Myra Alperson reports on the formation of a new grant- making group
A NEW acronym has recently entered the local business vocabulary: Saga, the Southern Africa Grantmakers Association. If you think this doesn’t quite sound like a business activity, it’s in part because Saga represents what many in corporate South Africa still won’t admit is an integral part of the function of business despite obvious ties to the reconstruction and development programme: to make direct social investments in the communities in which they operate or in which major players live.
And, to be sure, not all of Saga’s members come from the corporate social investment (CSI) community. Others include private foundations as well as foreign donors operating in South Africa.
However, all are involved in the funding of development projects of all sorts nationwide, and with budgets getting tighter while the need expands, a few dozen grantmakers felt it was necessary to form a network to discuss what they do, to co-ordinate some of their work and to improve the capacity of grantmaking so that they could be more effective.
The saga of Saga stretches back roughly five years, when a few CSI managers, led by Kobus Visagie of the Gencor Development Trust, tried to create a formal network of their peers to share information, possibly work together on some projects, and generally raise the profile of corporate social investment practitioners.
But the timing was off. For one thing, CSI in South Africa hadn’t evolved far enough for such an organisation to work. For another, quite a few companies were not yet willing to work in partnership with their counterparts. “Companies used to be afraid they’d lose their identity if they got into a `pot’,” one CSI manager told me. But, she added, “It’s different now; we can keep our identities. Companies are not using it as much as a marketing tool and everyone is very helpful.” And, third, creating an organisation with a public profile would have spelled trouble to those companies that were supporting anti-apartheid organisations whose activities were being monitored by government.
Nowadays, as the demands on donors grow, so, believe Saga’s organisers, has the need for an organisation to support them, both to give a public voice to the grantmaking community in the RDP debate, and to advance the legitimacy of CSI.
After nearly a year of planning, Saga was launched early last month, with a new board whose members represent a spectrum of companies and donors. Its new chair is Eunice Sibiya, who manages CSI at Coca-Cola South Africa. The vice-chair is Thabo Gallens from Engen and the new treasurer is Hugh McLean of the Liberty Life Foundation. The next few months will be critical as Saga carves out a plan to begin activities, with a small office manned by a full-time administrator and some support staff.
There are a few problems which Saga will have to address. No black-owned or very small companies are involved, even though more than 700 firms were invited to attend an organising meeting last January, so the organisation represents a core of active, large companies and lacks a major constituency from the small business community, which needs to be encouraged to join.
And not everyone among the large companies has welcomed the organisation. The Anglo American and De Beers Chairman’s Fund has refused to participate, and its director, Michael O’Dowd, thinks Saga is a terrible idea.
“It’s taxation without representation,” he says, objecting to the fact that Saga policies would give one vote on new policies to every member despite the fact that grantmakers with larger budgets would pay a higher membership fee. Besides, O’Dowd believes that the informal networks among CSI professionals already do an effective job in promoting good projects and passing on the news about those that aren’t working out, and he feels that Saga’s membership fees could be better used on direct social investment.
* Myra Alperson is completing a guidebook on corporate social investment in South Africa