Private enterprises and businesses
Potential partners in the private sector include small, medium, and large local enterprises and multinational companies. These are profit-making organizations that can be motivated to become donors in ways that directly or indirectly serve their economic interest.
For an enterprise, donor activity can be "good business." Donor partnerships may help to promote the sales of a company's goods or services. Donor partnerships may help a business to penetrate a new market. Donor partnerships may enhance a firm's local image as a socially responsible enterprise. For tax reasons, it may be advantageous for a business to become a donor. Companies may also engage in donor activities to improve the socioeconomic conditions of their employees, their future labor force, or their customers.
The Soros foundations can seek the following resources from private enterprises and business in a partnership:
Private enterprises and business can be attractive partners because they have resources available and can make decisions quickly. Like the Soros foundations, business may be attracted to opportunities for innovation and quick, visible impact. Moreover, collaboration of the Soros foundations with successful entrepreneurs might bring to the partnership valuable skills and an orientation to management and marketing.
In identifying a partner in the business community, the Soros foundations need to balance the business objective of profit with the network's objective of open society. A national foundation should ensure that these goals do not conflict and that its mission is not compromised. It will need to consider the nature of the company's activities, its public image, and the consistency of the company's way of working with the Soros foundations' principles of open society. Even if a business is willing to become a donor partner, there could be understandable reasons why a national foundation decides not to build a partnership.
Building partnerships with business requires a proactive approach by the Soros foundations. Some enterprises may not yet think of themselves as donors. It may be necessary for a national foundation to help an enterprise see its economic interest in a partnership and the ways in which it can contribute to the collaboration. Companies can also be stimulated to become a donor partner when they know that other businesses or their competitors are engaged in donor activity. Enterprises will rarely be long-term partners of the Soros foundations, because their economic interests will change. Only large companies may be interested or able to sustain a major donor effort.
In partnerships with companies, it is necessary to create the kind of visibility that the enterprise is seeking through its contribution. This may be done by attaching the name of the business and an acknowledgement to all project documentation and any donated goods; display of the company's logo at public events; a letter of thanks from the foundation's board to the enterprise; recognition of the partner in the media; wide publicity of a list of business contributors to the partnership; and organization of ceremonies that recognise the contribution of the enterprise.
