“Capturing people’s hearts, hands, and wallets”: corporate foundations as a vehicle for promoting volunteering

This chapter aims to shed light on the role corporate foundations (CFs) play in enhancing volunteering. Due to the limited literature on the topic, we lack knowledge on the motivation for enhancing volunteering by CFs, how it is done, and what differences there are, if any, between CFs and corporate social responsibility (CSR) departments when it comes to enhancing volunteering. To develop an initial understanding of these issues, a mixed method study was conducted in Australia, which included employee survey, three in-depth case studies, and document analysis of 40 CFs and CSR reports. The findings of the study show that CFs somewhat enhance personal volunteering but mainly focus on corporate volunteering. They do so by offering paid leave for volunteering, employee-led corporate volunteering, and matching funds. Recent shifts in corporate volunteering emerged, including skill-based volunteering, international corporate volunteering, strategic CSR, and measuring social impact. The main differences between CFs and CSR departments relate to motivation and how strategic they are, although some admit the boundaries are blurred. The contribution of the findings and implications for practice are discussed.