Generosity Inc.

By Steven Pearlstein
Wednesday, December 21, 2005

Most Washingtonians haven't heard of Bay St. Louis, Miss. But down in that hurricane-ravaged area, I suspect they are feeling pretty warmly these days toward our region's business community.

Three weeks after Katrina struck, the Loudoun Medical Group, the largest physicians group in Northern Virginia, teamed up with the Loudoun Foundation and a dozen other local businesses -- including America Online, Independence Air, Inova Health System and Seitz Technologies -- to open a medical relief mission at the old train depot in Bay St. Louis, providing free medical services and medications. Doctors, nurses and administrators from Loudoun and Fairfax counties, along with other volunteers, have been rotating through the community ever since, treating more than 8,000 people.

Katrina tapped into a rich vein of corporate generosity this year, much of it unheralded but all symptomatic of a renewed determination by businesses to "give something back." Every year at this season, I highlight a few extraordinary acts of corporate philanthropy. The list is woefully incomplete but still captures the breadth and depth of charitable activities by Washington area firms and their employees.

Also in this year's Katrina file is the story of Project Performance Corp., a mid-size IT consulting firm based in McLean. Bob Lohfeld at PPC got the ball rolling by proposing to get some relief supplies to the gulf, rounding up a 28-foot moving van and driver, which pulled up in front of the Sam's Club in Woodbridge to load $6,000 in supplies donated by PPC. But when local bystanders found out, many went into the store and bought additional items for Lohfeld's mission of mercy. In all, 38,000 pounds of food, water and other necessities arrived on Sept. 5 in Waveland, Miss., population 7,000, which had been virtually leveled by the storm. It would turn out to be the first of five trips to Waveland organized by PPC, which equipped the town with tents, sleeping bags, shovel, front-end loaders, Thanksgiving turkeys and hams and Christmas toys.

Over the Labor Day weekend, Dittus Communications loaded 13 volunteers and 6,000 pounds of supplies donated by staff and clients on a chartered bus bound for the Gulf Coast. After she returned, owner Gloria Dittus organized an event for Washington political types that raised more than $400,000 for relief organizations.

Countless other businesses contributed funds for hurricane relief, among them: marketing firm Worldwide ERC, the Mortgage Bankers Association, ICF Consulting and NEW Customer Service, all of which delivered big checks to Habitat for Humanity; and Booz Allen and its employees, who contributed $600,000 to the Red Cross. Freddie Mac and its foundation made $10 million in Katrina-related contributions, mostly to provide housing for displaced families in the Gulf Coast region. And the Dupont Grille raised $25,000 by donating 100 percent of its sales one weekend to the Salvation Army's hurricane relief fund.

In this Year of the Disaster, an Asian tsunami and a Pakistani earthquake also demanded attention. Abe Pollin and the Washington Wizards raised $80,000 for UNICEF. The Akridge development firm contributed $35,000 for tsunami victims while collecting needed items in the lobbies of its office buildings. The consultants at McLean-based LMI chipped in more than $14,000 for Red Cross relief efforts.

Here at home, businesses have realized that keeping kids out of trouble is a lot more cost-effective than dealing with them after they get into it.

The D.C. United has been working with a program called DC Scores to provide an after-school program for 700 children of the D.C. schools. The program mixes soccer instruction by United players with language instruction and community service.

Freddie Mac has been doing some interesting work with the Healthy Teen Network that helps pregnant teenagers and teenage mothers who are leaving foster care. The investment firm of Friedman, Billings, Ramsey took its support for the Boys & Girls Clubs to a new level this year (in excess of $100,000) by helping to finance a new facility in Southeast D.C. that includes a computer clubhouse and gym with two full basketball courts. Scheer Partners, Hughes Network and Lockheed Martin were there when the Germantown branch needed $1 million to complete a new gymnasium.

Verizon Communications has made a special commitment to public education. Employees donate thousands of hours of their time each year for the District's adult literacy initiative, supplemented this year by a $100,000 contribution to launch a Web-based curriculum. And thanks to Verizon's contribution, more than 400 D.C. public school students are photographing friends and family, and writing essays to go along with them, as party of the Literacy Through Photography program.

The Thurgood Marshall Academy charter school has long relied on the support of blue-chip law firms such as Jenner & Block, Morgan, Lewis & Bockius, Vinson & Elkins and Williams & Connolly. But none does more than Clifford Chance, whose partners and associates provide tutoring and once-a-week dinners, summer internships, scholarships to graduating seniors and underwriting for the school's annual fundraising gala. There's an equally close relationship between Foley & Lardner and Wilkinson Elementary in Southeast Washington, where the lawyers have supported construction of a new playground and library, sponsored field trips and provided tutoring and mentoring.

