Acting Together for the Common Good: The Experience of the SNCF Foundation

This autumn, Futuribles launched a series on the contributions of business to the common good. Among the proposed articles are various accounts from actors in organizations working to promote the general interest. After Initiative France and the Schneider Electric foundation, it falls to a large-scale public company, the French railway network, to outline the activities of its SNCF Foundation. Marianne Eshet, General Secretary of the SNCF Foundation, shows, for example, how it contributes in France to improving the common good along two major lines of action: “Living together” and “Doing together”. She explains how the foundation’s collective strategies have emerged and how they have been embodied in partnerships, according to the needs identified. Three examples illustrate this commitment: “inter-associativity”, which aims to bring together various NGOs around a common project, is illustrated here by the “Doing Together with our Differences” programme; the co-construction of projects at the local level is exemplified by the Fabrique Opéra [Opera Factory] cultural project; and the co-construction of projects on a national scale by the development of the Alliance for Education. These variable-geometry partnerships show the relevance and success potential of more informal alliances and arrangements between enterprises, on the one hand, and public and private actors, on the other, to further the general interest.