Can businesses still be a force for good after Covid-19?

Camden Giving is based on a notion that everyone has something to give, be that time, skills, money, local insight or money. Every person, business, community group and local employee can get involved in ending the statistic that Camden has the 3rd widest wealth inequality gap in the country.

Businesses of all, shapes and sizes, are an important part of our work and the majority of the money we raise to support community work comes to us via businesses. The support we’ve received from businesses over the last 3 years has kept young people safe, made sure families have the basics they need and made sure that people experiencing loneliness can find connection. But as businesses reinvent themselves to fit the Coronavirus crisis, is there any hope that businesses will still be able to play such a meaningful role in Camden’s communities?

ARE BUSINESSES STILL GIVING?

Camden’s businesses are hugely diverse and Camden Town’s micro businesses have reacted very differently to the international companies head quartered in Kings Cross. Big companies with charity budgets are re-assessing them, generally downwards, but not always, one company called last week to say they’d trebled their annual charity budget. Smaller companies are giving what they have and doing so with the agility you’d expect from small companies, they’ve delivered supplies to isolated people, donated stock and re-purposed closed buildings (Shout out to Camden New Journal, Pizzeria Di Camden). Companies have collaborated with community groups to put their expertise to use to create a clear understanding of ever-changing challenges (woop woop Phoenix Court).
In the short term at least, it seems likely that charities across the World will see less income from businesses, in Camden we’ll feel that more than in other places because corporate Giving has formed a significant income stream for many charities. Camden Giving set-up a Fund to help charities fill that loss of income. But in the medium and long-term, we’ll all need to re-visit that “sweet spot“ where what businesses need and what communities needs align. What will change?

A FRESH APPROACH TO VOLUNTEERING

Volunteering is likely to take a more important role on corporate responsibility agendas in the coming years as we all search fortune human connection we’ve lost in recent weeks. Working with others (even if it is remotely for now) brings joy, creativity and a sense of belonging, things employees need. The challenge for smaller charities is that we haven’t really nailed corporate volunteering. The charity sector needs to be honest with companies about how it can be most useful, sustained regular volunteering. There are models where this works brilliantly, like companies that allow (and genuinely encourage) paid time off for performing the duties of being a Trustee and companies that release employees to charities to deliver full projects. The era of teams digging holes with a beer in one hand should of ended long ago, but Covid-19 will hopefully be the end of them for good.

COMPANIES WILL ACT LOCALLY

Global issues have dominated the corporate responsibility agenda for the last 12 months, we’re rightly very concerned with what is happening beyond our own neighbourhoods. But what we’ve painfully learnt in the last few weeks is that global issues are always local issues. We can’t reduce the health and happiness of humankind to a spreadsheet, we need to show up for people who are part of our communities, the Coronavirus crisis seems to have reminded us of this and businesses have shown up in droves to makes sure food is delivered to vividly society and the NHS. Charities have done this without strategies or 3 year plans, we’ve done it because acting as a community is reassuring and feels great. The new networks being formed through mutual aid groups and food delivery networks will still exist in a year and will grow into the new corporate responsibility programmes and may even push out the big flashy charity partnerships that were the default for large companies.

The businesses that support Camden giving are tackling global issues from a community level upwards, often joined in the national and global movements that give their work momentum.

COLLABORATION WILL MATTER MORE

The majority of businesses are tightening their budgets and struggling to adapt quickly. But the desire to be part of positive change hasn’t evaporated, there’s just less budget to do it. Big companies used to running their own big CSR giving programmes will find giving harder, to make sure they’re still having an impact, they’ll need to come together. We’ve been really pleased to receive donations from new corporate donors over the last few weeks (hey British Land, hey Vitol), they’re putting funding in to joint programmes like the Camden Covid-19 Charity Fund that we launched at the end of March and that is already funding 29 initiatives keeping people safe, healthy and connected. Covid-19 may well give birth to the golden age of collective corporate responsibility that is so desperately needed. Camden Giving’s role is to bring together unlikely collaborators, in 2019 we ran a programme to keep young people safe, The Future Changemakers Programme, it was a collaboration between a small watch company, an international developer, 2 business improvement districts and the National Lottery Community Fund. Models like this are needed if we are to achieve more with less.

PRESSURE ON TECH COMPANIES

In 2018 a survey of the public found that people estimated that FTSE 100 tech companies, gave 13% of pre-tax profits as charitable giving. The actual figure was 0%. Camden is home to many tech companies, both big and small, some will be really struggling in this crisis, but others will be booming. Public expectation will grow, possibly political pressure, and with that I hope tech companies will work alongside civil society to become part of the communities they are based in.

LEARNING FROM SMALL CHARITIES

Within the first few days of lock down, small charities and community groups re-invented themselves, in some cases really radically, transforming from sports clubs to food distribution centres, from community gardens to online educators. It didn’t take weeks, it took days and it was effective. 4 weeks later some large businesses are still working out how to set-up home working. The potential for small charities and big businesses to learn from each other is HUGE. - see the point about collaboration.
The power dynamics between business and charity will shift, mainly because business will be handing out less donations, but also because the potential to learn from each others strengths will become apparent. In the future if a business needs to turn around a project exceptionally quickly, they should consult with (and pay) the manager of the local community centre, I bet they’d be able to cut the budget at the same time and reducing the timescales.

Organisations like Camden Giving that know both sectors can play match-maker, finding opportunities for this to happen.

DATA-LED CORPORATE RESPONSIBILITY

Over the last 4 weeks, I’ve lost track of the number of calls from people who work for Camden businesses calling to say ‘Can you tell us what’s happening and how we can be most useful’. They were asking for data, then an assessment of how they could make an impact on that data. 6 weeks ago, the most common questions were ‘who can we help?’, a more person-centred approach. As data and research catches up with the coronavirus crisis, companies will be able to find the issues they need to solve, but we’ll need to make sure we marry that data with invaluable lived experience.

At Camden giving, we work with community panelists with lived experience of the issues we are addressing, they’ve awarded 200 grants to grassroots community projects. And we are starting to do much more to provide our decision-makers with data that answers the unanswered questions they have about their communities. We are an open-data funder and we share all our grant-giving data on 360 Giving, so that others can see what we’re doing and importantly what we’re not doing.

THERE’S A SERIOUS PROBLEM

We’re trying the find the positives from this heartbreaking situation, but charities currently rely corporate support. In Camden we estimate that small and medium sized charities will be £8 million worse off over the next 3 months, some of that is because corporate support is drying up. Some charities will close for good. Camden Giving is a small charity and we’ll see around £120k of income disappear over the next 6 months. Like many small charities, our funding is at risk at the very moment we’re needed the most. The governments commitment of £370 million to small and medium charities is a start, but will hardly touch the edges.

The charity sector is resourceful and people have been incredibly generous to our Camden Covid-19 Charity Fund, so through this challenge there is hope.
Small charities need to reinvent their relationships with businesses, and where that can be done, those partnerships will be more collaborative, more honest and more impactful than they were 6 months ago.

Find out more about partnering with Camden Giving to end local inequality