Companies should follow the public’s example and not look too closely at what motivates their philanthropy, says Ian MacQuillin
Bad, bad naughty big business. How dare you give money to charity and expect something back in return?
The negative media response to Cadbury Schweppes’ recent UK launch of a cause-related marketing campaign linked to sales of chocolate bars shows just how much hostility a company can generate by trying to give away money with strings attached.
The Directory of Social Change (DSC), for example, is adamant business should only donate for the ‘right reason’. But that’s a circular argument: it’s right that you should give, therefore you give because it is right. On this view, any conditions – such as requiring a charity to promote your brand, or gaining PR kudos – undermine the pure ethic.
Such arguments presuppose there is a pure giving ethic in the first place, and that when members of the public give, they do so through unadulterated philanthropy and get nothing out of it themselves. The latest Darwinian thinking contests such disinterested altruism: just about everything comes down to some form of self-interest at heart.
People give to charity because they get something out of it personally. At the lower end of the scale, this may just be the feelgood factor of knowing they have done some good, though it may also assuage their guilt at not having done enough. At the higher end, you can bet a large amount of money that there is no such thing as a truly anonymous million pound donor. They may not publicly announce their donations, but their close inner circle will certainly know, and the donor’s standing will increase because of this. This is something the fundraising community hasn’t quite got to grips with yet. But business has.
However, there is a caveat. Experiments have shown that when people realize they are subconsciously acting in their own self-interest, they begin to do so explicitly and are more likely to exploit the system. Corporate philanthropy runs the risk of going down this route. The more businesses realize there is no ‘right reason’ for giving to charity, the less likely they are to give out of ‘pure philanthropy’.
This may or may not be a bad thing. What really matters is that good causes get the money they need. The motive for giving is really neither here nor there. It also matters whether those motives, once understood, lead businesses to give less. And this is why the positions of organizations such as the DSC serve a purpose. They act as a check on the excesses of reciprocal CSR. There will always be business people predisposed to give out of the goodness of their hearts, and calls to philanthropic duty keep the pure giving environment alive.
Anyway, in a world where all corporate giving exacted maximum benefit for the donor, pure philanthropy would probably endow a competitive advantage.
Ian MacQuillin is editor of Professional Fundraising magazine