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Nonprofit Organizations’ Views on Corporate Foundations

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Handbook on Corporate Foundations

Part of the book series: Nonprofit and Civil Society Studies ((NCSS))

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Abstract

The aim of this chapter is to provide a deeper understanding of how nonprofit organizations view their collaborations with corporate foundations. The views of nonprofit organizations presented in this chapter explain nonprofit organizations’ current practices in engaging in these collaborations, including the associated (social) benefits and challenges. The exploratory study was based on 23 semi-structured interviews with nonprofit employees, corporate foundations, and experts in the field conducted between October 2016 and March 2017. The results indicate that employees of nonprofits use three different views for corporate foundations. They consider corporate foundations as (1) moral agents of their founding firms, in which case the foundations hold resources that the nonprofits need in order to do their job as experts in addressing social issues; (2) they regard corporate foundations as instrumental agents of companies, where collaborations should create a win-win situation for the founding firm of the foundation as well as for the nonprofit organization; and (3) nonprofits see corporate foundations as change agents of their parent companies, in which corporate foundations actively work together with nonprofits to tackle social issues. The results further imply that it is difficult to describe one typical corporate foundation (as with the chapter of Bethmann and von Schnurbein), and working with them as nonprofits requires a flexible view on what a corporate foundation may entail, their focus, and their goals and should adapt their practices accordingly.

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Rotterdam School of Management (RSM), Erasmus University Rotterdam, Rotterdam, The Netherlands

    Sterre Swen, Lonneke Roza & Lucas Meijs

  2. University for Humanistics, Utrecht, The Netherlands

    Alexander Maas

Authors
  1. Sterre Swen
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  2. Lonneke Roza
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  3. Lucas Meijs
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  4. Alexander Maas
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Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Rotterdam School of Management (RSM), Erasmus University Rotterdam, Rotterdam, Zuid-Holland, The Netherlands

    Lonneke Roza  & Lucas Meijs  & 

  2. Center for Philanthropy Studies (CEPS), University of Basel, Basel, Basel Stadt, Switzerland

    Steffen Bethmann  & Georg von Schnurbein  & 

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Swen, S., Roza, L., Meijs, L., Maas, A. (2020). Nonprofit Organizations’ Views on Corporate Foundations. In: Roza, L., Bethmann, S., Meijs, L., von Schnurbein, G. (eds) Handbook on Corporate Foundations. Nonprofit and Civil Society Studies. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-25759-0_14

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-25759-0_14

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  • Publisher Name: Springer, Cham

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-030-25758-3

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-030-25759-0

  • eBook Packages: Social SciencesSocial Sciences (R0)

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