The day before the world knew in May that Fluor Corp. was moving its headquarters from Aliso Viejo to Texas, the head of Orange County’s United Way chapter got an unexpected phone message.
J. Robert Fluor II, the company’s vice president of corporate and public affairs,and president of the $12 million-asset Fluor Foundation,left what must have sounded like bad news for Maria Chavez Wilcox, president of the Irvine-based United Way chapter.
Bob Fluor wanted Wilcox to call him back right away, she said. But he told her to keep quiet about the matter until the news broke.
When Wilcox returned the call, she said she was given a heads up on the Texas move and that the Fluor Foundation would keep a commitment to OC.
“They didn’t want us to be taken by surprise,” Wilcox said. “This is the best of what can happen when a company relocates. It was wonderful to get the call.”
The downside for Orange County’s United Way and other groups here: They’ll be sharing Fluor with counterparts in Texas.
The local United Way plans to help Fluor get in touch with the right folks near its new headquarters in the Dallas suburb of Irving, according to Wilcox.
She said she’s optimistic: “I don’t see significant shifts in commitments to this community.”
But even before word of the move, which is set to take place next spring, Fluor has seen its giving slip.
It has fallen in the past three years as Fluor has trimmed workers amid a slowdown in energy work.
Going back to the late 1990s, Fluor had 3,500 workers in OC and Long Beach. Today, it’s at 1,500 in the area.
The downsizing has brought a drop in payroll deductions and company matches to the United Way.
After Fluor’s top executives and managers move to Texas, there will be roughly 1,000 workers in OC and 200 in Long Beach, nearly all engineers.
The Fluor Foundation is set to stay put, Bob Fluor said. But the move is set to further cut annual United Way donations by workers, the company and the foundation,on the order of $100,000, or by about a fifth, he said.
“We are still committed to supporting the Orange County region,” said Fluor, whose great-grandfather founded the company in 1912 in Santa Ana. “I’m staying.”
The $100,000 decline is what Fluor estimates will be the total drop in giving to United Way chapters in Los Angeles and Orange counties.
The declines have been going on for a while. For OC alone, Fluor’s United Way campaign contributions fell from $529,937 in 2002 to $478,979 last year, according to figures provided by United Way.
“We continue to have to look to new opportunities to support philanthropy in this county as shifts take place,” Wilcox said.
Fluor wasn’t the only company to send jitters throughout OC’s charities.
The day after Fluor said it had found a site in Irving earlier this month, Cypress-based health insurer PacifiCare Health Systems Inc. said Minnesota’s UnitedHealth Group Inc. was buying it for $8.1 billion.
PacifiCare is the county’s second largest company by annual revenue (after Santa Ana’s Ingram Micro Inc.). It’s also a Fortune 500 company,the second OC stands to lose along with Fluor.
Things still are unsettled at PacifiCare. The UnitedHealth buy won’t wrap up until early next year, after clearing regulatory hurdles (see story, page 1).
Bill Wood, president of the $2 million-asset PacifiCare Foundation, said it was too soon for him to be talking about the deal’s impact on giving.
“Normally I’d talk until I’m blue in the face, but I am so uncomfortable,” Wood said. “This is all so new to all of us. We are always the one who is buying.”
PacifiCare officials hadn’t contacted the United Way as of last week, according to Wilcox.
“They’ve been a major pillar of support to United Way for many years,” she said of PacifiCare.
Jim McAleer, head of the OC chapter of the Alzheimer’s Association in Irvine, said he doesn’t expect a major shift in giving by PacifiCare, which supports his group.
“Their foundation is strong,” he said. “It’s not something I’m going to lose sleep over. It may look a little different, but I don’t expect the support to go away.”
PacifiCare is expected to stay in its Cypress headquarters and keep its brands. Most of PacifiCare’s 10,500 workers, including some 4,800 in OC, could keep their jobs. Chief Executive Howard Phanstiel is set to become a United vice president.
Bonnie Brittain, executive director of Arts Orange County, said it was a “little early” to tell what the fallout would be for her group.
“It continues to get more challenging,” Brittain said. “It’s about building relationships over the long term, and it’s difficult to do that when decisions aren’t being made locally.”
Lynn Howes, director of communication and development with the Orange County Red Cross, said her Santa Ana-based agency has seen a steady decline in corporate giving due to local companies leaving, for whatever reason.
She pointed to Exult Inc., a provider of outsourced human resources services that was bought last year by Lincolnshire, Ill.-based Hewitt Associates Inc.
Former Exult executive Kevin Campbell sat on the Red Cross agency’s board of directors.
“You lose some of that expertise by having these people sit on your board, and who then leave,” Howes said.
Hank Goldstein, chief executive of the Oram Group, a New York philanthropic consulting company, said it’s common for executives to get lost in corporate shuffles.
“It’s hard to measure, but it is a loss,” he said. “Most nonprofits find it hard to recruit. They spend a lot of time cultivating these relationships because they are a source of contributions, and if you suddenly lose a big customer, you worry about it.”
