Corporate foundations seek bigger social impact through partnerships
Corporations are pushing for a more collaborative approach to social responsibility, saying today’s biggest social and environmental problems are too broad for companies to tackle alone.
The League of Corporate Foundations (LCF), a network of operating and grant-making corporate foundations and corporations in the Philippines, made the call at the recently concluded “2026 Expo Collab-A-Fair” at the Glorietta Activity Center in Makati.
The event gathered organizations primarily working on education, livelihood and community development.
LCF chair Shem Jose Garcia says the expo reflected the league’s push to raise the bar for corporate social responsibility (CSR) as it marks its 30th anniversary.
“The idea behind the ‘Collab-A-Fair’ is to emphasize collaboration … Our idea of raising the bar together is to bring up the standards of good corporate citizenship in the Philippines,” Garcia tells the Inquirer.
‘Not just a charity’
He says that LCF believes in companies working together, alongside the government and the communities they support, to achieve common social goals.
“It’s not just a charity where they’re (communities) receiving, but it’s a collaboration in which they are actively participating,” he adds.
The expo brought together corporate foundations from various companies such as Ayala Corp, Metro Pacific Investments, BDO and Coca-Cola.
Garcia says the expo was designed to showcase projects that other organizations and the public could take part in, including through volunteerism and partnerships.
He points to education as an example of how corporate foundations can respond collectively to a national problem.
After international assessments exposed the Philippines’ learning gaps, Garcia says LCF member foundations that previously had no literacy programs began partnering with groups already active in the field.
“If we can do in other areas what we’ve done with literacy, we’re going to see better results,” he says.
Call for gov’t support
Metro Pacific Investments Foundation (MPIF) also mounted its own booth at the expo for the first time this year.
MPIF president Melody Del Rosario says the foundation was using the expo to directly showcase the foundation’s advocacies and connect with the public.
“Seeing people face-to-face and interacting with them is also on a different level,” Del Rosario tells the Inquirer. “This is a very good venue for us to be able to expose what we’re doing, all our advocacies.”
She says CSR was closely tied to the sustainability of Metro Pacific’s infrastructure businesses, which draw on resources such as water and energy.
“The goal of the foundation [is] to be able to work with communities to make sure that we do conservation work and protection of the environment because that is where we draw our business in,” Del Rosario says.
But she also called for stronger government support to help foundations expand their work, including clearer sustainability policies, better regulatory frameworks and environmental programs.
“We all draw from the natural resources, but we’re not doing a master plan or a blueprint for a more sustainable Philippines,” she says.
Del Rosario says the government could do more to foster closer ties with corporate foundations.
She says policies and laws that encourage greater private-sector participation in social development could help foundations do more good.
LCF also brought the expo into a public mall and invited students from schools across Metro Manila to show younger Filipinos both the impact of CSR work and the career paths it can offer.
Garcia says students increasingly consider a company’s social impact when deciding where to work.
“They can be inspired to sort of demand that of the companies that they want to work for,” he says.
