Corporate partnerships will become more commercial in the future, with charities expected to help their corporate supporter boost its profit, according to a new report by payroll-giving agency the Charities Trust.
The research aims to predict how corporate giving will evolve by 2023. It is based on online responses from 106 people working in corporate social responsibility and six interviews with “global thought leaders”, including Cathy Pharoah, director of the Centre for Charitable Giving and Philanthropy at Cass Business School.
The research finds the relationship between a company’s community involvement and its commercial activity has been growing closer for a number of years and predicts it will accelerate.
“The boundary will blur further as companies seek more measurable coherence and long-term profits from their corporate giving,” says the report.
Some 85 per cent of survey respondents felt that there would be a greater focus on delivery of the business strategy through corporate community involvement.
“Not-for-profit partners will need to approach projects from the perspective of what the company is trying to achieve as well as how to meet their own charitable objectives,” the report says.
It explains that companies today are already exploring how their community programmes can help access a new market or innovate a new product.
The report also found that another significant trend among respondents was a growing focus to measure the impact, including the commercial value of a corporate partnership.
Linda Minnis, chief executive of the Charities Trust, said: "Developing robust evaluation measures will certainly provide an advantage.
"From the corporate stakeholder’s viewpoint, it demonstrates impact and outcomes, which supports the initial investment and makes a case for further support. From the perspective of charities, having the ability to show hard-and-fast progress toward a stated objective strengthens the case for involvement."
However, the report finds that although some charities will find it difficult to respond to businesses’ push for profit, some of the winners may be the ‘Cinderella’ causes which often lost out to slicker, more appealing charities.
