Corporate cash donations in Los Angeles County decreased slightly last year among the top 25 largest contributors, following a pattern of an overall decline in all types of giving since the recession.
The total combined dollar amount donated by the companies on the Business Journal’s list of corporate philanthropists, as ranked by cash donations to county charities in 2016 (see page 10), fell to $126 million from $128 million in 2015, a dip of about 1.6 percent.
The rankings of the top three companies on the list were unchanged from the previous year, though all decreased their charitable cash spending. San Francisco-based Wells Fargo was No. 1 with $19.1 million in local donations, followed by Burbank-based Walt Disney Co. at $13.1 million and Pasadena-based Kaiser Permanente Southern California donating $12.3 million.
JPMorgan Chase & Co. fell from No. 4 on the previous list with $11.4 million in local giving to No. 9 in this year’s list with $5.6 million.
That allowed Edison International to move up to No. 4, with $10.4 million in county donations, and Panda Restaurant Group to be ranked No. 5, with $6.7 million in charitable giving. The dollar value of the Rosemead companies’ contributions, however, was flat.
Charitable giving in general has declined nationally since the recession, said James Ferris, director of the Center on Philanthropy and Public Policy at USC. “Everyone took a hit in 2008. All giving of all types has decreased since 2008.”
UCLA’s Luskin School of Public Affairs said in a study last year that county residents declared $6.03 billion in charitable deductions in 2013, a dip of more than $1 billion from 2006, when they reported $7.16 billion in donations.
Ferris cautioned that corporate cash donations don’t necessarily reflect a company’s total giving, which can include in-kind gifts and employee volunteering, and that measuring the impact of donations is difficult.
“Corporations tend to think of their contributions not only in dollars or gifts, but a lot of in-kind benefits and trying to involve employees in neighborhoods,” he said. “It’s a much more complex equation of social impact than just cash contributions.”
Disney, for example, noted that it paid for employees to provide 75,628 hours of service last year.
Kaiser Permanente said it made in-kind donations of medical equipment, office furniture and supplies, clinical practice guidelines and intellectual assets, in addition to its physicians and employees volunteering a combined 10,915 hours.
Ferris said companies are, in any case, trying to be more strategic about their giving.
“The biggest trend over time is that giving patterns and priorities are more aligned with the business,” he said. “They don’t see the giving as something separate from the business; it’s more integrated.”
Chipping in
Gregg Sherkin, senior community relations manager for Wells Fargo, said he saw a similar pattern in the field.
“All grant makers want to use their financial resources – all their resources – most effectively,” he said. “What we try to do is be in the nexus of where there’s a need in the community and where we can bring our resources – expertise, funding, volunteering.”
The bank gives to a broad range of causes, including arts and culture, civic and community development, education, and human services.
“Our focus is to make every community we do business in better because we’re there, whether it’s through culture, services – especially philanthropy,” Sherkin said.
Wells Fargo donated to 1,250 L.A. nonprofits last year, including the Los Angeles LGBT Center, where it’s one of the biggest donors and supports the charity’s youth and senior services, as well as the L.A. Police Activities League, where it put 110 kids through a financial literacy program last year.
Sherkin wouldn’t say how much the company contributed to individual organizations, but said one of the larger gifts it made in the county was to the West Angeles Community Development Corp., where it helped hundreds of South L.A. homeowners avoid foreclosure last year.
He said that despite Wells Fargo’s decrease in cash donations from $19.6 million in 2015 to $19.1 million last year, the amount it has given to L.A. nonprofits over the past decade has remained relatively steady.
That was in spite of the bank’s net income decreasing from $22.9 billion in 2015 to $21.9 billion in 2016.
Profits vs. charity
The amount of giving throughout the list didn’t seem to necessarily correlate with profits.
The foundation of San Francisco-based Blue Shield of California bucked the overall downward trend of this year’s list, increasing its county giving from $1 million in 2015 to $6.5 million last year. It rose from 22nd place to No. 6 on this year’s list, despite a significant decrease in net income to $67 million last year from $115 million in 2015.
Kaiser Permanente Southern California, on the other hand, decreased its local cash donations while seeing an increase in net profits. The health care insurance provider’s county giving was down from $14.4 million in 2015 to $12.3 million in 2016. Meanwhile, its Oakland-based corporate parent reported an increase in net income from $1.9 billion in 2015 to $3.1 billion last year.
It remained in third place this year.
