Here in the world of socially responsible companies and triple bottom lines we have our ear to the ground about corporate giving. So when my colleague, Niko Tomlinson (Senior Midwest Director), sent me an email about www.CorporatePhilanthropy.org, I was obviously intrigued. You’ll notice there’s a very informative–if somewhat dry–report on Corporate giving trends for the Fortune 100 as well as surveyed companies on the whole (get it at the link below). The results were surprising but ultimately positive.
Niko did an excellent job of boiling down the N.B. parts of the report:
The lead stats:
Total giving increased-
-Median $ amount increased from $29.5 million to $32.6 million per year
-Median % increase of 4.8 per company
-Median total giving as a percentage of revenue was unchanged at 0.14%
-Median total giving as a percentage of pre-tax profit fell from 0.98% in 2005 to 0.93% in 2006
-SO… companies are giving a smaller percentage of their profits but the absolute dollar amount is greater.
Now I’m no economist (full disclosure: I was a Music and English major) but it doesn’t take an M.B.A. to tell you that more overall money from corporate giving is a good thing. Hopefully this type of philanthropy will be seen as less of an added bonus to what a company is doing, and more of a necessity in company (and popular) culture.
Download and read the full report (.pdf format) at this link.
