Five Minutes With: Charles Moore, Executive Director, CECP

For many nonprofit development officers, the notion that a corporation can have goals symbiotically related to their own organizations’ runs counter to intuition. Indeed, wouldn’t it seem downright obvious that the desires and goals, and even the basic moral orientations, of nonprofit and for-profit companies are in stark opposition?

Not so at all, argues Charles Moore, executive director of The Committee Encouraging Corporate Philanthropy, an organization missioned to educate the business community about ways to be better philanthropists — the two can, should be and, in many cases, already are intimately intertwined.

In a recent e-mail interview with FundRaising Success, Moore offered nonprofits advice on how to go about creating and nurturing partnerships with corporations — relationships that work precisely because they benefit both parties.

“Giving back, when conceived and executed thoughtfully, creates a win-win scenario for business and the public,” Moore says. “From eradicating disease and improving childhood literacy rates to boosting employee job skills, opening new markets and heightening brand recognition — business and society both stand to benefit greatly if companies can demonstrate programmatic effectiveness, fiscal accountability and good stewardship in their philanthropic contributions.”

Moore argues that corporations have a long history of philanthropic giving, but what has changed recently is the extent to which corporations are doing more for their nonprofit partners by providing them with resources that are not simply financial, such as volunteer labor and management expertise.

“By selecting nonprofit partnerships that tap into resources such as human capital and professional expertise, companies can do even more for their communities,” he says.

Two-way street

Nonprofit organizations never should lose sight of the fact that their for-profit counterparts benefit in many ways from partnering with them, Moore says, adding that, in fact, for-profit businesses often are actively engaged in the search for organizations whose missions are in alignment with their own business strengths and resources. This alignment is what Moore calls a “natural fit.”