Corporate donation

Corporate donations ( english Corporate Giving ) refers to the transfer of money, goods or services available from companies for public welfare purposes. So this includes both financial and in-kind benefits. Allowing the use of premises or operational resources (computer, copier, paper, etc.) also falls under the scope of corporate giving. An essential feature is that these donations are made voluntarily, i.e. without any legal obligation, and without any consideration.

In the literature, corporate giving is subordinated to the concept of corporate citizenship . Corporate giving is therefore on the same level as corporate volunteering , the voluntary use of labor or the voluntary provision of personnel, and corporate foundations , the establishment of corporate foundations . On the part of the common good-oriented organization, corporate giving is part of fundraising ; the giving company is a sponsor.

Corporate donations are tax-favored in Germany, starting points are provided by Section 9 (1) No. 2 of the Corporation Tax Act and Section 9, No. 5 of the Trade Tax Act . In addition to the tax incentives, the advantage of a donation is that companies have comparatively little conceptual and administrative effort.

Definition of terms sponsoring

The difference between corporate donations and sponsoring lies in the contractual agreement between the sponsor and the sponsored, which contains a specific consideration for the sponsor's donations. In contrast to this, corporate donations are made voluntarily and without consideration.

Donation motifs

Simply put, there are two thrusts in which donation motives can aim - they can be company-related and / or socio-politically motivated. In practice, it has been shown that corporate donations are often made for a mixture of different motives that take into account company-related and socio-political advantages to different degrees.

Company-related donation motives

Company-related donation motives can be:

Increase in employee satisfaction and strengthen employee loyalty
easier recruiting
supporting measure for employee development
to expand customer loyalty
improved customer acquisition and sales promotion
increasing awareness and a better corporate image

supports differentiation on the market and in brand building

easier cultivation of relationships with stakeholders

an intact corporate environment

increased location attractiveness

Society-related donation motives

Society-related donation motives can be:

the belief that when society is doing well, so is companies
strengthening social cohesion
corporate responsibility for sustainability
the self-image as a good "corporate citizen"
entrepreneurial contribution to solving social problems
Financing tasks that would otherwise not be financed
Compensation for public deficits
long-term preservation of the competitiveness of a region or a country

Situation in Germany

In 2012 around 64 percent of all companies in Germany were socially committed. The companies invested around 11 billion euros in corresponding corporate citizenship measures, including 10.9 billion euros in money, material and infrastructure donations.

Donations from German companies, 2012

Companies are mainly involved in the areas of sport, social affairs, culture, education, health and environmental protection. The most donated organizations in Germany therefore include Aktion Mensch , Caritas , Doctors Without Borders , UNICEF and the WWF .

A study by the auditing firm PricewaterhouseCoopers in 2012 showed that the proportion of donations that are directly related to the company's business areas was less than 50 percent of the total donation budget in every second large company. Only 14 of the 100 large companies stated that all donations made by the company were directly related to the company's business area.

criticism

Critics complain that corporate donations often neither have a lasting effect nor are altruistic , but often only serve to free companies from their bad image (" PR effects ", " greenwashing ", " whitewashing "). Some companies admit of their own free will that some of them are only donating "for image reasons".

literature

Michael Urselmann: Target group approaches in fundraising. In: Halfmann, Marion (Ed.): Target groups in consumer marketing - segmentation approaches, trends, implementation. Wiesbaden 2014, ISBN 978-3-658-00624-2 .
Andreas Schneider, René Schmidpeter : Corporate Social Responsibility: Responsible corporate management in theory and practice. Berlin / Heidelberg 2012, ISBN 978-3-642-25398-0 .
Holger Backhaus-Maul, Christiane Biedermann, Stefan Nahrlich (eds.): Corporate Citizenship in Germany: Social Engagement of Companies. Balance sheet and perspectives. 2., act. u. exp. Edition. 2010, ISBN 978-3-531-17136-4 .
Committee Encouraging Corporate Philanthropy: Giving in Numbers. , 2012, accessed January 16, 2014.

Web links

Individual evidence

^ ^A ^b Eckhard Priller, Jana Sommerfelder: Who donates in Germany? Science Center for Social Research. Berlin 2005.

^ ^A ^b ^c Christoph Mecking: Corporate Giving. Corporate donations, sponsorship and especially corporate foundations. In: Holger Backhaus-Maul u. a. (Ed.): Corporate Citizenship in Germany. Balance sheet and perspectives. 2008.

↑ ^a ^b Thilo Pommerening: Corporate Social Responsibility. A distinction between the concepts of corporate social responsibility and corporate citizenship. 2005, accessed January 14, 2014 .

↑ Michael Urselmann: Target group approaches in fundraising. In: Marion Halfmann (Ed.): Target groups in consumer marketing - segmentation approaches, trends, implementation. Wiesbaden 2014.

↑ ^a ^b ^c ^d PricewaterhouseCoopers: Companies as Donors - A survey among the 500 largest stock corporations in Germany on their donation behavior and their criteria for making donations. ( Memento of the original from February 2, 2014 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. 2011, accessed January 16, 2014. @1@ 2

↑ ^a ^b ^c ^d ^e PricewaterhouseCoopers (ed.); Andreas Menke, Michael Werner: Corporate Citizenship - What are large German companies doing? 2007, accessed January 9, 2014.

↑ First engagement report of the Federal Government 2012. (PDF; 1.92 MB) Federal Ministry for Family, Seniors, Women and Youth, July 30, 2012, accessed on January 9, 2014 .

↑ Andreas Knaut: Donations: Do they even damage a company's image? In: green.wiwo.de. December 27, 2012, accessed January 16, 2014.

[Priller_Sommerfelder_2005-1] A ^b Eckhard Priller, Jana Sommerfelder: Who donates in Germany? Science Center for Social Research. Berlin 2005.

[Mecking_2008-2] A ^b ^c Christoph Mecking: Corporate Giving. Corporate donations, sponsorship and especially corporate foundations. In: Holger Backhaus-Maul u. a. (Ed.): Corporate Citizenship in Germany. Balance sheet and perspectives. 2008.

[Pommerening_2005-3] Thilo Pommerening: Corporate Social Responsibility. A distinction between the concepts of corporate social responsibility and corporate citizenship. 2005, accessed January 14, 2014 .

[Urselmann2014-4] Michael Urselmann: Target group approaches in fundraising. In: Marion Halfmann (Ed.): Target groups in consumer marketing - segmentation approaches, trends, implementation. Wiesbaden 2014.