Softening Economy Doesn't Harden Hearts

Also Click2Mail and Toys for Tots; Foley & Lardner and the Wilkinson Elementary School in the District; Latham & Watkins and Miriam's Kitchen; ExxonMobil and the Community Summer Jobs Program in Fairfax County; Hogan & Hartson and Calvary Women's Services; Holland & Knight and the Holocaust Remembrance Project; Willkie, Farr and Gallagher and the Community Foundation; Mack Crounse Group and My Sister's Place; Geico and Children's National Medical Center; Calvert Group and Manna Food in Rockville; and the Association of Legal Administrators and the Salvation Army's Angel Tree program.

And then there are those one-off instances, as happened this year when the District's new police chief got concerned about the lack of security for some of the items at the department's evidence warehouse. The issue came up at a meeting of the DC Police Foundation directors. