The Corporation, Pt. 2

In my post on 11.16 “The Corporation – Are We Seeing it the Same Way?” I related a statistic found in this month’s World Ark (a publication of Heifer, International): In 2011 individuals gave $218 billion dollars to charities, and corporations gave $15 billion. To that, I asked a lot of questions, including: What is our image of the corporation? What do we expect from corporations regarding charity?

There are many ways to give. Money is most certainly not the only measure, and not always the most efficacious intervention. Time, job-training, opening-doors, donating clothing and so on are some examples of other ways of giving. So, to add other perspectives to the blog on 11.16, I’ll kick off today’s questions with information from the same issue of World Ark, from an interview with Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton regarding the Walmart Foundation.

The Walmart Foundation, having multiple aims, includes their Global Women’s Economic Empowerment Initiative. This Initiative seeks to train women entrepreneurs, source products from women-owned companies, connect women to networks and resources and otherwise support their business efforts, and includes $100 million in grants. Sure, all of the candidates come from the Walmart supply chain and ultimately help the Walmart supply chain. For example, Walmart Brazil will train women construction workers to build their new stores. But as the world’s largest retailer and private employer (World Ark, Holiday 2012), is this a bad thing?

Endeavors such as Walmart’s, which falls into the Corporate Social Responsibility mentioned in the blog on 11.16, are becoming increasingly popular among large corporations. Some examples are the HP Foundation which works with communities hit by disaster, the Kellogg Foundation which supports families, kids and civic engagement, and (my long-time favorite) the Nike Foundation that supports the Girl Effect. Most of these efforts shift giving to an existing foundation, to working within their own where they can leverage existing assets, goals, and/or international presences to train workers, educate children, build communities and so forth.

So, from this vantage point, I again ask: What is the image we have of the corporation? Knowing our image will illuminate what we expect from companies, and from there where they are excelling or failing to meet those expectations. What is your image? (For the exercise, refer back to blog on 11.16).

And with that comes another question I am curious to hear from everyone about: What are some of the ways to give back besides donating money?

‘Tis the season to inspire and be inspired…