Societal Marketing and Philanthropy in Dutch Companies

ABSTRACT

In the concepts of societal marketing and social responsibility, it is assumed that profit companies should have an explicit policy to shape their societal involvement and their corporate philanthropy. One way to express their societal involvement is by corporate philanthropy, by supporting important societal causes. In order to find out how Dutch companies deal with corporate philanthropy and to what extent that philanthropy is based on their corporate policy, a survey was conducted among a representative stratified sample of 962 out of all of the Dutch profit companies with 20 or more employees. Due to a relatively large drop-out of non-philanthropic companies, the ultimate responding sample of 485 companies was clearly biased towards over representing philanthropic companies. If this bias is taken into account, it could be established that at least 53% of all Dutch companies are involved in philanthropics. However, only 20% of the philanthropic companies did base their philanthropic business on an explicit corporate policy. Only a few companies believe they can get an equivalent compensation in return for their support given to societal causes. Also it seems that the professional handling of philanthropic business could be improved. Maybe here lies a task for the societal causes to better communicate their “business-worthiness” and the good communication possibilities they can offer in return to the profit companies.

KEYWORDS:

• Societal marketing
• sponsoring
• gifts
• social responsibility
• philanthropy