Margaret Coady
Director
Committee Encouraging Corporate Philanthropy

Originally posted on NCOC's website as a featured discussion, http://www.ncoc.net/GivingInNumbers_2012.  Interview betwen Alice Murphy, NCOC and Margaret Coady, CECP

November 27, 2012--Alice Murphy: Looking at the context you provide in this report, it seems like corporate giving is beginning to stabilize after the economic downturn. Could you provide a short narrative illustrating how corporate giving has weathered the economic crisis?

Margaret Coady: You have the headline exactly right: CECP’s data show that corporate giving has regained lost ground and stabilized from a low point in 2009.

Companies had been steadily increasing their giving until 2009 – we saw this in the survey data from 2006, 2007, and 2008. It wasn’t until 2009 that giving levels contracted. Anecdotally, they were doing all they could to keep giving levels high--trimming their administrative budgets and coming up with creative ways to deploy resources. A few companies were able to give more in 2009 largely through increases in non-cash giving (e.g., product, facilities, pro bono service).

Despite uncertainty about the health of U.S. and global markets, companies have been quick to restore their past giving levels. Some were able to do so in 2010 and others in 2011. Our survey data suggests that giving will remain flat in 2012.

 

 

 

Margaret Coady
Director
Committee Encouraging Corporate Philanthropy

July 6, 2012--"Courageous Conversations" was the theme uniting the sessions throughout the agenda of the 11th annual Corporate Philanthropy Summit in New York City, hosted each year by the Committee Encouraging Corporate Philanthropy (CECP). The audience of more than 200 senior corporate giving officers from the world's most influential companies, who together represent $15 billion in annual corporate contributions to charity, came ready to be inspired, have their thinking stretched, and to get their toughest questions answered by their peers.

The event kicked off with Arianna Huffington galvanizing the crowd around what she as dubbed the "Fourth Instinct" to find spiritual fulfillment and meaning in our lives. She urged us to focus on building critical mass in the service of real, lasting community solutions.

A standing-room-only session on Impact Investing challenged giving professionals to consider funding programs that create a profit and a societal benefit at the same time. Leaders from the "A Billion+Change" project provided a road map for bringing the power of skills-based employee volunteer programs to life and Michael Smith of The Case Foundation led a social media panel on how to engage employees and consumers in a two-way dialogue on the company's community commitments. Nonprofit luminaries Nancy Lublin of DoSomething.org and Dr. Helene Gayle of CARE USA delivered rapid-fire best practices regarding how companies and their nonprofit partners can work better together, stressing candor about goals and a "gut check" at the outset of any partnership to ensure that the relationship between institutions unfolds in a mutually-strategic way.

What’s new (and exciting) about Sustainable Value Creation?

 

 

Margaret Coady
Director
Committee Encouraging Corporate Philanthropy

August 12, 2011 -- To paraphrase the remarks of Professor Stuart Hart, author of Capitalism at the Crossroads, in his keynote address at CECP’s 2011 Corporate Philanthropy Summit: you know an idea has caught fire when buzzwords for it proliferate. With that in mind, our ears perked up at the observation by Tim McClimon, President of the American Express Foundation, in his CSR Now! blog that a new crop of buzzwords has emerged to describe the win-win opportunity waiting for companies and communities at the intersection of business interests and societal need.

Tim notes, correctly, that CECP has added to the dense thicket of terminology with the introduction of the term “Sustainable Value Creation” (published first in our 2010 report “Shaping the Future: Solving Social Problems through Business Strategy” based on research by McKinsey & Company, which we followed-up on this summer with “Business at its Best: Driving Sustainable Value Creation” co-authored with Accenture).

So, in the context of a landscape buzzing with confusing terms, what do we think is exciting about “Sustainable Value Creation”? And why did we write two reports about it?

 

 

 

Margaret Coady
Director
Committee Encouraging Corporate Philanthropy

August 25, 2010 --– Earlier this week, The Wall Street Journal published an Op-Ed piece, "The Case Against Corporate Social Responsibility" written by Aneel Karnani, associate professor of strategy at the University of Michigan's Stephen M. Ross School of Business.  Based on our organization’s ongoing contact with over 150 top business CEOs on this issue, it is our view that the article does not fully reflect the current mindset of corporate leaders on whether and when it is appropriate for a profit-maximizing entity to involve itself in solving tough social issues, such as poverty.  With this response, we share our Committee’s direct experience in working with these leaders on this issue, as well as quotations from CEOs such as Mike Duke, Ron Williams, Jim Rogers and others that illuminate their thinking.

New Tool for Deciding Which Social Issue to Address:
The “Issue Ripeness” Map

 

 

Margaret Coady
Director
Committee Encouraging Corporate Philanthropy

August 18, 2010 --– In an environment in which increasingly urgent and complex social issues run concurrently with limited corporate funding and other resources, how should companies decide where to focus philanthropically?

In a new report featuring research and CEO interviews conducted with McKinsey & Company titled Shaping the Future: Solving Social Problems through Business Strategy, CECP presents an “issue ripeness” map (found on page 22) to help companies decide where to engage for maximum business and social gain.