Strategic Philanthropy for Organizations Research Paper

Strategic Philanthropy for Coca-Cola Company
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Strategic Philanthropy for Coca-Cola
Strategic philanthropy is a form of management practice that emerged around the 1980s and meant to support social responsibility in various firms in the United States of America. Strategic philanthropy is defined as using organizational core resources and competencies in a synergistic manner to address the interests of stakeholders while achieving both social and organizational benefits (Anheier, Simmons & Winder, 2007). It changes the connection between a company and societal needs by tying the firm’s activities to business objectives and goals and putting an emphasis that those activities are likely to advance business interests. AT&T is considered to be the first company to engage in strategic philanthropy under the leadership of Reynold Levy. Other companies that followed suit include Coca-Cola, General Motors, Walmart, Microsoft, Facebook, among others (Ferrell & Hartline, 2013). Their approaches to strategic philanthropy have been found to link stakeholder values and balance strategic donations and altruistic giving.
Fortune 500 is a list that is developed by Fortune magazine to rank the top most 500 public corporations in America by comparing their gross revenue. This list has significant wealth and power and thus define business in the United States as they contribute two-thirds of American GDP with revenues amounting to $12 trillion. Coca-Cola is one of the companies that has been featured in the Fortune 500 since 1995 when it was ranked 50th (Anheier, et al., 2007). Coca-Cola Company is a global beverage corporation located in America, which manufactures, market, and retails beverage concentrates that are not alcoholic. Its most popular product is Coca-Cola drink, and it operates distribution system that is franchised to bottlers who make soft drinks from Coca-Cola’s syrup concentrate.
Research has shown that philanthropy is important to a majority of the businesses and approximately 89% of all entrepreneurs engage in charitable giving either personally or through their firms. It is also claimed that 62 % of those entrepreneurs say that charitable giving brings success to their firms in the long run (Ferrell & Hartline, 2013). Most employees in those charitable firms have been found to embrace philanthropic activities, and new employees claim that they consider charitable giving when deciding which company to join. This means that strategic philanthropy brings many benefits to the employees and community. A strategic philanthropy program ought to be well planned, consistent and systematic for it to make a significant difference while engaging the employees and abiding by it.
Coca-Cola has been a leading company in strategic philanthropy and its former CEO, Roberto Goizueta, claimed that the process of embracing various forms of strategic approaches to philanthropy, companies manages to meet their respons...