Alternative Funds Make Slow Progress in Quest to Solicit Corporate Workers

The federal government’s charity drive has long offered a major lift to fund-raising federations that compete with United Way. Since 1980, the federal drive, which last year raised $197.1-million, has allowed many types of federations to seek money from government employees.

But non-United Way funds have had a much tougher time winning the right to solicit corporate workers. Only 12 per cent of Fortune 500 companies include non-United Way funds in their on-the-job drives, says Robert O. Bothwell, president of the National Committee for Responsive Philanthropy, in Washington. And the access at those companies, he says, “is not always universal. It may be only to a headquarters office or to a plant office.”

Non-United Way funds have been waging aggressive campaigns to gain access to corporate work sites for more than a decade, but progress has been slow. “It’s not easy because people don’t want to hurt United Ways, and there’s inertia,” says Kalman Stein, president of Earth Share, a Washington organization that raises money in behalf of environmental groups. “There’s a certain resistance to doing anything differently.”

Even so, Earth Share has won the right to solicit at several major corporations, including J. P. Morgan & Company; Sears, Roebuck and Company; Time Warner; and The Gap.

The Combined Health Appeal, an Atlanta group that raises money for 19 charities, has also made gains. Three years ago, it was allowed to participate in only one company; now it solicits money at 17 companies.

“The barriers are beginning to drop,” says H. Edward Godshall, the organization’s president.

When company campaigns do add alternative funds to the mix, United Ways sometimes feel the pinch.

Pitney Bowes, a Stamford, Conn., company that sells business equipment and services, last year for the first time allowed several non-United Way funds to participate in its drive. Although giving increased from $1.5-million to $1.6-million, only $1-million went to United Way in 1997, compared with the entire $1.5-million the previous year.

The company opened up its campaign at the request of employees, who said they wanted to support a greater variety of charities, including environmental and international organizations.

The United Way has said it understands why competitors want to solicit at corporations, but it is also trying to protect its campaigns, says Denise Pesich, senior vice-president for marketing and strategic development at United Way of Tri-State, in New York.

The United Way of the Tri-State plans to compete by stepping up its marketing campaign with a year-round effort to let people know the impact their gifts are making, even when the campaign is not in progress. “We want to show that the decision that they have made in the fall has yielded returns 365 days a year, 24 hours a day, even while they’re not thinking about it,” says Ms. Pesich.

She adds: “Our battle cry is that we are in this for the long haul — and in order to do that we have to be about change.”