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
