The largest corporate foundations in Orange County combined to give $113.1 million last year, down 5.9% from a year earlier.
The pace of decline indicates the recent trend of cutbacks might be stabilizing. Last year’s list saw donations drop by 13%, to $119.7 million.
The foundations are the charitable arms of some of the biggest companies with headquarters or a sizeable presence here.
The list includes the most recent available data on donations. Some entries reflect all of last year and others include data for 2009.
They are listed alphabetically on this week’s Business Journal directory.
Mixed Bag
About half of the companies cut back on giving, while nearly a third boosted donations. The rest gave about the same amount as the year earlier.
Among the foundations that increased their giving are the Allergan Foundation in Irvine, an arm of the county’s largest drug maker Allergan Inc.; the Angels Baseball Foundation in Anaheim; the Beckman Coulter Foundation in Brea; and Irvine-based chipmaker Western Digital Corp.’s Western Digital Foundation.
Angels Baseball Foundation, an arm of Angels Baseball LP, more than doubled its donations in 2009, the most recent data available, to $893,289. Its assets also moved up 14% to $2 million over the same period.
The Beckman Coulter Foundation was one of the couple of companies that gave more despite a decline in assets. Its assets fell by 14.3%, to $5.9 million from 2009 to 2010. Donations rose 21% from 2009, to $1.2 million.
The foundation gives primarily to areas of education, science and healthcare research.
Beckman Coulter Foundation started as the arm of Beckman Coulter Inc., a maker of medical tests and supplies that was recently acquired by Washington, D.C.-based Danaher Corp. for $6.8 billion.
The sale is not expected to affect the foundation.
“I don’t anticipate any changes,” said Mary Luthy, a spokeswoman for Beckman Coulter. “The foundation is a separate entity, and there are no plans to make any changes to the foundation.”
The Egbar Foundation saw the largest percentage jump in giving, with $50,000 in donations for the year ended November 2010, more than 16 times its total in 2009. The organization was established by Sunshine Makers Inc., which markets Simple Green and other cleaning products. The foundation saw its assets rise more than 21 times to $46,148 over the same period.
Egbar’s Roster
Egbar last year supported 45 education facilities, such as Lake Forest Elementary School, Stanford Middle School and Loyola Academy, with $1,000 grants each, and gave $5,000 to Viking Charities.
The top three donors on the list were unchanged.
The largest is the Atlanta-based UPS Foundation, the charitable arm of United Parcel Service of America Inc. It gave $38.9 million in 2009, according to the latest data available, down 7% from 2008.
Southern California is the company’s largest market.
Los Angeles-based fund manager Capital Group Cos., which has an Irvine campus, was No. 2. Its foundation organization gave $15.7 million for the year ended June 2010, down 28.8% from the year earlier.
No. 3 was UnitedHealth Foundation. It’s the charitable arm of UnitedHealth Group Inc., a Minnetonka, Minn.-based managed care company with a large operation in Cypress.
The company recently announced plans to increase its operations in Orange County with a deal to buy the management arm of Irvine-based Monarch Health-Care, A Medical Group Inc.
Monarch includes about 2,300 doctors in Southern California, the majority of whom are in Orange County. It will become part of UnitedHealth’s Optum health services business unit, which is separate from UnitedHealth’s insurance operation.
The UnitedHealth Foundation gave $7.7 million in 2009, according to the latest data available, unchanged from the year earlier.
Steady Nationwide
Nationally, corporate funding held steady in 2010. The total donations amounted to $4.7 billion, about flat from 2009, according to data from the New York-based Foundation Center.
Corporate foundations account for about 10% of the entire foundation giving.
Other companies that have cut back on giving in 2010 include the Gateway Foundation in Irvine, Santa Ana-based First American Financial Corp.’s First American Foundation, and the GSF Foundation and Taco Bell Foundation, both in Irvine.
Gateway Foundation is an arm of Gateway Inc., the sixth-biggest computer products company based in Orange County. It cut its donations by more than 90% last year, to $7,940. The foundation’s assets fell by 2%, to about $420,000.
Title insurer First American Financial Corp.’s foundation gave $74,725 for the year ended October 2010, a 75% decrease. Assets fell 25.7% to $195,713.
The GSF Foundation, which is part of Irvine-based Golden State Foods Corp., a food processor and distributor, gave $1.6 million in 2009, according to the most recent data available. That amount is down 26% from 2008.
The charitable segment of Orange County’s biggest restaurant chain, Taco Bell Corp., gave $2.1 million in 2009, down 16.6%. Over the same time, Taco Bell Foundation’s assets increased 57.2%.
Taco Bell is a unit of Louisville, Ky.-based Yum Brands Inc.
Download the 2011 OC’s LARGEST CORPORATE FOUNDATIONS List (pdf)
