The View from the Boardroom - UNDP Trinidad and Tobago

More documents

Recommendations

Info

The View from the Boardroom - CEO Study on Corporate Social Responsibility in Trinidad and TobagoCHAPTER 3The Third Sector Revisited – Private Sector and Nonprofit PartnershipsThe United Way –Nonprofit Funding and Charitable Giving“What interested us when we first got involved with United Way on the upside was theconcept of UWTT’s vetting of charitable organisations to ensure that the organisationsand environment were bona fide. The downside was the knowledge that a portion ofthe money being collected would be used for administrative purposes. In short, whenwe spent a dollar on charitable organizations the full dollar goes there but if we sentit through United Way it’s probably discounted by the administrative costs of theorganization. We also realised, on the other side, that there are a number of NGOs inTrinidad and Tobago that are receiving funds from government and from organisationssuch as ours to support their efforts but in some of these institutions those fundsactually disappear into the pockets of persons that are running the show.So United Way appealed to us in that they were vetting these things, it is properlyorganised and administered and made sure that the money was well spent. There wasyet another appealing area of the whole thing and that is that an organisation as smallas ours gets inundated every single week with requests for charitable donations andit was somewhat easier for us to subscribe to United Way and to create a standardletter to say to the majority of them that we are already working with United Way andsuggests through this medium that they go through the United Way AccreditationProgramme. By so doing, they in turn could be certified and accredited for United Waysupport on a continuing basis.”Nicolas Galt, PresidentTCL Group of Companies52
Those requests would come through institutionswith which we are involved like the Youth BusinessTrust. On occasion these come directly to us aswell.” However, not all companies engage in socialpartnerships with NGOs. Norman Sabga, Chairmanof the Ansa McAl Group of Companies says:“Though we may partner with certain NGOs fromtime to time, we think that we are large enough to doour own thing. That’s because of our own capacity,recognition for what we do, recognition for who weare and what we want to do. This has very little todo with the quality of the nonprofit partners but ismore about us being able to identify what we wantto do. In addition to which working with some of thelarger organisations, a substantial amount of whatyou put into the pot goes into their administration.We think we can do a lot more doing it ourselves.”Companies who seek to develop some degree ofprogrammatic input and content for implementationthereby going beyond the frontiers of traditionalphilanthropy often do so by establishing their ownfoundations as nonprofit delivery vehicles as is thecase with Ansa McAl or the telecommunicationsprovider Digicel. Such corporate-driven nonprofitorganisations created for the launch, oversight andmanagement of sustainability initiatives as well asthe area of sponsorship and charitable giving enablecompanies to engage with civil society organisationsin supporting roles while also pursuing their own CSRactivities and formats. The Ansa McAl Foundation’sannual Anthony N. Sabga Caribbean Awards forExcellence are an illustration of the latter.“We support a steelband group andwhen you do that you are doingsome community developmentas well as culture in terms ofthe way we operate with thembecause we are integral partof their organization. We haverepresentatives that sit on theirboard. The role that pan plays in theareas that we support in Laventille,it really helps to bring people offthe streets.”Errol Le Blanc, CEOUnicomer53
Page 1:
The View from the Boardroom- CEO St
Page 5 and 6: The View from the Boardroom - CEO S
Page 19: The View from the Boardroom - CEO S
Page 50 and 51: “Our process for supporting NGOs
show all

The View from the Boardroom - UNDP Trinidad and Tobago

You also want an ePaper? Increase the reach of your titles

Delete template?

Save as template?