A Call for Cross-Sector Partnership




Charles H.  Moore
Executive Director
Committee Encouraging Corporate Philanthropy

February 28, 2011-- Today, the Committee Encouraging Corporate Philanthropy (CECP) is leading the celebration of International Corporate Philanthropy Day, a global advocacy day created to mobilize the business community and others with a stake in the positive role that companies play in helping to address pressing societal problems.   It’s a day of sharing best practices, communicating progress on established programs, forging new partnerships, and recognizing the importance of collectively addressing the pressing challenges of today—and tomorrow.

Stephanie Strom of The New York Times Analyzes the Social Innovation Efforts of Google and PepsiCo




Charles H.  Moore
Executive Director
Committee Encouraging Corporate Philanthropy

February 24, 2011-- As a fervent believer in the power of corporations to advance progress on societal issues, I read with great interest the sharp critique of Google DotOrg’s philanthropic track record that Stephanie Strom of The New York Times co-authored with Miguel Helft in late January of this year.  That piece enumerated the implementation challenges faced by the DotOrg business unit of Google in its quest to flex the company’s creativity and innovation toward solutions to climate change, global poverty, and global pandemics, among other pressing issues.  Those challenges ranged from a reported lack of executive leadership, difficulty integrating philanthropic staff into cross functional teams within the firm, and frustration with the long timeframe required for achieving change on societal issues.  As someone who has worked directly with the CEOs of leading companies on their philanthropic endeavors for the past ten years, I felt some sympathy for Google as I made my way through the timeline of disappointments (Google is not a member company): I know from experience that selecting the right societal issues on which to focus is deceptively hard for companies, and implementing the best of intentions related to those issues is much harder still. 

Charles H.  Moore
Executive Director
Committee Encouraging Corporate Philanthropy

August 2, 2010 -- Recently, two major newspapers have run opinion columns which our organization, the Committee Encouraging Corporate Philanthropy (CECP), believes represent outdated perspectives on the role of business in society.

Jamie White, in a July 21 Wall Street Journal editorial titled “When Corporate Theft is Good” stipulates that corporate philanthropy is tantamount to “stealing shareholders money,” and the Washington Post’s Chrystia Freeland, in the July 18 editorial “What’s BP’s Responsibility?” blamed the “cult of social responsibility” for the gulf oil spill and financial crisis. Both take the stance of Milton Friedman in asserting that the purpose of business is narrowly business, to make the maximum profit. Freeland goes a step farther by saying that the interests of business and society are not aligned, calling for government to step in as regulators, keeping the “perfectly proper corporate greed” from harming the larger community.