So what's the difference

Corporate foundations are playing a vital and increasing role in sustainability. That's the positive take-out from the study recently produced and published by Corporate Citizenship.
The headline message of their report The Foundations of Business is that that there are now some 140 corporate foundations in England and Wales compared with 107 in 2006.
And that's just the national perspective. From our work with the Better Cotton Initiative, the 4C Coffee Association, GoodWeave and ISEAL , we know that major international corporates are also working effectively through their foundations to reduce environmental impact and materially improve the lives of those involved in the production of the commodities on which their brands depend.
The less good news is that, in England and Wales at least, the average income of corporate trusts is tending to decline from about £1.75m in 2015 to an estimated £1.46m in 2011. We suspect, however, that some of the US, European and Asian based foundations are showing healthier growth and certainly far more impressive overall numbers than those here in multi-dip Britain.
The real concern from the report is the patchy approach to the collection and management of impact data. 42% of the respondents said that they do not 'do impact assessment' and those who did seemed not too confident about its accuracy. This may the issue that really matters.
Corporate and foundation boards rightly expect to see a return on investment. As once Sustainability Manager told us: "I am going to have start doing more than tell good anecdotes to persuade my Board to keep investing at this level. They want to know what impact we have had on the countries and the people where we are spending millions on sustainability."
Bill Gates made his focus on impact crystal clear in the Dimbleby lecture. He's prepared to invest billions from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation to eradicate polio which is now down to its last couple of hundred cases. It may be an astonishing cost per case but the impact is clear, measurable and sustainable.
If corporate foundations are to thrive, all of us in this sector have to work harder on the metrics, the outcomes and the impacts. The techniques and the capability to assess impact are already there. What is really needed is higher levels of cooperation between governments, companies, standards systems and assessors. That's possible if there is the will to make it happen.