The View from the Boardroom - UNDP Trinidad and Tobago

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The View from the Boardroom - CEO Study on Corporate Social Responsibility in Trinidad and TobagoCHAPTER 3The Third Sector Revisited – Private Sector and Nonprofit Partnerships“My wife and I started an organisation a while agowhich is located in Laventille and is called K.I.N.D.(Kids in Need of Direction). There we deal with kidswho have social problems, emotional problems,learning problems and once you have successfullyaddressed those issues you are surprised how farthey can go. Some of them just graduated fromuniversity. It started off with almost no hope,they were outside the system and it just showsif they have the right input and care. Where theorganisation is today is way beyond the point wherewe started it, we have a staff of around twelvepeople. In terms of the funding, we are runningthe NGO now for fifteen years in Laventille whichis a hot-spot community and we have not receivedone cent ever from any government ministry andwe have virtually given up to secure financialassistance from the government. We receive a lotof funding from foreign donors. We spend a lot oftime marketing and fundraising and writing lettersand we sometimes feel that we are a marketingorganisation when we are a service organisation.”Daniel Scott, CEOAnthony P.Scott Ltd.However, partnerships are not a winwinarrangement by default. In order toachieve targeted outcomes and developsustainable partnership structures,both companies and nonprofitorganisations need to pay considerableattention to the process of partnerselection and its strategic context,the design of joint projects and themanagement of mutual expectations.Selecting the right partner NGO -something that “can be the resultof either a planned or an emergentprocess” 30 - is a crucial pre-requisitefor successful collaboration betweenbusinesses and nonprofits. Finding theright match for joint activities basedon a partnership approach requiresalignment of strategic direction, aclear understanding of the sharedresponsibility on assignments, arecognition that organizationalsize matters on both sides of thepartnership and a thorough graspof the mutual needs and pay-offexpectations. The longevity, regularityand nature of partnership-drivenjoint initiatives may vary from caseto case and a company’s nonprofit‘portfolio’ may be characterised bysome degree of diversity. Eugen Tiah,CEO of Phoenix Park Gas ProcessorsLtd. points out that “we do partnerwith traditional NGOs. Sometimesthe partnership is an ongoing type ofrelationship and sometimes it’s of aproject nature in that we work over anumber of years on a particular projectand see that through to completion.But our model is that we will partnerwith an NGO and we will define whatwe expect in terms of governance andstandards of performance. We definewhat the deliverables are, we definehow they will be delivered and we alsodefine what we will stand for and whatwe won’t stand for.”In other cases, focusing on one’s owncore business guides companies intheir selection process of nonprofitpartners. Ingrid Lashley, CEO ofTrinidad and Tobago MortgageFinance Ltd. (TTMF) explains:“Habitat for Humanity is an NGO thatwe worked with very closely and onethat is in line with our business. Wetry to get people into a home, that iswhat we do as a business. Mortgagefinancing is the way we do it butour focus is always to put people inhomes. If we therefore have displacedboys we must find a home. If we havehomeless people we must find a home.If we have a home that is dilapidatedwe must contribute to building a30 Maria May Seitanidi, Andrew Crane, ‘Implementing CSR through partnerships: understanding the selection, design and institutionalisation of nonprofit-business partnerships’, Journal of BusinessEthics, Vol.5, No.2, Supplement 2, 2009, p.422.50
The View from the Boardroom - CEO Study on Corporate Social Responsibility in Trinidad and TobagoCHAPTER 3The Third Sector Revisited – Private Sector and Nonprofit Partnershipsbetter home. Habitat is involved inall that so they are a natural fit.” Thistype of congruence has been describedby some experts as a ‘cause fit’ which“involves a compatible positioningbetween the company and the causethat is based on an element of strategicsimilarity”. 31Contrasting with such an approachthat seeks to align a company’score business with its partnershipidentification and selection process,other corporate actors deal withthe issue of nonprofit partnershipsin a more ad-hoc, reactive and lessformalised way. Michael Aboud,CEO of Amalgamated Security Ltd.explains: “The NGOs that we workwith would be the Living Waterscommunity and we would normallyrespond with whatever they needfrom us. For example, if they havea fair and they want security or theywant us to incorporate some of theirpeople in our mentoring programmethen we would facilitate that. We have,however, no formal agreement withany of the NGOs. We see NGOs asthe conduits through which we canexecute some of our projects. If weare talking to our managers aboutour social engagement, we would askthem to identify through the NGOsthe things that they would like to seehappening and to see if we can getinvolved in that. But it’s not formal.They are important but they are alsovery focused in what they want todo which is not necessarily what Iwant to do. If the alignment is notthere, the project may never happenthrough them. So they may come tous with something where we feel thatthis is something that they can do ontheir own and they don’t need to bein partnership with us.” And askedabout the same aspect of formal andlong-term partnership arrangementsbetween the world of profits andthe world of societal development,Norman Christie, President of bpTTelaborates: “Globally, the partnershipsbetween companies and NGOshaven’t really always focused on thenotion of sustainability. Somehow therelationship tends to be in itself shorttermin focus. So, I believe that anevolution is required. NGOs might beevolving and might be getting betterbut there are even more possibilitiesto develop that space so that when we(i.e. companies and NGOs) are talkingit is really a conversation about apartnership on long-term sustainableissues.”Since companies and nonprofits hailfrom different organizational cultures,the room for misunderstandings,misaligned expectations, attemptsat dominating joint activities or thedivergence of targets and objectivesis considerable. Suspicion, mistrustand apprehension are the likely byproductsof partnerships that lacksufficient preparation, informationand expectation management.The problem of corporate micromanagingor at least the perceptionof corporate micro-managing ashighlighted in the previous casearises predominantly in situationsin which the company decides toadopt a programmatic approachinstead of pursuing a philanthropicand grant-making model of supportfor social and environmental causes.Combining the two approaches,Nicolas Galt, President of the TSLGroup of companies says abouthis company’s support for nongovernmentalorganisations: “Inso far as NGOs are concerned,our involvement has been largelymentoring, time based and somewhatfinancial. We use our experience inbusiness and our ability to understanda business proposition to adviseyoung start-ups how to deal with this.“Managing expectationson both sides of thepartnership withregards to the levelof organizationalcommitment, to theoutput produced andoutcomes generated aswell as to the resourcesallocated will determineif volunteer projectsbecome reasons forcelebration or a triggerfor corporate hang-over.”Roadmap to CorporateVolunteering- 6 Steps Towards Developingan Employee VolunteerProgrammeUNDP Trinidad and Tobago201131 Ida E. Berger, Peggy H. Cunningham, Minette E. Drumwright, ‘Social Alliances: Company/Nonprofit Collaboration’, California Management Review, Vol.47, No.1, Fall 2004, p.74.51
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