Corporate Charitable Giving in the Netherlands: Determinants of corporate charitable giving and sponsorships

• In Event: Measuring Volunteer contributions

Abstract

Corporate charitable giving and sponsorships are interrelated concepts (Mullen, 1999) and are increasingly prominent business practices across the globe. Corporate charitable giving, often referred to as corporate philanthropy, is “the voluntary business giving of money, time or in-kind goods, without any direct commercial benefit, to one or more organizations whose core purpose is to benefit the community’s welfare.” (Madden et al., 2006, p. 49). Sponsorships, on the other hand, do serve a commercial benefit for the donor.

In 2020, it is estimated that corporations in the Netherlands gave 2.2 billion euro to charitable causes (Koolen-Maas & de Gilder, 2022).Corporate giving comprised 39% of the total estimated giving in the Netherlands, making corporations the biggest group of donors. Additionally, it is estimated that 61% of the Dutch corporations engage in corporate charitable giving – either by sponsorships, charitable giving or both (Koolen-Maas & de Gilder, 2022). More than a third of the corporations therefore do not engage in such philanthropic behavior. This study seeks to answer the following question: what are the determinants of corporate charitable giving and charitable sponsorships in the Netherlands? In other words, what factors explain why some corporations give while others do not?

According to Liket and Simaens (2015), corporate charitable giving is influenced by factors at the institutional, organizational and individual levels. Although research on the topic sparked academic interest since the 1990s (Cha & Rajadhyaksha, 2023) , “the evidence of the determinants at all levels seems to be rather thin. In other words, our knowledge of the characteristics that drive CP seems limited” (Liket & Simaens, 2015, p. 294). We aim to combine determinants at the individual level with organizational level characteristics. For instance, firm resources, ownership type, company size, profitability, and advertising or R&D intensity at the organizational level, and tenure and trust in nonprofit organizations at the individual level. See Liket and Simaens (2015), and Gautier and Pache (2015) for reviews.

This study advances our understanding of corporate giving by taking a multi-level approach; examining how corporations in the Netherlands give/sponsor, why they give/sponsor and what organizational and individual determinants influence the likelihood and the amount of charitable giving or sponsorships.
To get more insight into corporate philanthropy including sponsorships, we use data from the 2023 of Corporate Giving in the Netherlands survey. These unique data were collected in the summer of 2023 among 990 corporations. The dataset entails a large variety of corporations in the Netherlands, spanning from small single-person businesses to large corporations. The data include both organizational and individual level information on corporations and philanthropic decision-makers. Furthermore, they contain elaborate measurements of corporate philanthropy, such as questions on both charitable giving and sponsoring by corporations and the amount that they gave or sponsored. This unique combination of information allows us to examine an extensive set of predictors of corporate philanthropy. Using logistic regression models and average marginal effects, we will shed more light on the factors that contribute to corporate philanthropy. This might inform practitioners on how/where to stimulate corporate charitable giving.

References

Cha, W., & Rajadhyaksha, U. (2021). What do we know about corporate philanthropy? A review and research directions. Business Ethics, the Environment & Responsibility, 30(3), 262-286.
Gautier, A., & Pache, A. C. (2015). Research on corporate philanthropy: A review and assessment. Journal of Business Ethics, 126, 343-369.
Koolen-Maas, S., & de Gilder, D. (2022). Geven door bedrijven: Giving by companies. In Geven in Nederland: Maatschappelijke betrokkenheid in kaart gebracht (pp. 187-214). Amsterdam University Press.
Liket, K., & Simaens, A. (2015). Battling the devolution in the research on corporate philanthropy. Journal of Business Ethics, 126, 285-308.
Madden, K., Scaife, W., & Crissman, K. (2006). How and why small to medium size enterprises (SMEs) engage with their communities: An Australian study. International Journal of Nonprofit and Voluntary Sector Marketing, 11(1), 49–60.
Mullen , J. 1999 . Hoping to enhance a local funding relationship: Exploring private sector business preferences when contributing to nonprofit organizations . Journal of Nonprofit & Public Sector Marketing , 6 ( 4 ) : 87 – 99 .

Authors

• Stephanie A. Koolen-Maas

• Marlou Ramaekers, Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam