How The Chronicle Did Survey on Corporate Giving

The Chronicle’s annual survey on corporate giving offers a glimpse of the state of philanthropy at many

of the nation’s largest businesses. The survey is based on information provided by companies ranked according to their annual revenue in Fortune magazine’s Fortune 500.

The 150 largest companies in the Fortune 500 were asked to provide figures on their charitable giving in 2002, 2003, and 2004. Information was obtained from 93 of those companies. A company either filled out a Chronicle questionnaire or The Chronicle obtained a copy of a company foundation’s 2003 fiscal year Form 990-PF, the informational tax return that is filed with the Internal Revenue Service.

While federal law makes the foundation tax returns open to the public, businesses are not otherwise legally required to disclose details about their corporate giving. Because many companies do not provide this information to the public, it is difficult to get a complete picture of corporate giving at the nation’s top companies.

The 57 companies that declined to provide information offered a variety of reasons for not participating. AdvancePCS, a health-care company in Irving, Tex., could not complete the survey because it was purchased in March by Caremark, a pharmaceutical-services company in Nashville. Anthem, a health-insurance company in Indianapolis, declined due to a pending merger with another company. Medco Health Solutions, a pharmaceutical company in Franklin Lakes, N.J., declined to complete the survey because it split from Merck & Company, the pharmaceutical corporation in Whitehouse Station, N.J., in August 2003. Officials at Medco felt that historical data on corporate giving would be inaccurate because it would reflect Merck’s giving. Medco is in the process of establishing its own company foundation.

Officials at other corporations said company policy prevented them from participating in the survey. Still other companies did not respond to repeated requests for information or gave no reason for declining to participate in the survey.

The Chronicle survey asked companies to provide data on donations from the entire business, including subsidiaries, and for all gifts to charities in the United States and other countries.

Readers should be cautious about making comparisons among companies from year to year. Some companies may not have reported complete giving numbers because they could not track how much their affiliates gave. In other cases, companies may have been able to provide figures only for their foundations, which makes it difficult to compare one company with another.

Readers also should be cautious in comparing year-to-year figures for the same company, as the company may have lost subsidiaries or merged with another company. For example, Pfizer said that its decline in pretax profits from $11.8-billion in 2002 to $3.3-billion in 2003 was due to a one-time accounting charge related to the acquisition of the Pharmacia Corporation in April 2003.

The survey does not take into account paid time off that some companies give their employees so they may volunteer at charities, or money raised by employees themselves.

Following are the companies that declined to provide any financial information about their philanthropy to The Chronicle or could not provide information from their most-recent informational tax-return filings.

AdvancePCS (Irving, Tex.) (sold)

Allstate Corporation (Northbrook, Ill.)

Amerada Hess Corporation (New York)

American International Group (New York)

AmerisourceBergen Corporation (Chesterbrook, Pa.)

Anthem (Indianapolis)

Archer Daniels Midland Company (Decatur, Ill.)

AT&T Wireless Services (Redmond, Wash.)

Berkshire Hathaway (Omaha)

Cigna Corporation (Philadelphia)

Coca-Cola Enterprises (Atlanta)

Comcast Corporation (Philadelphia)

Costco Wholesale Corporation (Issaquah, Wash.)

Countrywide Financial (Calabasas, Calif.)

CVS Corporation (Woonsocket, R.I.)

Dell Computer Corporation (Round Rock, Tex.)

Delphi Corporation (Troy, Mich.)

Emerson (St. Louis)

Exelon Corporation (Chicago)

FedEx Corporation (Memphis)

General Dynamics Corporation (Falls Church, Va.)

General Motors Corporation (Detroit)

Goodyear Tire & Rubber Company (Akron, Ohio)

Halliburton Company (Houston)

HCA (Nashville)

Ingram Micro (Santa Ana, Calif.)

Johnson Controls (Milwaukee)

Kmart Corporation (Troy, Mich.)

Lear Corporation (Southfield, Mich.)

Lehman Brothers Holdings (New York)

Liberty Mutual Insurance Company (Boston)

Lockheed Martin Corporation (Bethesda, Md.)

Loews Corporation (New York)

McDonald’s Corporation (Oak Brook, Ill.)

Medco Health Solutions (Franklin Lakes, N.J.)

Northrop Grumman Corporation (Los Angeles)

Publix Super Markets Charities (Lakeland, Fla.)

Qwest Communications International (Denver)

Rite Aid Corporation (Camp Hill, Pa.)

Sprint Corporation (Westwood, Kan.)

Sunoco (Philadelphia)

Sysco Corporation (Houston)

Target Corporation (Minneapolis)

Teachers Insurance & Annuity Association College Retirement Equities Fund (New York)

Tech Data Corporation (Clearwater, Fla.)

Tenet Healthcare Corporation (Santa Barbara, Calif.)

Time Warner (New York)

TJX Companies (Framingham, Mass.)

Tyson Foods (Springdale, Ark.)

UAL Corporation (Elk Grove Township, Ill.)

UnitedHealth Group (Minnetonka, Minn.)

Valero Energy Corporation (San Antonio)

Viacom (New York)

Visteon Corporation (Dearborn, Mich.)

Walgreen Company (Deerfield, Ill.)

Williams (Tulsa, Okla.)

Wyeth (Madison, N.J.)

The Chronicle’s survey was conducted by Leah Kerkman, with assistance from Stanley W. Krauze, Cassie J. Moore, and Ian Wilhelm.