NGO–business collaboration following the Indian CSR Bill 2013: trust-building collaborative social sector partnerships

ABSTRACT

The CSR Bill of 2013 introduced systematic corporate participation into social development in India. In the light of this law, this article argues that NGOs will play a decisive role in determining the benefits of corporate involvement and recommends that NGO–business partnerships are needed for meaningful social change. The article identifies a trust deficit between NGOs and businesses in India as a key obstacle to the success of NGO–business collaborations in the social sector. It suggests practices that could be adopted by NGOs to build trust in their partnerships with business partners, using a case study of one NGO, SNEHA (Society for Nutrition, Education and Health Action).

KEYWORDS:

• Civil society – NGOs
• Partnership
• Social sector
• South Asia

Acknowledgements

We would like to thank Maaike Bijker, Sheila Chanani, Kyoko Miura, Luis Miranda, and Gayatri Divecha.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes on contributors

Anuja Jayaraman is the Director, Research at SNEHA (Society for Nutrition, Education, and Health Action).

Vanessa D'souza is the Chief Executive Officer at SNEHA (Society for Nutrition Education, and Health Action).

Trisha Ghoshal is a Research Coordinator at SNEHA (Society for Nutrition, Education, and Health Action).

Notes

1 The eligibility criteria were companies with an annual turnover of 1,000 Crore INR or more, or a net worth of 500 Crore INR or more, or net profit of 5 Crore INR or more.

2 Value creation could be in the form of social value, interactive, or associational value (Austin and Seitandi 2012) or in the form of co-creation of social innovations (Sanzo et al. 2015).