November 18, 1999 | Read Time: 1 minute
Some of the nation’s top business leaders, along with the actor and businessman Paul Newman, today announced the formation of a new group to help spur corporate giving.
The group, called the Committee to Encourage Corporate Philanthropy, says its goal is to increase the total amount of annual charitable gifts from companies around the country to $15-billion by 2004. Companies gave a total of nearly $9-billion in cash and in-kind gifts last year, according to estimates in Giving USA, an annual report that measures American philanthropy.
The new group will be headed by Paul Ostergard, who is retiring as chief of the Citigroup Foundation, the charitable arm of the New York company. The chief executive officers of about two dozen other companies, including the Kmart, Xerox, and Chase Manhattan Corporations, have already joined the group. Mr. Newman, chairman of Newman’s Own, a multimillion-dollar food company that donates its profits to charity, will help enlist more business leaders.
The group plans to prod companies to give more by working with businesses to establish or expand giving programs and to set up corporate foundations. It says it will also identify and share the most effective corporate-philanthropy practices, and conduct research to determine how companies benefit from their charitable work.
