NEW YORK -- Actor Paul Newman joined some of the nation's top CEOs Thursday in launching a venture dedicated to pushing corporate America into giving at least $15 billion a year to charity.
The group, representing the new Committee to Encourage Corporate Philanthropy, said that alongside the steady increase in corporate pretax profits has come a disturbing decline in the percentage of those profits that are given to charity. And 75 percent of the nation's corporations still give no money at all, it said.Through peer pressure and personal visits by Newman and other member CEOs to the leaders of corporate America, the group hopes to reverse the trend and convince more companies to give, and give more.
"We're in the '90s, its flush times," said Newman, who gives the profits from his Newman's Own food products company to charity and will be the committee chairman and national spokesman.
"The country is waiting; it's scanning the horizon hoping for some institution to distinguish itself . . . to be the standard bearer for social and civic responsibility," added Newman. "What an opportunity -- and you only have to reach out and grab it."
Paul Ostergard, chairman and CEO of Citigroup Foundation and president of the new committee, said "With companies making record profits, I can't think of a better time to urge businesses to increase the amounts they give to charitable giving."
And at least some CEOs seem to concur. More than two dozen CEOs have already joined the committee, and about 25 more were expected to join soon, said Peter Malkin, chairman of Wien & Malkin LLP, and the committee's honorary chairman.
Companies whose current or former CEOs have joined the committee include ABC/Capital Cities, Black Enterprise, Bloomberg, Chase Manhattan Bank, Estee Lauder, Fannie Mae, Fleet Boston, Goldman Sachs Group, GE Capital, Hallmark Cards, Johnson & Johnson, Kmart, Lucent Technologies, Monsanto, Ogilvy & Mather, Sara Lee, U.S. Trust and Xerox.
"We can honestly say that not a single CEO that we met with said 'No, I don't like the idea. I don't believe in it.' Everyone said that they would be supportive," Malkin said. "We think that if corporations increase their giving by only 10 percent a year, we will be able to increase our corporate giving in the United States from $8.9 billion to $15 billion in four years, and that's our goal."