Private Sector Disaster Relief: Altruism and Business Do Mix

I was in Iloilo City when Typhoon Yolanda/Haiyan hit, but the city itself had been spared. Not so the surrounding municipalities, some of which are just an hour’s drive away.

A few days later I was at the Iloilo Sports Complex packing used clothes and canned food into boxes as part of our company’s relief drive. One of my co-workers cracked that he would stick his picture on one of the boxes. This was a reference of how some politicians were distributing relief goods with their mugs plastered on the packaging or grinning out of streamers at the distribution site, and how these brazen heavy-handed attempts at self-aggrandizement were drawing the ire of the denizens of social media.

This made me think of the relief efforts of both government and private companies. To be sure, the Department of Social Welfare and Development did the best they could, but they were hindered by a system riddled with poor infrastructure and politics.

Then I read of the efforts of the MVP Group of Companies for Yolanda victims. When I was stationed in Manila many years ago I volunteered for one of their relief efforts as a favour to a friend. I am certain that Manny Pangilinan’s face did not appear in any of the relief packages. And why should it? Unlike with politicians, there would be no point.

I brought this up with someone, whose only response was to sneer that big companies use this as a tax write-off. Well, if it gets help to disaster victims, I have no argument with that.

But is Corporate Social Responsibility motivated by pure altruism?

The private sector certainly seeks to improve its corporate image, motivate and retain employees and break into new markets, states a study by IRIN. The same study also says that companies regard disaster risk reduction as an investment essential for the business community.

So there you have it. But the most important questions is this: Is that so terrible?

The problem is that we see any gains by corporations as nefarious activities by blood-sucking, greedy, grasping, money-grubbing capitalists. As a Third-World country, this old chestnut is further inflamed by our entertainment media which inevitably features that cliché of the Wicked Rich villain cackling behind a wall of goons.

The plain truth is that companies need to benefit if they are going to survive. Former US President Bill Clinton said: “We want healthy companies because only they can invest in our communities.”

 If a company goes under, they won’t be much help to the community during times of normalcy, let alone disaster.

Ask yourself: Is ANYTHING motivated by pure altruism? When you dropped P50 into the collection box, did it make you feel good. Some may have done it to gain favors or to assuage a feeling of guilt. We are doing it to serve our own needs, too. Why should companies be exempted? Whether it is a poor widow dropping a copper into the poor box or a major corporation donating a planeload of goods to a storm-stricken people, everyone benefits from helping people out.