Corporate Philanthropy as a Strategic Tool for Advocacy

In the strategic CSR literature, corporate philanthropy is primarily conceptualized as the voluntary redistribution of corporate wealth to the disadvantaged, channeled through nonprofits that provision various social goods and services to those in need. However, limited attention has been paid to the fact that not all nonprofits are service providers. Another important but often neglected function of nonprofits is advocacy, which leads to the question of whether a portion of corporate giving is channeled toward advocacy nonprofits. Yet, given the lack of scholarly attention, we do not have the answer to this simple question; we do not know even the basic facts about this phenomenon of corporate advocacy giving - who gives, how much, where, and why, etc. Thus, this paper would take an approach of fact-based paper by documenting key empirical facts that would provide a foundation for future research. The findings show not only that corporate advocacy giving is indeed a significant empirical phenomenon, but also that it is distinctive from the alternative nonmarket strategies - traditional philanthropic giving and lobbying, calling for future studies on this understudied phenomenon.