Belgium: reports address corporate fundraising dilemmas & opportunities

A report looking at considerations around corporate fundraising in Belgium cautions that businesses sometimes make inappropriate or unexpected offers of donations.

But charities could still use these as an opportunity to build what might become a more positive relationship, according to How do charities raise funds from companies? by Hogeschool Gent, better known as HOGENT.

That report, as well as another entitled How Generous are Flemish and Brussels SMEs?, has been published to support the growing number of charities wishing to develop corporate income streams. Both are available on the HOGENT website.

The business generosity study shows that around four out of five SMEs in Flanders and Brussels support charities. These are generally based around donations, with only one in 12 having an employee volunteering programme.

The How do charities raise funds report recommends that charities invest time into understanding the corporate sector, undertake targeted prospecting, and communicate clearly what it is that they offer, in order to achieve corporate fundraising success.

One area addressed in it is non-cash donations, including of furniture or other equipment. The 46 fundraisers who contributed to the report were split in their opinions of these gifts – while some found them useful, others said it felt like they were being given surplus goods, meaning the corporate is effectively passing a logistical problem on to the charity.

One fundraiser for an international development organisation says in the report:

“We regularly encounter companies trying to dump all kinds of overstock or things that are just about to expire, suggesting: ‘yes, you can do something with this in Africa, so that we can get rid of it’. That is often with good intentions, but we have a lot of resistance to this because that is colonial thinking: ‘everything that we no longer find good enough here will still be okay in Africa.’”

The report goes on to say that some fundraisers have at times accepted a gift that was not particularly useful, in order to build a relationship with the donor.

Ethical issues

The report also considers ethical issues with corporate relationships – saying that ethical policies generally include a list of industries from whom a charity would not accept donations.

It adds that while fundraisers know that they need to have such policies, many admit that it is difficult to know how to start building one, and can be tricky to put them into practice given the grey areas that could exist.

One fundraiser told researchers that it had twice been offered donations from a tobacco company, but with no strings attached. They commented:

“We were not asked to make it public. We accepted the donations – but if the company had wanted their logo to be displayed on our vans, then [we would have said] no.”

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