.