CBIA: Business and Economic Info.

From CBIA News, May 2002

Giving to community causes

For many companies, it’s a routine part of business

When the city of Hartford said it couldn’t afford a parade for the UConn Huskies last month, it seemed as though the NCAA champs would have to go without a public celebration. But the parade stepped off as scheduled April 6, to the delight of thousands of fans, the team, and state and city officials, thanks largely to donations by Connecticut businesses. Companies contributed nearly $100,000 toward the cost of the parade, says Ken Kahn, executive director of the Greater Hartford Arts Council, which solicited the donations along with the MetroHartford Regional Economic Alliance. The money came not just from one or two large corporations, either. “We’re getting a lot of small contributions — $100, $500,” Kahn says.

The Huskies’ parade was far from the only community cause that Connecticut businesses, large and small, have helped make possible. Businesses throughout the state routinely contribute money, equipment, expertise or volunteers to numerous charitable organizations. Putting a dollar amount on all that giving isn’t possible because complete data is unavailable. But consider just one type of community support: corporate foundations. The 40 corporate foundations operating in Connecticut in 1999 together gave more than $64 million that year, 24% more than in 1995, according to The Foundation Center, a philanthropy research and training organization in New York City.

That was during good economic times, of course. But even throughout the recent recession, many Connecticut companies continued to give to community causes. Most of the state businesses that responded to a recent survey said the amount of money they gave to charities over the past two years either increased or stayed the same.

That survey, conducted late last year for the Connecticut Council for Philanthropy, also found that 77% of the 200 largest businesses and 59% of businesses overall had sponsored a community group such as a sports team, educational program or other type of community activity. And fully 100% of the larger companies surveyed said it was either very or somewhat important for corporations to provide volunteers and give money to charitable organizations; 94% of businesses overall said the same.

That’s certain to be good news to the thousands of charitable organizations that depend on corporate and private donations.

“Corporate contributions will account for half of our United Arts Campaign this year,” says the arts council’s Kahn. Overall, the campaign aims to raise $3.2 million, which will help support more than 100 arts, cultural and heritage organizations in Greater Hartford, he says. The arts industry that the council supports attracts an audience of more than 4 million people annually, generating an economic impact of about $200 million a year.

Strengthening communities

Businesses don’t only contribute to causes that directly generate an economic impact. But they do often focus their contributions on organizations whose activities help strengthen the communities in which their employees, shareholders or customers live and work.

The Barnes Group Foundation, for example, a grant-making organization created by the Barnes Group Inc. that is supported by a company-funded endowment, gives priority to organizations and projects in locations where the company has facilities. “Most of our giving is here in Connecticut, because it’s where our headquarters are; it’s where our roots are,” says Tom Barnes, chairman and president of the company, which makes precision springs and other products for industrial and aerospace markets.

Based in Bristol, where it was founded by a Barnes ancestor in 1857, the company has about 30 locations around the United States and several overseas facilities. “Some units make direct contributions from their operating budgets, but 99% of [the company’s giving] comes from the foundation,” he says.

The 145-year-old company has “a long history of charitable giving,” Barnes says. But they decided to create the endowment in 1976 partly for tax reasons and partly because “if we’re having a bad year, we can still use the endowment to continue our charitable giving,” says Barnes.

The company feels so strongly about helping to support the community that it provides financial incentives for employees to do it too. Through the Barnes Group Foundation, the company provides a two-to-one match of employee donations, up to $4,000 per employee per year, to certain types of 501(c)(3) organizations. “We started with education,” says Barnes. “Last year we added arts and this year we added health care.”

The company also matches on a one-for-one basis “what employees across the country contribute to the United Way,” he says. Although the company itself had been contributing to the United Way drive for years, “We started the match two years ago, hoping that it would encourage employees to give more,” says Barnes. The strategy worked: “Employees’ contributions went from $50,000 to $165,000 in two years,” he says.

To encourage employees to donate their time to worthy causes, the company has a Volunteer Action Awards program. When an employee volunteers at least 30 hours for a qualified local charity, the Barnes Group Foundation will grant up to $2,000 to the organization.

Employee volunteering made “possible at People’s”

Another company committed to improving the community through volunteering and other means is Bridgeport-based People’s Bank. And like the Barnes Group, People’s targets certain types of organizations to help.

The bank gives almost $2 million to charitable causes throughout the state, according to Lisa McGuire, People’s vice president for government and community affairs. “Our giving is focused on youth-related organizations,” she says.

