Towards a Model of Strategic Corporate Giving Bernd Helmig 1 , Vera Hinz 1 , Alexander Haas 3 , Peter S. H. Leeflang 2 1 University of Mannheim, Mannheim, Germany, 2 University of Groningen, Groningen, Netherlands, 3 University of Bern, Bern, Switzerland Nonprofit Organizations (NPOs) are exposed to rising competition for funding resulting from a significant increase in the number of NPOs combined with reduced government spending (Salamon et al. 1999; Macedo and Pinho 2006; Raman and Zboja 2006; Hume et al. 2007). The situation is aggravated by the current economic and financial crisis. Corporate Giving (CG) is a relatively small but nevertheless vital part of the total income of nonprofits (Cantrell et al. 2008), and unlike government funding, it is especially important for NPOs to employ distinct fundraising strategies to generate this income. NPOs that are perceived by the donor organization to be aligned with the strategic interest of CSR policy are thought to have an increased likelihood of fundraising success (Sargeant et al. 2002). For NPOs, gaining more insight into the expectations linked to the firm’s CG programs as well as the decision making processes within the firm is a major challenge but also an opportunity as it enables them to develop a customer-oriented marketing strategy (Kotler and Lee 2005; Meijer et al. 2006; Cantrell et al. 2008). Until now, the majority of research has been focusing on corporate social responsibility (CSR) and CG from a company’s point of view, especially on the giving-performance relationship (see Griffin and Mahon 1997; Orlitzky et al. 2003; Wang et al. 2008 for reviews). Researchers have included several possible mediating and moderating inter-corporate variables of the giving-performance relationship recently, such as industry type, market dynamism, and degree of internationalization, whereas little attention has been given to possible intra- corporate factors causing variation. E. g. there exists only limited theoretical and empirical research examining the decision processes for CG activities (Cantrell et al. 2008). In contrast, there is a strong probability for heterogeneity in organizational structures and managerial processes due to various explanatory variables (Brammer and Millington 2004), a differing degree of strategic thinking (McAlister 2002; Porter and Kramer 2002; Saiia et al. 2003) and also cross-boarder differences in managerial behaviour (Bennett 1998). Yet the possible relevance of organizational structures on the efficiency and composition of CG activities has been acknowledged (Brammer and Millington 2008) and a country-specific approach to CG has already been followed in Europe (Meijer et al. 2006). Research Questions To the best of our knowledge, there exists no conceptual framework linking the intra- corporate organization of CG to the CG implementation and success. This study aims at shedding light into this under researched part of CG concerning the intra-corporate organization and its strategic involvement which besides external, inter-corporate factors influence the CG implementation. The relationship between the key variables as well as with the CG implementation and success is not specified and approved yet, leading to the following research questions: 1) How are the intra-corporate key variables including the giving culture, degree of strategicness and decision process design linked to each other? 2) How does the intra-corporate organization and strategic involvement affect the corporate giving implementation? 3) What is CG success? How is CG success evaluated? 4) How does the CG implementation affect the CG success? 5) What implications result for nonprofit fundraising?