With regards to companies trying to buy influence with the future direction of the charity's work - sometimes you have to cancel the agreement. Its hard, it has a lot more risk and in my case, makes my job a whole lot harder.
But when a company tries to dictate to the charity or else it will take its money elsewhere - and not just suggesting negotiation - then the trustees need to decide whether they want to go down that route.

It then comes to how much the charity is willing to do for money.
including chasing the money rather than its mission.

Martin

Hi Mr Burton

In another thread you mention that there's no such thing as a free gift. It's a fair point, but one that is particularly pertinent in the corporate fundraising world. You may think that companies are taking their CSR responsibilities "very seriously ", but in the light of the fact that the environment is now pretty much universally political flavour of the month, I think it's more a case of businesses understanding the marketing power of being seen to support your work. I don't have a problem with that at all incidentally, I just think that people need to be realistic about the nature of corporate support for charitable causes. To put my cards on the table I'm a real fan of mutually beneficial charity/corporate partnerships just so long as the corporate partner doesn't 'buy' influence over the future direction of the charity's work.

Don't shoot the messenger

If Global Witness is only saving two trees for every five pounds, they are not doing very well. We have been helping save rainforest, and a whole range of other habitas for nearly 20 years, and with forests averaging around £50 an acre, and at least 400 trees an acre, that's a lot cheaper than £2.50 a tree. And these are only averages; We have just helped one of our partners buy land at around £10 a cectare and another at under £50 hectare. That a lot better value.  But we were not included in the Green Philanthropy analysis -- presumably because we were not big enough. But in the environment movement, small is beautiful.

And in answer to another question -- we are certainly getting most of our support from corporate donors -- a lot ar taking their CSR very seriously.

 John A Burton, World Land Trust

We don't know the figures as to how much is spent generating funds from each sector - but you're right it would be interesting to know.

Lizzi, Intelligent Giving

I interpret the report to be saying that they deserve more but perhaps that the cake needs to be bigger rather than the environmental charities eating into other areas' funding (I think thats enough of the cake analogy!)

 From what I can gather from the link about the lottery funding, this is more about whether charity funding should be decided in a Dragon's Den-esque show rather than whether they deserve this money. Although, I suppose it was inevitable that the reality TV slant would soon enter the charitable sphere.

I would also be interested to hear other people's views on whether environmental charities should be getting more funding. And if the charities will benefit from this TV show idea...

Lizzi, Intelligent Giving

The trouble with wanting a bigger slice of the cake is that there is never enough cake to go around.
To get more of the cake is for some other groups to get less.
Is environment concerns an attractive enough idea to cause corporates to donate more, on top of doing their own green bit with packaging and processes?

The 'cute and cuddly' factor for individual giving might account for WWF getting corporate support while friends of the earth (without having those cute tiger cubs and so on) have a harder job. Or could simply be down to marketing - do we know the effort each charity puts into getting funding from different groups?

Thanks Lizzi for your well thought out and detailed reply.  I do wonder if the low levels of corporate giving are as a result of ethical policies.

 I'd meant to include a link for the news of the grant - if I'm allowed? http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/7057299.stm

 One thing that comes up though, "I think the main point that is being made in the NPC report is....environmental charities get a smaller slice of the cake than they should. "

So does this mean that the NPC believe more should be given to environmental charities in place of others?

I'd love to hear other people's take on this subject too..

Mike - you ask some important questions and as I'm sure you'll understand it is very difficult to generalise across the entire environmental charity sector. But, if we take  few examples, we'll see that funding varies widely

Take WWF UK, in 2006,(total of over 42 million) c.70% of incoming resources came from voluntary income (in the form of donations from the public, legacies and membership fees), 10% came from the corporate sector while only 2% from charitable trusts.

Friends of the Earth follows similar lines , of 5.6 million coming in,  some 83% comes from the public. But in this case, c.12% is from charitable trusts and there appears to be nothing coming from the corporate sector.

 As the charities get smaller, there seems to be a trend towards a heavier reliance on charitable trusts. Marine Stewardship Council received c.76% of total income from charitable bodies. Global Witness takes slightly less with 61%.

I think the main point that is being made in the NPC report is that from all sectors of the giving community (government, trusts, corporate & the general public), environmental charities get a smaller slice of the cake than they should. And the charities have to shoulder some of the responsibility for this because they are often not transparent enough to the donors and need to lay their solutions to environmental problems out on the table for all to see (and then hopefully fund).

 As for the ethical bit, it is an interesting question and I imagine one that again varies from charity to charity. Hypothetically, whether a charity would accept money from BP would probably come down to the obligation that the charity would then have to BP and whether their work is directly conflicting BP's aims as an organisation. It all comes down to a judgement call - and a difficult one at that i imagine.

Finally, the lottery fund should not really put off the average donor. If we look to another sector, say hopsices, we see that lottery funding (although perhaps not to the same amount - although I couldn't be sure) does not prevent the general public from giving and often being the major source of funding which keeps local hospices up and running.

There's a lottery grant to help too, so again people don't have to dip into their own pockets to save the world.  Do you think this ultimately helps or hinders?  Is it much needed funding, or will it encourage the thinking that someone else will deal with it?

Thanks for your reply.  I suspected you'd say that.   Yet, isn't it interesting that people want to 'save the world', but don't want to spend to do it?

Now this brings me to two things.  Firstly, while non-corporate giving outweighs corporate, environmental charities must be getting their cash from somewhere, so if it isn't you or me, then who?

Secondly, the ethical bit.  If BP wanted to pony up £100k should HGC (Hypothetical Green Charity) refuse it or take it?

Sadly we don't know this percentage. Bernard Mercer spent 6 months researching for the NPC report and he comments that corporate funding is too hard to ascertain. The point is made though that often environmental charities (eg. those involved in campaigning against logging) will refuse corporate funding because there will be a conflict of interest. Other than that, there is very little about corporate funding in the report - probably because it is just too 'hard to ascertain.'

Lizzi, Intelligent Giving

I'd love to find out the percentage of corporate giving that goes to this kind of cause.  Simply because every company I know wants to give green.  But then, I don't work for a 'green' charity trying to 'save the world'.