{"id":5040,"date":"2010-11-04T09:56:00","date_gmt":"2010-11-04T16:56:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/ietransfer.wpengine.com\/?p=5040"},"modified":"2019-04-26T07:55:41","modified_gmt":"2019-04-26T14:55:41","slug":"is-philanthropy-csr","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/inspiredeconomist.com\/articles\/is-philanthropy-csr\/","title":{"rendered":"Is Philanthropy CSR?"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>I\u2019ve been pondering this question for quite some time and as far as I\u2019m concerned, the answer is still unclear. Without analyzing the specifics of what CSR is (100 different people may give you 100 different answers), I\u2019ve always broken things down into two camps. One side would be companies that have formulated their business plan, mission and values around not only making money, but helping to improve society as well. The first company that comes to mind and perhaps the first to embrace this idea is Patagonia. The other camp is much greater and could really be made up of any company that has decided either for marketing purposes or in fact for legitimate fiscal, social and environmental reasons, to pursue CSR initiatives (this is obviously quite general, but could mean increased recycling, higher labor standards, less water usage etc.).<\/p>\n

Many of these initiatives are new to the capitalist conscience. However, some of the country\u2019s first great capitalists such as Andrew Carnegie and John D. Rockefeller gave away much of their wealth to fund various social causes. Of course this was during the early part of the 20th century before anyone had heard of the environment (although one could make the case that much of the money was made based on businesses that were ultimately harmful to the environment). Regardless, philanthropy seems to be the move for companies (particularly large corporations) to dip their toes in to the world of CSR. Of course, just like an individual donating money, it is a passive activity and one that may have varying results. That is not to say it is not useful or admirable, just that it is something that is does not ultimately change business strategy like aforementioned CSR measures often do.<\/p>\n

As any sustainability director can attest to, it is difficult to integrate CSR measures into an existing business model, particularly one that is bureaucratic and has already achieved success for a number of years (if it ain\u2019t broke, don\u2019t fix it). Businesses that are just starting out have the advantage of incorporating aspects of positive social and environmental outcomes into their business models and hopefully position themselves to achieve financial success. Most likely, these are not the companies engaging in philanthropy, mainly because they don\u2019t have a lot of money in the start-up to growth stages, but also because the business models are proactive as opposed to reactive when it comes to CSR.<\/p>\n

So does a company that gives money away to charitable causes engage in CSR? Of course CSR means different things to different people, but to me it stokes images and thoughts of active, rather than passive engagement.<\/p>\n

Image Credit by <\/em>robinsonfilmcenter<\/em><\/a> via Flickr under a CC license<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I\u2019ve been pondering this question for quite some time and as far as I\u2019m concerned, the answer is still unclear. Without analyzing the specifics of what CSR is (100 different people may give you 100 different answers), I\u2019ve always broken things down into two camps. One side would be companies that have formulated their business […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":39,"featured_media":5173,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_uag_custom_page_level_css":"","site-sidebar-layout":"default","site-content-layout":"","ast-site-content-layout":"","site-content-style":"default","site-sidebar-style":"default","ast-global-header-display":"","ast-banner-title-visibility":"","ast-main-header-display":"","ast-hfb-above-header-display":"","ast-hfb-below-header-display":"","ast-hfb-mobile-header-display":"","site-post-title":"","ast-breadcrumbs-content":"","ast-featured-img":"","footer-sml-layout":"","theme-transparent-header-meta":"","adv-header-id-meta":"","stick-header-meta":"","header-above-stick-meta":"","header-main-stick-meta":"","header-below-stick-meta":"","astra-migrate-meta-layouts":"default","ast-page-background-enabled":"default","ast-page-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-4)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center 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Banco","author_link":"https:\/\/inspiredeconomist.com\/author\/jonathanbanco\/"},"uagb_comment_info":7,"uagb_excerpt":"I\u2019ve been pondering this question for quite some time and as far as I\u2019m concerned, the answer is still unclear. Without analyzing the specifics of what CSR is (100 different people may give you 100 different answers), I\u2019ve always broken things down into two camps. One side would be companies that have formulated their business…","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/inspiredeconomist.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5040"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/inspiredeconomist.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/inspiredeconomist.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inspiredeconomist.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/39"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inspiredeconomist.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5040"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/inspiredeconomist.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5040\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inspiredeconomist.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/5173"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/inspiredeconomist.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5040"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inspiredeconomist.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5040"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inspiredeconomist.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5040"},{"taxonomy":"adace-sponsor","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inspiredeconomist.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/adace-sponsor?post=5040"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}