Corporate “Guilt Money” and the Environment – Who Really Bears the Guilt?

The purpose of my research is to begin to address the ethical question faced by non-profit, environmental organizations that take financial and product contributions from corporations. I have elected to study several major, multi national US-based petroleum companies. In this study I have attempted to determine if a relationship exists between the amount of press a corporation receives, and the amount of money it contributes to non-profit organizations. I feel more concrete information regarding the motivations behind corporate giving is valuable for corporate fundraisers.Using a Spearman Rank Correlation test for the data in this study I have generated an inconclusive result, and am unable to say if a relationship exists between the two variables in this study. This mean that for one of the corporations there is a correlation between media hits and contributions, while for the remaining three there is not. No consistency emerged from data analysis in regard to the answering of my hypothesis, and so the result is inconclusive.My interpretation of the data is that since no correlation was proven, at this time non-profit organizations have no reason to stop, or more aggressively pursue, accepting corporate contributions. More study is clearly needed, as the inconclusive result provides little actual insight into the question I was looking to answer. My work has laid the groundwork here and is an important first-step in a long research path.