BNP Paribas Fortis Foundation work under the microscope

Do our philanthropic initiatives actually make a difference? This is the question that BNP Paribas Fortis Foundation, having been up and running for four years now, has been asking itself.  In late 2013, independent consultancy Cap Conseil was commissioned to carry out a wide-ranging impact study*, on both a quantitative and qualitative basis.

The objective was to assess the work of the Foundation since it was set up, to measure the impact – on the final beneficiaries and on the charitable organisations concerned – of the projects it has supported, and to gain a better understanding of the needs of the charity sector. This detailed probing has revealed a number of trends.

In order to assess how well-targeted its philanthropic approach currently is, BNP Paribas Fortis Foundation basically set out to measure the effect of the financial support it provides in terms of meeting the needs of its intended beneficiaries, to check the consistency between its various programmes and then, if need be, to adjust its working methods.

Most urgent needs linked to precarious circumstances – The first conclusion of the impact study relates to the root causes of the social problems encountered.

Asked to “describe in a few words the most urgent needs of the people you assist both within the terms of and beyond the goals of your organisation,” 40% of the 544 organisation heads replying to the online questionnaire felt that a lack of education and training was the most glaring need. The impact study clearly highlights the correlation between lack of education and training and socio-economic marginalisation. “In Belgium, lack of education and training is strongly correlated with socio-economic precarity and is the result of an unfortunately very efficient system of scholastic relegation in our schools, which affects mainly under-privileged families,” states the report.

The European Office of Statistics had already highlighted this conclusion. According to a Eurostat report over 400,000 children live below the poverty line in Belgium. On a regional comparison, close to one child in four lives below the poverty line in Wallonia versus just one in ten in Flanders, while in the Brussels-Capital Region, one new-born child in four is born into a family with no income from employment.

In addition to lack of education and training, the impact study points out other needs such as lack of income, illness, problems with integration, access to culture and entertainment facilities, and housing. These are the very needs on which one charitable organisation in four focuses.

The work of the BNP Paribas Fortis Foundation – especially the Awards and Jump programmes – would in fact appear to be highly relevant to these priority needs. For the last four years the Foundation has provided financial support to a wide range of educational projects designed to assist children and young people in difficulty. In 2013 no less than €833,000 went towards supporting education projects.

Charities affected by the crisis; difficulties financing new projects – Another of the report’s observations is that the crisis in the economy appears to be increasingly hitting the basic financial resources of charitable organisations.

The perception that these organisations have of how their resources have changed makes it even more necessary for them to make a systematic search for aid. Almost half (44%) of the organisations surveyed believe that their finances will diminish in the future, versus just 8% that think they will increase. Among those organisations which expect to see their financial resources decrease, over half (113, i.e. 21% of the total of 544 respondents) believe that this decrease will jeopardise their organisation. It should be noted that in addition to leading to a reduction in state financing, the economic crisis is most probably also affecting donations from private individuals. Meanwhile donor generosity constitutes an important resource for a large number of non-profits.

Asked to rank their needs in terms of problems they encounter, 27% of the respondents said they had difficulty in financing new projects, while 19% found it difficult to finance the purchase of equipment, and one in five organisations was having a problem funding its basic charity work.

Assistance from private foundations is vital – The charitable bodies surveyed place high expectations on private foundations. They believe that without private charitable foundations there would be almost no new projects. Close to seven out of ten think that the role of a foundation is to focus its support on project financing rather than on the organisation’s running costs. “Non-profit organisations are devoted to their projects because these are the driving force of their activities and are a concrete example of their desire to ‘do better’, even though these new projects deplete the organisation’s finances even more, adding the cost of work plus expenses,” the impact study underlines.

However, the study reveals that the charitable bodies do not doubt the value of the private foundations’ contribution. Their donations are seen as necessary and complementary to basic funding sources. By financing ‘projects’, they help to stimulate the development of new ideas and new solutions. As regards the work of BNP Paribas Fortis Foundation, those surveyed judged it to be “relevant, useful and well appreciated among the field workers when it comes to implementing new projects.”

Slight change to BNP Paribas Fortis Foundation philanthropy policy – In response to the conclusions of the impact study, the Foundation has decided to take a number of initiatives designed to improve the effectiveness of its actions.

The Foundation will now prioritise the implementation of new activities within a given charity organisation.

The Foundation also intends to promote projects which respond explicitly to several parallel needs.

Last but not least, the Foundation will continue to support education and assist underprivileged young people, but from now on it will focus on educational projects which prioritise addressing the challenges of poverty among children and young people.

Annual activity report 203 of BNP Paribas Fortis Foundation - French version

Annual activity report 203 of BNP Paribas Fortis Foundation - Dutch version