Development Partnerships: Views from Corporate Foundations

Posted on 18 May 2010

By Lakshmi Iyer

I have always believed that a successful NGO develops successful partnerships. In the non-profit funding world, it is a critical challenge for NGOs to ensure that relationships with donors are not muddled with power imbalances but, in fact, are true joint efforts to achieve a shared mission.

The April 8 NGOs & Development study group session looked at this relationship from the perspective of corporate foundations. Two inspiring women led the discussion: Salimah Samji, formerly with Google.org, and Shalaka Joshi, Vice President, Global  Strategies, CSO Partners.

Salimah kicked off the discussion with an overview of types of foundations, with specific focus on corporate foundations. Students engaged in a discussion on understanding what corporate foundations can offer and what their biggest challenges in the field are. Here are my take-aways from that discussion:

• Typically, corporate foundations have a local area focus and prefer partnering with local NGOs (Hint for those starting NGOs and looking for funds: look local!) 
• Some corporate foundations like to capitalize on their core business strengths. For example, the 10,000 Women initiative by Goldman Sachs is a five-year investment to provide underserved women around the world with a business and management education. Here, the company is leveraging its core competency for a social benefit. 
• Many corporate foundations focus on specific development sectors such as education, health and environment.

Corporate foundations can be a great resource for NGOs since they can provide not just financial resources, but also volunteers, credibility, networks, products and services and free awareness platforms. 

Salimah provided a good tip for those who might want to work for a foundation:
one of the most useful skills for a career in a foundation is the ability to ask the right questions of NGOs who approach you for funding.  Sometimes, the frustration of working in a corporate foundation is that the mission of the foundation may not be a core priority of the corporation and one might be pressured to support the pet projects of top management.

Shalaka Joshi, who works for the foundation arm of ICICI Bank, India’s largest private sector bank shared the model followed by ICICI, which involves using a combination of various methods to impact society an inclusive growth framework. For example, through the IFMR Trust, it capitalizes on what it knows the best: delivering better access to financial services to help the poorest of the poor to smooth consumption and manage risks. It is also focusing on elementary education through the ICICI Centre for Elementary Education. Most recently, through CSO Partners, the ICICI Foundation is committed to mobilizing resources for, facilitating support services for and enhancing the effectiveness of civil society organizations (CSOs) in India.

It was interesting to note that both the speakers, through their combined experience in India and Africa in well-respected corporate foundations, strongly believed that corporate foundations had high potential to support grassroots level development work. It was also clear that the effectiveness of a corporate foundation is highly dependent on the people within the organization. The level of priority and internal push that the top management gave to the social arm of the private corporation often determined how effectively the resources were directed.

Lakshmi Iyer is a first-year Masters in Public Policy candidate at the Harvard Kennedy School.