With a slowly improving economy, corporate philanthropic spending nationally is slowly increasing. But Los Angeles is an outlier to the trend mainly because of one bank company.

The Business Journal’s annual ranking of local corporate philanthropic giving shows that the top 20 companies in Los Angeles gave $104.7 million last year. That’s up more than 24 percent from $84.2 million in 2011. A majority of the increase can be attributed to a single non-profit program at Wells Fargo & Co.

The Chronicle of Philanthropy newspaper said national corporate cash donations modestly rose 2.7 percent to $5.3 billion in 2012, in keeping with a slowly recovering economy.

James Ferris, a professor of public policy and director of USC’s Center of Philanthropy, said each company has its own priorities regarding philanthropy.

“The level of corporate giving is a corporate decision,” Ferris said. “Increasingly, corporations are seeing giving as a corporate strategy. It’s hard to say what’s driving it.”

But in Los Angeles County, San Francisco-based Wells Fargo accounts for about 40 percent of the corporate philanthropy among the 20 biggest donors, according to the Business Journal’s list.

Jonathan Weedman, senior vice president at Wells Fargo, said its culture and corporate strategy led the bank to start its Neighborhood Lift program last year, which contributed the bulk of its increased philanthropic spending last year. Weedman also heads the Wells Fargo Foundation for Greater Los Angeles, the bank’s philanthropic foundation.

Wells Fargo donated $39 million cash in Los Angeles in 2012 and $394 million in the country. Of the $39 million, $15 million came from Neighborhood Lift, a program Wells Fargo organized with independent non-profit organizations.

Neighborhood Lift was a one-time program that offered soft loans, up to $30,000, to first-time home-buyers to purchase properties in select areas. The loans are forgiven if the homeowners live in the house they purchase for more than five years.

In 2012, Wells Fargo reached a $50 million settlement with the Department of Justice to resolve allegations of discriminatory lending practices that led Latinos and African-Americans into subprime loans. The $50 million supported City Lift, a Wells Fargo program in collaboration with the Justice Department and independent non-profit organizations. Neighborhood Lift was outside of the collaboration with the Justice Department. Wells Fargo considers City Lift philanthropy because the bank donated money to non-profits. Nationally, the bank contributed close to $100 million combined, a quarter of its 2012 philanthropical spending, to City Lift and Neighborhood Lift.

Weedman said he anticipated 2013’s numbers will decrease because Neighborhood Lift is over, though he expects Wells Fargo to maintain its lead in philanthropic spending.

“The core of it is our philosophy,” he said. “If you want to own the market, you need to own the community. You have a real obligation and expectation to give back. If the community is healthy and people have jobs and housing, then businesses there will be successful.”

In addition to Lift, Wells Fargo made traditional donations to the Red Cross Foundation and to inner-city youth orchestras, for example. The company also tries to foster a philanthropic atmosphere among its workers. Wells Fargo employees have three paid days each year to do volunteer work, and bank branch managers are expected to be active in local charities.

Weedman said all the giving helps both the community and Wells Fargo. The company greatly benefits from its giving, he added, because it helps attract customers and retain employees.

Even amid the recession, Wells Fargo increased its giving each year. The bank was either in first or second place on the Business Journal’s corporate philanthropy lists from 2008 to date.

“As the economy recovers and businesses become stronger and more confident, that certainly helps us. It’s safe to say that perhaps it makes our giving a little easier,” Weedman said. “But we’ve given in good times and tough times, when our stock price wasn’t doing very well. We stayed with our strategy.”