New corporate giving report reveals more good news than bad

A new report shows that the lingering impacts of the recession continue to take a bite out of corporate giving despite the fact that the market is very slowly improving. A new survey details the specific amounts donated and also offers insights as to how the economy has made companies react. While the data is informative it might be more useful to align the totals given to the actual turnover or profit of a company. I may do that for a future post but for time being the results aren’t as bleak as I might have expected and in many cases companies continue to reinvigorate their giving programs. In many instances a transition from cash to goods and services is the chosen route for many companies as they seek to maintain a history of giving with more resourceful with how they give.

The data studied 162 of the largest companies in the US in conjunction with a survey that was answered by almost 65% of recipients. The news pertaining to the survey should be greeted with some interest by many non profits as it allows them to better forecast their donor strategies in accordance with private and public support. Most companies anticipated that their level of giving in 2010 will be almost identical to 2009, as opposed to a 7.5% fall experienced between 2008/9. It does however indicate that much patience may be required to see donation levels return to where they stood before the recession started hitting hardest throughout the world. Just under 3/4 of those surveyed expected that giving would remain stable in 2010 which while not excellent news is not as discouraging as some insiders had predicted.

Also worth nothing is that the data naturally doesn’t  cover the entire spectrum of corporate giving so there is room for some variance on the overall trend. The 2009 report shows that 54% of companies reduced cash donations that year while 16% gave very near the same amount, leaving 30% in the column that shows them having given more financially. The overall trend shows a drop in cash contribution but an overall increase of over 4% in cash plus goods which reflects the changing nature of corporate behaviour.

Sixty-eight companies decreased their cash giving in 2009 to $3.9 billion, the first time since 2003 that cash contributions from businesses in The Chronicle’s survey have dropped. Fifty-four percent of businesses gave less cash, 30% gave more, and 16% gave roughly the same. But donations of cash and products increased by nearly 5% last year, as companies sought to compensate for the decline in cash by offering other types of assistance. Very significantly eleven of the 162 companies gave more than 5% of their overall profits to charity.  The most notable trend in the changing dynamics is that many (more than half) of the companies surveyed are actively encouraging employees to volunteer more. This mirrors a gradual shift to providing people to the front lines of charitable works rather than an over reliance on cash donations, a movement I expect to see continue as philanthropy reinvents itself to a certain extent.

I’ve purposely neglected to name specific company results as I think all merit recognition equally, more details of the report are available via the ‘Chronicle of Philanthropy’ website.