August 10, 2000 | Read Time: 1 minute
By DOMENICA MARCHETTI
Non-profit leaders in Los Angeles say the entertainment industry “has not come close to doing its fair share” of supporting local charities, according to The Hollywood Reporter.
In a special section of its July 25-31 issue, the magazine says that the city’s non-profit organizations are looking to Hollywood to replace corporate giants such as ARCO, First Interstate Bank, and the aerospace and defense industries, whose philanthropic roles have diminished in large part because of acquisitions by outside companies.
“They had foundations or corporate-giving departments; their executives served on boards of non-profits, and they gave generously,” the article says of the former corporate giants. “But they’re gone, and Hollywood remains.”
The entertainment industry, however, is an insular world, the article says. Many studios contribute to causes favored by the celebrities and producers with whom they work, rather than giving to organizations that work to improve conditions for the city’s poor or to solve local problems.
“The Hollywood studios could better decide to tackle some of L.A.’s bigger problems and do some joint programming on it, rather than each studio just picking their favorite charity,” Margery Tabankin, who runs the Barbra Streisand Foundation and Stephen Spielberg’s Righteous Persons Foundation, told the magazine.
A few philanthropies in the business are working to get Hollywood to think more about how it gives money away, the article says. One is the Entertainment Industry Foundation, which raises money through on-the-job campaigns and distributes it to Los Angeles charities.
Still, the article says, the goal of organized philanthropy in Hollywood could remain elusive. Says one Hollywood foundation executive: “The entertainment industry is inherently anti-institution.”
