Cause Marketing

Words I Meant to Say On Friday, Feb 1 I was a panelist at the Global Philanthropy Symposium sponsored by the University of Utah Law School and moderated by the school’s energetic young dean, Hiram Chodosh . There were two sessions: Public/private Healthcare Initiatives and Microfinance/ Corporate Social Responsibility. One of the subtexts of the second session in particular was that how a company gave was as important as what or how much it gave. Or, as one of the other panelists put it directly: “I have concluded that there is no altruism in corporate philanthropy.” Maybe not. But does that matter? That’s what Brady Stuart…a second-year law school student whose précis of the history of corporate giving in the United States had introduced the session… asked me and another panelist over lunch. His question, I think, was prompted by this discussion about the ‘why’ of corporate giving. During the session I made the point that while direct corporate donations to charities have been legal ...