By Volunteer Suyog Ingle, FHI Nagpur
Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) is basically the responsibility corporations owe towards the well-being of society. Since CSR has been made mandatory in India, every company (those eligible for CSR as per the requirements given in Companies Act, 2013) has to contribute at least 2% of their net profit to the social & environmental cause.
Corporate companies can indirectly comply with CSR by collaborating with NGOs having the common purpose of social or environmental well-being.
Thus, collaboration of corporate companies with NGOs under CSR can enhance the efficiency of NGOs to accomplish their objectives on the grounds of the following reasons:
Aid in fundraising: For any NGO to function smoothly, fundraising becomes an essential element, as, in order to accomplish predefined objectives, NGOs have to conduct various programmes, campaigns & many other such things that primarily need funds. Collaboration with corporations could be a great aid in this regard as NGOs would be getting funds from companies through CSR.
Expansion of NGOs family: Another crucial resource of NGOs is their family strength i.e. volunteers. Through collaboration, companies get an option for community volunteering through which they can volunteer their employees in NGOs which in turn can increase the total strength of volunteers. Increased helping hands could obviously result in greater possibility of accomplishing NGOs’ objectives.
Revival of dying NGOs: There are numerous NGOs in India out of which as many as 94280 are only registered on DARPAN portal. Many of them might be on the verge of dying. These can be revived through collaboration as getting funds & volunteers can regerminate the spirit to work towards the noble cause.
Additional fruits: Additional to the perks mentioned above, NGOs can get many other benefits such as implicit publicity of the NGOs through companies, value addition to the human resource of NGOs as skilled & SME employees (Subject Matter Experts) could become volunteers etc. which collectively influence the impact of NGOs towards particular cause.
At the same time, the collaboration could create few threats as well in accomplishing objectives of the NGOs which could be-
Unethical compliance of CSR: There could be a possibility that the fund given by the corporate companies would be used arbitrarily for personal motives by the interested parties rather than for the social causes but showcasing as CSR expenditure. Thereby ultimately leading to the overall failure of accomplishing objectives.
Thus, collaboration of corporate companies and NGOs under CSR has a great potential to enhance the impact of NGOs towards a particular cause. However, we must ensure rectification of the drawbacks in collaboration through possible means.