ABSTRACT
In this chapter, the authors go beyond corporate social responsibility to explore the community, philanthropic, and charitable activities of business families. They drill down into the community context to examine how family businesses engage with the communities around them. Family businesses are often well-known within the communities in which they trade and many of them support their local community, financially and through community-strengthening initiatives. More specifically, philanthropic responsibility is about contributing financial and human resources to the community and improving quality of life. The key point to recognise about Carroll’s corporate social responsibility pyramid is that responsibilities are concurrent, not sequential; in other words, the social responsibilities of a business are expected to include all these areas at the same time. Charitable giving is one aspect of philanthropy and includes any gift of financial or other resources to charities or worthy causes. Charitable giving can be from individuals or from the business itself.
