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Chapter 3 Corporate Phylanthropy

3.1 Corporate Phylanthropy – The concept

The word philanthropy was developed by the Roman Emperor Flavius Claudius Julianus as something
similar to religious charity, but the term has evolved so that it is now used in the field of business to refer
to aid actions through donations, volunteering or other forms, to humanitarian organizations or
communities. Philanthropy can go further when knowledge and experience are shared and real, close
relationships are created with the people who are part of society.

In the context in which we find ourselves, the term philanthropy is used in a broad sense to refer to the
totality of activities that are carried out without the intention of profit, including private donations of
resources, but also civic activism, volunteer activities in non-profit entities and even paid work in such
entities. It is therefore, regardless of the forms it may take, a type of non-profit action, a form of gift that
is carried out to improve the state of the community in which one lives (Amestoy, 2019).

The activities that today are described as philanthropic address a wide field of action, and can take shape
in different ways: economic contributions, volunteer programs, social inclusion projects, etc. Philanthropic
activities are usually carried out in areas such as education, arts and culture, health, research, etc. Thus,
under the connotation of philanthropy we find the financing of a museum, the construction of housing for
the homeless, subsidies for medical research, charity canteens, etc.

Source: Corporate Philanthropy (Henderson, 2019)

An action of this type has two characteristic notes that distinguish it from activities such as investment or the
financing of certain causes. First of all, philanthropy is an activity of a non-reciprocal nature, since what is
given or done through it is made free of any expectation of correspondence. In strictly philanthropic action
there is no expectation of recovering in any way the value of what is donated or given: the philanthropic
gift is a gift in its purest sense, it is a free gift that does not expect to receive anything in return (Vizion 360,
2018).