The bankers of PNC are moving aggressively into the local market, bringing with them a reputation for strong community involvement. This year, PNC awarded $150,000 to three Head Start operators-- Campagna Center in Alexandria, United Planning Organization in the District and Community Action Agency in Montgomery County -- to create demonstration projects in language development, scientific thinking and early literacy mentoring.

Acumen Solutions of Vienna got 1,450 runners out this month for the 10K Jingle Bell Run out at Hains Point to benefit the SEED Foundation, which runs an amazingly successful charter boarding school that begins in the seventh grade and so far has gotten all of its graduates into college.

Another charter member of the charter school movement is the Sallie Mae Foundation, which over the past two years has contributed $27 million toward a facilities fund known as Building Hope. The fund helped finance the Cesar Chavez Parkside Facility, which opened last month in Southeast Washington.

There's no column long enough to describe all the ways companies and their employees donate invaluable services to nonprofits that could not otherwise afford them. But any list this year would include the legal work Blake Biles and his colleagues at Arnold & Porter do for homeless women; the 4,000 hours put in by lawyers at Hogan & Hartson to research and write a report on AIDS in the District; the improvements at Eastern Middle School in Silver Spring by Allentuck Landscaping; and the marketing done by Sage Communications for the first annual Duke Ellington Jazz Festival.

Building contractors have also discovered they can work miracles by working together. A group too numerous to mention, under the direction of Michael Tabassi of Tadjer-Cohen-Edelson Associates, renovated the Gospel Rescue Ministries in the District. And HomeAid Northern Virginia, the charitable arm of the building industry association there, teamed up with Richmond American Homes to double the bed capacity at The Haven, the only homeless shelter in Fauquier County.

And at a time corporate support of the arts has begun to wane, Lockheed Martin committed $1.5 million to support special exhibits at the Phillips Collection while KSI, the big real estate developer, provided $25,000 this year to Class Acts Arts, which brings the arts into low-income schools in Rockville and Silver Spring.

One-off contributions are nice, but many nonprofits say they live and die on multifaceted relationships with key corporate sponsors. Those include the Freeman Group's deep involvement with Family & Child Services of Washington, Giant Food's 25-year relationship with the Capital Area Food Bank, General Dynamics' support for So Others May Eat and the decade-long tie between Altria and Food & Friends, which delivers meals at home to those with life-challenging illnesses.

Ronald D. Paul Cos. is a stalwart in supporting the National Kidney Foundation while Centex Construction in Fairfax has managed everything from bowling outings to winter clothing drives for the children at the Center for Multicultural Human Services of Falls Church. In Northern Virginia, Habitat for Humanity credits First Horizon Home Loans and its employees with going "above and beyond" this year by sponsoring a Black Tie and Tool Belt gala, which raised $25,000. SAIC's involvement with the USO this year has ranged from sponsoring military family nights at Nationals games to providing financial support to injured troops and their families.

In terms of longevity, however, nothing beats the century-long special relationship between the Little Sisters of the Poor, which serves the elderly indigent of the District from its home on H Street NW, and its neighbor, Ottenberg's bakery, which this year provided about $11,000 in baked goods.

And then there are these relatively newfangled approaches to business philanthropy:

CitiMortgage raised funds for Big Brothers and Big Sisters, and EDS for the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society, by sponsoring a "casual dress day" that allows contributors to show up for work in jeans and flip-flops. Marriott now has a "linen bank" in which its replaced bedsheets and towels go to nonprofits like House of Ruth and the Armed Forces Retirement Home. In Arlington, the management of Post Pentagon Row capitalized on the popularity of the "Bachelor" and "Bachelorette" TV shows by auctioning off some of the most eligible local singles, raising $23,000 for cancer research.

But perhaps the most impressive innovation comes from Leah Gansler and CharityWorks, which focuses the financial support from dozens of participating companies on a single nonprofit each year in a way that transforms it, along with the lives of the children and families it serves. In just six years, CharityWorks has distributed more than $4.5 million to various initiatives, among them sending 24 local foster children to college, expanding literacy programs for 3,600 elementary school children, financing construction of a second campus for the Maya Angelou charter school and launching after-school and summer programs in some of the poorest areas of the District.

To corporate philanthropists I've overlooked, please accept my apologies, along with an invitation to drop me an e-mail around Thanksgiving time next year.

Happy holidays.

Steven Pearlstein can be reached atpearlsteins@washpost.com.