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Foundations in the News

January 23, 2008: Mary Poppins and George Bailey on Banking Philanthropy

The other day a business reporter asked why we thought the banking industry’s economic downturn would affect more than just housing and community development organizations.

For a few banks whose philanthropy and community involvement are specifically focused on these interest areas, it’s true that housing and economic development groups will be hurt by the industry’s financial slump and the resulting downturn in philanthropy within those specific banks.

However, in most major banks, such as Bank of America, Washington Mutual, Citi, National City, Wells Fargo and U.S. Bancorp – the downturn will mean more bad times for arts and education organizations than for housing and community development groups.

It’s a mistake to assume that banking-related philanthropy is primarily focused on housing and economic development, and a worse mistake to assume that housing and economic development are the primary business of banking.

Let's go back to Mary Poppins’ field trip to the Dawes, Tomes, Mousely, Grubbs Fidelity Fiduciary Bank – “You'll be part of Railways through Africa, Dams across the Nile, Fleets of ocean greyhounds, Majestic, self-amortizing canals, Plantations of ripening tea”.

Now it is true that many banks, especially smaller, locally based institutions, invest heavily in housing projects and business development. However, most larger commercial banks invest heavily in all kinds of things that don’t have anything to do with housing or community businesses – mega-construction, transportation, pharmaceuticals, agriculture, energy, and other banks, just to name a few.

Okay, so banks are investing in many things besides housing and economic development.

So what?

Banks take in dollars (or tuppence) through deposits, loan interest, and other financial instruments to support their investments. While much of banks’ investable funds are derived from major customers and returns on investments, a very large portion comes from small depositors, including local employees, businesses, nonprofit groups, and government agencies.

We depositors like our banks to give something back to our community. In fact, we like it so much that we passed a federal law in 1976, the Community Reinvestment Act that requires banks to give back to the community – through loans, employee volunteers, and mostly through philanthropy and sponsorships.

So banks have to give something back – some of their philanthropy goes to housing and economic development transactions. However, even more of banking philanthropy is invested in institutions like schools, arts organizations, United Way, community events and civic ventures.

With the exception of Wells Fargo’s housing philanthropy and Comerica’s community development philanthropy, every major bank in America awards more charitable giving to education, the arts and United Way than to housing and community development organizations. It is true. Check the giving figures at the Foundation Center Online Directory.

Why more to education and the arts? We have two theories.

First, “The Retailer Theory”. Almost every major retailer – clothing, fast food, sports equipment, drugstores – award most of their philanthropy to local charities that are safe, respectable and family-oriented. For example, Macy’s says they like to give grants to institutions that their target market --adolescent and teen girls --understand and want to support. Look at their grants list. You will rarely find large, complex enterprises like medical research (except for AIDS and children’s cancer).

As retailers, commercial banks must also cater to their target markets, their neighbors, and their neighbors’ employers. Education and arts are great, visible, popular community causes that people understand (unlike housing and business investments) and solidly support. So why not support the most popular causes in town?

Second, “The Lots of Small is Good Theory.” The average grant from the banking industry has traditionally been much smaller than the average grant from other corporate sectors. For example, 3-4 years ago, the auto industry’s average grant was five times larger than the average banking industry grant.

Banks have to give away smaller grants because everyone needs to get a piece of the bank philanthropy pie – it would be terrible to lose a depositor over a $1000 gift.

So if they have to give away smaller grants, why not give to organizations where a small grant will make a significant difference, rather than a huge institution (i.e., medical research, universities) where a four-figure grant can get lost? That is not to say banks do not make grants to large institutions, but they tend to be local institutions, rather than national behemoths.

Therefore, many organizations have something to lose when banking philanthropy suffers.

However, and here is final and probably most interesting point. Most major banks will never say that their philanthropy has, or soon will take a nosedive. Even in the midst of the post 9/11 recession, major banks were telling us their philanthropy was “stable”. Even when CEOs are being fired and the Fed is lowering interest rates, banks are telling us that "2008 philanthropy levels are consistent with 2007 levels.”

How can this be? How can projected giving levels remain the same when actual giving levels are declining? Don’t banks know how to do financial projections? Don’t they know about budgeting?

Of course they do, however, banks rarely announce that giving is down for two reasons:

First, -- to use another fictional financial institution -- remember what happened to the Bailey Building and Loan Association in “It’s a Wonderful Life” when word got out that there were financial problems at George Bailey’s little S&L? A run on the bank! A panic that no bank – real or fictional – is remotely willing to risk with publicly disclosed bad financial news.

Second -- back to the depositors. As we said earlier, we like our banks to support our community, and we're no dummies about banks and profits. We know many bank CEOs are earning seven-figure salaries, and we know someone is making lots of money from our 2% savings accounts. A bank’s withdrawal of financial support from our community may be just the inspiration we need to switch our account from Wells Fargo to that new little bank opening across from our local grocery store.

People do change banks for such reasons and in the banking industry, that’s so scary that when Washington Mutual, the nation’s largest savings and loan actually announced this week that it was decreasing its philanthropy for 2008, it made headline news in at least five business journals from coast (Seattle) to coast (Tampa Bay).

So if they don’t want to admit they are giving less this year than they gave the prior year, what do banks do to hide the philanthropy downturns?

Simple, rather than announcing a decrease in giving, they add a source of giving. For example, when one Boston bank was forced to reduce their philanthropy during the downturn of the late 1980s’, they didn’t tell anyone they were downsizing. Instead, they added the dollar amount of their employees’ United Way donations to their published giving totals, something they had never done before. This had the effect of nearly doubling their published philanthropy totals, in spite of the fact that the bank’s corporate giving program actually gave away millions less than the prior year.

There are plenty of unpublished generosities in any major company – in-kind contributions, employee giving, employee volunteer hours, local giving, and even discarded goods that are used by “backdoor charities”. Adding those sources to the company's giving total may be slightly questionable, but probably not unethical. Moreover, if it keeps us from shifting our accounts to other, less generous, but more cunning banks (e.g., Dawes, Tomes, Mousely, Grubbs), then perhaps it’s not that bad.

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