Two of the bank’s “signature” programs (ones receiving the most support) involve mentoring and an antibullying effort, McGuire says.

Nearly 100 People’s employees are participating in the TeamPeople’s Youth Mentoring program. Launched this past January, the program is a joint venture of the Connecticut Mentoring Partnership (a program of the Governor’s Prevention Partnership, which is co-chaired by People’s CEO John Klein) and Nutmeg Big Brothers Big Sisters. Under the program, each of the bank’s employees has the opportunity to spend one hour during the workweek mentoring a child. They help the child with homework, discuss issues, or consider future employment and educational opportunities.

In Bridgeport, the weekly mentoring sessions are held at the bank’s headquarters, where children ages 8 to 10 are brought by bus from a local community center. In other areas, People’s employees visit their “mentees” at local schools.

The involvement of companies like People’s “is very valuable,” says Liz Davis, manager of Nutmeg Big Brothers Big Sisters’ Site-Based Mentoring Program, which covers 107 of the state’s 169 towns. “It gives kids an opportunity to have an adult friend or role model in their life, rather than just someone who’s a disciplinarian,” says Davis. “The kids love that they can spend some special time with an adult.”

The antibullying program that People’s helps support is Operation Respect CT, which Klein also co-chairs. According to Lisa McGuire, the program provides training sessions for adults who work with children — for example, school personnel, sports coaches, summer camp employees, even parents — to teach them what it means to be a respectful person so they can pass that message along to young people.

Most of People’s corporate giving is aimed at helping children because “they’re our future,” says McGuire, “and it’s good for employee retention.”

Mentoring, for example, ultimately helps to produce more well-educated, responsible young people entering the work force. And employees who mentor feel good about having a positive impact on young people’s lives. The bank believes that these employees become more productive at work and have higher levels of job satisfaction, which leads to improved employee retention.

“Statistics show that the consistent presence of a caring adult makes a young person less likely to use drugs, less likely to skip school, and substantially more likely to finish school and go on to college — outcomes that enhance that person’s chances of succeeding in life,” Klein says. “At the end of the day, mentoring helps our young people, and it is good business.”

Building a haven for families

The owners of Business Invirons Inc., brothers Mark and John Charette, also believe it’s good business to give to their community.

The 72-employee Rocky Hill firm, which provides office construction, furniture and floor covering services, last month helped convert an old house on Sigourney Street in Hartford into a “lead safehouse” for families with children who were living in a lead-contaminated environment. Business Invirons employees used the firm’s computer-aided design equipment to do the space planning for the building, which includes office space for the safehouse staff in addition to the family quarters. Besides donating furniture and floor coverings, the company also contributed skilled craftspeople to do the construction work, assisted by some of Business Invirons’ other employees and their family members.

The lead safehouse project was sponsored by Rebuilding Together (formerly called Christmas in April), a nonprofit agency that organizes brigades of volunteers to rehabilitate homes for low-income elderly or disabled people or families with children.

Business Invirons has participated in Christmas in April projects before, and finds other ways to help community causes, especially those championed by its customers or its employees — for example, by “bailing” someone out of “jail” to raise money for the American Cancer Society. And the company and its employees have “adopted” a disadvantaged family in Rocky Hill by giving them a week’s worth of groceries at Thanks-giving, buying presents on their Christmas wish list and helping the family buy back-to-school items.

Mark Charette, the company’s president, says, “We look for causes that bring our employees together as a work team and that foster closer relationships with customers. It’s fun to work together for different reasons than work. We all enjoy doing it.”

Restoring a wetlands habitat

Not only are families getting a safe place to thrive thanks to a Connecticut business, but so are aquatic plants and wildlife. In New London, Pfizer has been restoring a degraded salt marsh next to its new pharmaceutical research facility and is working with the Science Center of Eastern Connecticut and other groups to create a curriculum that uses the marsh as an environmental education tool.

A repository for run-off from an old junk yard and long-gone industrial operations, “Bentley Creek had been an abused wetland,” says Fred Turco, a Pfizer environmental engineer. To remediate the 1.8-acre site, Pfizer “removed contaminated material and added clean fill to allow for a sustainable ecology. Now it’s up to nature,” he says. It will probably take about five years before the salt marsh begins to look like it’s coming back to life, and as long as 20 years for it to become a thriving estuary again, he says.

