How The Chronicle’s Survey of Giving by Big Companies Was Compiled

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 annual Fortune 500.

The 150 largest companies in the Fortune 500 were asked to provide figures on their charitable giving in 2001, 2002, and 2003. Information was obtained from 92 of those companies. A company either filled out a Chronicle questionnaire or The Chronicle obtained a copy of a company foundation’s 2002 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 58 companies that declined to provide information offered a variety of reasons for not participating. Some companies, such as Wyeth, a pharmaceutical company in Madison, N.J., and Ingram Micro, a Santa Ana, Calif., distributor of computer-technology products and services, said company policy prevented them from divulging information requested in the survey. Officials of other companies said they did not have the time or the personnel to fill out surveys. Still other companies simply 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 between 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 foundation, a problem that makes it difficult to compare one company to another.

In other ways, too, the survey represents only a portion of corporate charity. For example, 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. In addition, the survey results do not reflect donations of in-kind gifts other than products a company manufactures or sells. Not counted in the survey, for example, was property valued at $1.3-million that Exxon Mobil donated last year to the Smithsonian Environmental Research Center, in Edgewater, Md. The donated property will become part of a nearly 3,000-acre area and will be used for environmental studies.

Also, changes in how companies calculate their giving budgets may affect donation totals from one year to the next. And mergers and acquisitions can make year-to-year comparisons difficult, as the new companies must reconcile two formerly independent giving programs.

While observers of corporate giving typically measure a company’s generosity by comparing the business’s charity budget to its profits, some companies use other approaches, including basing their giving on an average of profits over several years.

Following are the companies that declined to provide any financial information about their philanthropy to The Chronicle: Abbott Laboratories (Abbott Park, Ill.)
AdvancePCS (Irving, Tex.)
Allstate Corporation (Northbrook, Ill.)
American International Group (New York)
AmerisourceBergen Corporation (Chesterbrook, Pa.)
Anthem (Indianapolis)
AT&T Wireless Services (Redmond, Wash.)
AutoNation (Fort Lauderdale, Fla.)
Berkshire Hathaway (Omaha)
Cardinal Health (Dublin, Ohio)
Cendant Corporation (New York)
Cigna Corporation (Philadelphia)
Costco Wholesale Corporation (Issaquah, Wash.)
CVS Corporation (Woonsocket, R.I.)
Delphi Corporation (Troy, Mich.)
Dow Chemical Company (Midland, Mich.)
Exelon Corporation (Chicago)
Express Scripts (St. Louis)
FedEx Corporation (Memphis)
Fleming Companies (Lewisville, Tex.)
Gap (San Francisco)
General Dynamics Corporation (Falls Church, Va.)
General Motors Corporation (Detroit)
Georgia-Pacific Corporation (Atlanta)
Goodyear Tire & Rubber Company (Akron, Ohio)
HCA (Nashville)
Home Depot (Atlanta)
Honeywell International (Morristown, N.J.)
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)
Loews Corporation (New York)
Lowe’s Companies (North Wilkesboro, N.C.)
Lucent Technologies (Murray Hill, N.J.)
Marathon Oil Company (Houston)
May Department Stores Company (St. Louis)
McDonald’s Corporation (Oak Brook, Ill.)
Northrop Grumman Corporation (Los Angeles)
PepsiCo (Purchase, N.Y.)
Publix Super Markets (Lakeland, Fla.)
Qwest Communications International (Denver)
Rite Aid Corporation (Camp Hill, Pa.)
Supervalu (Eden Prairie, Minn.)
Sysco Corporation (Houston)
Teachers Insurance & Annuity Association College Retirement Equities Fund (New York)
Tech Data Corporation (Clearwater, Fla.)
Tenet Healthcare Corporation (Santa Barbara, Calif.)
UAL Corporation (Elk Grove Township, Ill.)
UnitedHealth Group (Minnetonka, Minn.)
U.S. Bancorp (Minneapolis)
Viacom (New York)
Visteon Corporation (Dearborn, Mich.)
Walgreen Company (Deerfield, Ill.)
Winn-Dixie Stores (Jacksonville, Fla.)
Wyeth (Madison, N.J.)

The Chronicle‘s survey was conducted by Marni D. Larose, with assistance from Stanley W. Krauze and Ian Wilhelm.