Anti-Business Bias Is Bad Business

By HILDY GOTTLIEB

When I was growing up, my father owned a small store in a declining inner-city neighborhood. While the faces in the neighborhood changed, my father was always the same, greeting each customer by name and bringing their stories home at dinner time.

Next door to my father’s store was a hardware store, the only such store left. The owner was vocal in his disdain for the changing color of the neighborhood. Since it was the only store of its kind, the residents had little choice but to shop there, though they hated the owner as much as he hated them. The more he mistrusted them, the worse they treated him; and the worse they treated him, the more it made the owner feel justified in his opinions.

When people in the non-profit world hear this story, they almost always identify with my father. They pride themselves on their open minds, and feel confident that they would never tolerate the racism displayed by the hardware-store owner.

But indeed many non-profit executives harbor a different, but no less insidious, form of bigotry: widespread suspicion, mistrust, and even dislike of corporate donors and their motives.

Though it is expressed in many different ways, the often-whispered sentiment seems to be: “Businesses only care about money, and individual business people only care about money. Their philanthropy isn’t real philanthropy.”

Just like my father’s neighbor, many non-profit executives believe they are being objective as they talk behind the backs of the very companies and business leaders who make their good work possible — their donors and board members. Failing to note that those businesses and people give their money and their time, non-profit leaders see only what their biases allow them to see: corporate greed. And like my father’s neighbor, non-profit groups lose out when their biases get in the way.

By discounting the motives of all business executives, we lose opportunities — not just the opportunity to attract more money, but the more important opportunity to forge the kind of relationship that makes the whole better than the individual parts could ever be. A real relationship can never happen when we see the other party as a necessary evil or as a money tree to be tapped and yet scorned at the same time.

As a small-business owner, I know firsthand that corporate philanthropy can often be motivated by altruistic desires to make a difference, and sometimes has little to do with business objectives.

After my company’s first year in business, we created and sponsored an event to collect diapers for organizations that help children. The event was such a huge success that, as it grew year after year, it began to take over our lives. Last year, the event benefited 30 organizations, taking significant time away from our real work.This year, the event has turned into its own non-profit group, the Southern Arizona Community Diaper Bank, benefiting every single Tucson organization that serves young people.

As for the benefit to my company, the event has cost us plenty of money over the past three years. Local publicity we receive for sponsoring the event has little value to us, because we have many clients who are not based near our headquarters. We took on the diaper project because we had discovered an unmet need. We simply couldn’t not do it.

Bigger companies give for the same reasons — because they feel an obligation to give back to the world that has given to them. A leader in the banking industry once told me, “It has to be God, family, and the bank, in that order.”

To be sure, businesses that give back do receive a benefit. In Built to Last: Successful Habits of Visionary Companies, James C. Collins and Jerry I. Porras document the traits of visionary companies worldwide — those that, despite hardship, always seem to come out as the premier institution in their industry. They found that successful companies possess a set of core values and a sense of purpose beyond just making money. Put another way, the same things that make a human being decent and successful also make a business successful.

Businesses are no more or less than a collection of human beings, with human values. And those values are expressed, among other ways, through their volunteerism and philanthropy.

Until those in the non-profit world can rid themselves of their anti-business bias, their struggles will only continue. It is an “us versus them” mentality that is counterproductive at best, and ugly at worst.

It is true that some companies will jump at a chance to be philanthropic because they think it’s good for the bottom line.

But that doesn’t make it smart for charity leaders to lump corporations with a history of giving with those that are merely following the trends, just as a few bad people of any race or religion do not justify bigotry against that whole race or religion.

It is harmful because it creates a disrespect for the corporations that help charities do the good work they do. And it is harmful because it creates an unspoken resentment among staff members toward business-minded trustees. Instead, we need to keep in mind that businesses and charities must work as partners to improve communities, and that without a healthy business environment there is no money for charity.

Charities can continue to insist that they are justified in their anti-business bias, or they can seek out opportunities to create relationships that provide real and meaningful giving. They can stop suspecting the motivations of those who give, and start getting to know business executives.

People who run businesses, from the corner store to I.B.M., have plenty of heart and want to share it with their communities. Non-profit executives owe it to those they serve to stop missing the opportunity to work with business leaders, to teach them and to learn from them, and to work together to make a difference to society.

Hildy Gottlieb is president of ReSolve Inc., a management-consulting company in Tucson that works with non-profit groups and Native American tribes.