World Affairs Council Corporate Philanthropy (11/5/2004)

Jeff Mattan and I attended this session mostly because of Janine Firpo, the point person on HP's e-inclusion effort around microfinance. She was one of 3 speakers, by coincidence, Dipak Basu, also an RDVP Fellow, was a speaker on the panel representing Cisco. The third speaker was Bill Manion, of Pfizer.

Bill Manion of Pfizer spoke first, describing their Global Health Fellows program. Some 30 employees since 2003 have spent 3-6 months working with NGO's in developing countries. Katherine Kim was on hand, having spent time on the border between Malaysia (?) and Mynamar. The program has support of the CEO, leadership team (6 senior officials within Pfizer), board of directors, and shareholders (Bill claims to have never gotten negative feedback from shareholders about the expense of the program). The fellow's position is held open during the time he or she is away, and it represents a commitment from the fellow's co-workers as well, as they need to pick up the extra work while the person is away. He said the program is in line with their goal to be the most "valued" company, and they donate $750M/year worth of cash and product. Bill's advice for people travelling to another country is to be accepting of that community's way; in particular, things like schedules and agendas are probably not the same for them. Pfizer partnered extensively, with local and international NGO's, as well as targeting supportive governments. They're focusing now on sending multiple people over multiple years to the same region to leverage their learnings.

Janine Firpo of HP went next. She described HP's interest as a combination of doing good while serving corporate interests (market development). She focused mostly on microfinance, saying only about 10% of the global population that could benefit from it has access. Pushing a typical technical solution may not be the best route, since it requires stable electricity, connectivity, air conditioning, a literate population, generally working only in urban markets. She said that HP has made a 3 year commitment to live in communities (Ander Pradesh in India, Limpopo in South Africa) to experience the needs and understand how to craft appropropriate solutions. In the area of microfinance, HP has created a partnership of 7 entities. They identified some of the challenges with microfinance (rife with errors, long times to collect/enter data) and created a solution based on smart cards and portable readers that enables electronic capture of data, the initial step of a transactional backbone that will enable these borrowers to enter into the traditional banking community.

Dipak Basu of Cisco rounded out the panel presentations. He talked about Cisco's support of NetHope, an organization devoted to helping NGO's achieve benefits from technology. He noted that Cisco also views its "Leadership Fellows" program as one of employee development, and the fellows are people who have been identified as potential senior level managers. The Cisco program is not for generating current profit, but does have strong shareholder support from John Morgridge (Chairman) on down.

Responses to Questions

Janine mentioned that it's important to be creative in re-inventing the technology, re-thinking how the service is to be provided. Competition will be coming not just from the developed world but also the developing world. Making a success in reaching the bottom of the pyramid will help encourage other companies to try, and not just multi-national companies: companies that are based in the developing world are a natural to serve this market since they evolved within it. A deep level of engagement with this community is needed to understand how to serve it. The multi-lateral consultant model (World Bank, USAID) especially needs to be overhauled. Corporations participating in development provide a lot more than financial capital. More important, she said, was the "business sense" the approach to doing things, and the accumulated intellectual capital of the firm. She estimated that about 100 microcredit banks had figured out sustainable business models, but they'd come under pressure as banks such as ICICI moved down market and started providing services to BOP consumers.

Katherine Kim, the Pfizer global health fellow in attendance, described the training that she went through and pointed out that the community needs to be prepared to receive the fellow as well. And individual selection was critical, but not easy--the best resume is not always the best person for the job. Even the Peace Corps reportedly has a 40% return (dropout) rate.

The panel closed with a question about measurements. People agreed that this also was necessary, but hard. Especially since with so many different projects and fellows there was little consistency for a global set of outcomes. Therefore, mostly the project initiators suggested their own metrics, to which things like employee satisfaction, observed outcomes and lessons learned were added for everything.