VA Insight | “Bullets” and “Casings” of Business for Good: Stick to Original Aspiration and Walk with Two Legs
Chinese enterprises have suffered challenges in the past two years, and the uncertainty is still mounting.
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“Bullets” and “Casings” of Business for Good
No matter how challenging the environment is, business for good has become an irreversible trend and will still be going forward in the future.
No matter what companies are doing for good and how they do it, they have to answer what are their “bullets” and “casings”. What companies do is a “bullet.” Companies can focus on a specific social issue or use technology to empower social organisations. The approach of business for good is ‘casing’. There are many ways to participate in philanthropy or corporate social responsibility, such as companies’ internal departments (CSR), a corporate foundation, a specific fund under a public fundraising foundation, or a family philanthropic trust.
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Business for Good: Stick to Original Aspiration
“Bullets” and “casings” are surface-level questions that ultimately depend on a company’s original aspiration. It does not matter how “right” the answer is or who the audience is, but the answer to ourselves must be honest and accurate. It is the key to determining a company’s mission and leading future paths.
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Business for Good: Walk with Two Legs
Finding the original aspiration is a crucial step forward. The next stage is to walk with two legs. First, identify the relevance between the current business and philanthropy. This relevance relates to the path to the future. And the bearing can be designed. For example, a tech company can help NGOs do fundraising directly or use technology to empower NGOs to communicate with the public and attract more funding. Furthermore, the company can use technology to solve social problems. The first solution creates a weak connection between business and philanthropy, but the other two solutions are not.
Second, identify the need to be independent for companies doing good. Because the “casing” not only depends on the “bullet” but is also relevant to the company’s needs for separating philanthropy from the business. Many of them do philanthropic projects unrelated to their business through CSR departments to respond to the requirement of governments or investors. However, Vanke is a role model among most enterprises. The company established a corporate foundation focusing on Community Waste Management, which is almost unrelated to Vanke’s business. In addition, the foundation has its mission and operates in a clear boundary with Vanke.
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Business for Good: Five Suggestions from VA
Finally, let’s summarise the VA’s experience in making strategies of business for good.
- Integrate social problems with the enterprise’s mission to break the boundary of social impact and profit-making. In this case, the consistency of original aspiration, “bullet,” and “casing” is the highest.
- To expand the scale of the corporate foundation and achieve the socialisation of the corporate brand by separating corporate philanthropy from the business.
- Establish a corporate foundation or a specific fund to socialise corporate philanthropy and realise maximum funding and human resources efficiency.
- Invite corporates from the upstream and downstream of the supply chain to do business for good together, integrate ESG and carbon management into corporate strategy to find a sustainable path
- When corporates are required to do philanthropy, the best way is to spend less money and do more outsourcing to tell a good story.