CURRENT AND POTENTIAL FORMS OF CORPORATE SUPPORT. AN ANALYSIS BASED ON NGOS’ ANNUAL REPORTS

Abstract

ABSTRACT. Ensuring a viable partnership with the corporate funders has always represented a focal issue for entities representing the Third Sector. Being based on the detailed analysis of five NGOs' annual reports, the paper renders their perspective on building and maintaining such a relationship. Another feature of the studied framework resides in its framing within the field of social services from Romania. The cases highlight that the interaction between the two categories of entities is characterized by a relatively superficial conduct of NGOs. Although it can be stated that the non-profit entities share a common viewpoint on conceiving the above mentioned publications, the comparative study reveals that there is enough room for improvement. Consequently, presuming that NGOs have the capacity to further develop the informational content of an annual report, it is recommended to value this tool in order to enhance the range of intersection points with the current and potential corporate funders. Given a preamble which resides in the structural framing of the resources achieved from the corporate entities, NGOs should focus on prioritising their prior interest of raising funds for ensuring a proper flow of the intended activity.JEL Classification: L31, M31, M14Keywords: NGOs, fundraising, corporate donors, corporate social responsibility.IntroductionThe paper aims to present main characteristics of the manner of objectifying the companies' social involvement, with precedence from the perspective of raising funds by non-governmental organizations (NGOs) activating in the field social services.The present scientific paper is structured in two parts. Having as reference the process of critically reviewing the literature, the first part refers to a series of theoretical constructs about the collaborative approach between NGOs and corporate entities. The framework also integrates a current overview on the Romanian non-governmental sector, along with several references to NGOs handling social services and their interaction with existing or potential corporate funders. The second part of the paper renders several practical approaches, as a resultant of applying the research method. Hence, the main themes elaborated are discussed in detail in order to substantiate a series of guidelines regarding the mode of ensuring corporate support.From a concluding perspective, interacting with entities from the corporate sector in terms of a partnership, constitutes a matter which may definitely influence the NGOs' overall activity.Traditionally, NGOs were viewed as being primarily interested in achieving public and private funds in order to broaden their social contribution or for promoting items of environmental conservation. Beyond this aspect, NGOs have acquired a new function relative to their common mission, namely that of modifying the economic and political conditions underlying the social and environmental issues. Withal, numerous NGOs have sought to widen the range of their financing sources. They oriented themselves beyond the membership fees and governmental sources, towards corporate entities, further forming alliances (Arenas, Lozano and Albareda, 2009).With reference to the conjunction NGO-beneficiary-benefactor and to the inferential private information and hidden actions, transparency represents a key issue of the non-profit sector (Burger and Owens, 2010). The donors tend to assign more support and contributions while benefitting of more information provided by the concerned NGOs. In the extent to which there exists preoccupation from them, the core competence of the sector resides in building strong relationships with the donors. Moreover, the NGO's ability of enhancing this relationship will determine its capacity of acquiring a sustainable revenue intended to contribute to its activity's continuity (Zainon et al., 2011).In recent years, adhering to corporate social responsibility (CSR) represented one of the corporate objectives of many organizations due to the fact that they were put in front of some social movements about maintaining the legitimacy among stakeholders as employees, communities and categories of public (Zainon et al. …