Meanwhile, Turco is working with Science Center staff and other local business and community leaders on the Bentley Creek Community Project. The project includes a long-term monitoring study that will involve community members in gathering wetlands data; development of a curriculum to teach young people about the importance of wetlands; and efforts to publicize the study and the curriculum as a way to get more people involved in similar activities.

The Science Center, with help from Pfizer’s Turco, has already created a curriculum for high school interns participating in its Youth Alive program. The students are tracking ecological changes in Bentley Creek and comparing them with data from two mature marshes. Eventually, a curriculum will be developed for teachers to use in classrooms.

Overall, the project — to which Pfizer has contributed funding as well as engineering expertise — aims to help students, educators and the public to learn about local coastal habitats. “There’s a perception that estuaries are just mosquito-ridden places, that they’re no good,” says Turco. “We’re trying to show why they’re important.”

Support comes in many forms

Pfizer, Business Invirons, People’s Bank and the Barnes Group are only four of the many Connecticut companies helping local nonprofits. Here are a few of the many other examples. (Note that the following companies provide many more services and resources than can be listed here.)

Stamford-based Pitney Bowes Inc. provides technical and leadership services as well as in-kind and financial resources to the Stamford Enterprise Zone and the South End Neighborhood Revitalization Zone.
The United Illuminating Co. Foundation provides funding for the Jumpstart program in Bridgeport, New Haven and New London. The program recruits and trains college students to work with low-income 3- to 6-year-olds on language and literacy skills.
The Travelers has been the sole corporate funder of Postponing Sexual Involvement, a teen pregnancy prevention program sponsored by Hartford Action Plan on Infant Health. Travelers, which has been involved with the program since it began in 1995, “has provided $50,000 grants in most years,” says Marlene Ibsen, Travelers second vice president of public affairs.
Fleet Bank employees read to preschoolers through a partnership with the Connecticut Library Association, the Connecticut Center for the Book and Scholastic Books.
The Hartford Financial Services Group supports many educational initiatives in Hartford. For example, it has committed more than $1 million in computer equipment and services to transform Hartford Public High School into a center of technological excellence.
Webster Bank has provided funding to the Children’s Community School, a program for Waterbury school children from difficult home situations. And three of the bank’s employees serve on the school’s board of directors.
Lincoln Financial Group has a formal program for encouraging and providing employee volunteer opportunities.
More than 50 employers sent employees to speak at a series of Youth Employability Skills Academy workshops that CBIA helped the Capital Region Workforce Development Board present for 200 Hartford area teenagers last month.

What’s more, literally thousands of companies participate in drives for federated funds like the United Way and Combined Health Charities of Connecticut. Maureen Shiner, acting president and chief professional officer of Combined Health Charities, says most of their money comes from these workplace fund-raising campaigns. Although the donations come primarily from employees, “It costs a company time and effort to set up this kind of program,” Shiner notes. And allowing donations to be made through payroll deduction, as many companies do, “makes [donating] a little more painless and allows people to make bigger donations.” And some companies kick in their own money too.

Economy plays a part

What will the future bring for corporate philanthropic efforts? Nancy Roberts, president of the philanthropy council, says one trend it has observed over the past 10 years or so is that the dollar amount donated has gone up, while the number of recipients has gone down. “Companies have been giving larger, but fewer grants,” she says.

To what extent companies will continue to contribute will depend, at least in part, on economic conditions. “The ability to give is driven by the profits a business makes. If it’s not making money, it can’t give it way,” notes Tom Barnes.

How, then, to explain the fact that most companies surveyed by the philanthropy council said they increased or maintained their charitable giving during last year’s tough economy? Or the fact that giving by corporate foundations nationwide rose by 2.6% in 2001, as noted by a Foundation Center estimate?

According to the center’s report, “Exceptional giving in response to the 9/11 terrorist attacks helped corporate foundations to maintain positive growth in support, despite the effects of declining profits.” The report also noted, however, that although corporate foundations gave more in 2001 than the year before, the increase was the smallest since 1994. “Corporate foundations were the first [type of foundation] to show the effect of the economic slowdown, and it’s unlikely that we’ll see a substantial increase in corporate foundation giving until the economy begins a robust and sustained recovery.”

Nevertheless, considering how community-minded Connecticut companies obviously are, it seems a sure bet that the next time the Huskies deserve a parade — or a local school needs new computers, a food bank can’t feed all the hungry, or families need a safe place to stay — many companies will rally to the cause. As Tom Barnes puts it, “It’s important for everybody to give back to the community in some way. People need to stretch sometimes.”

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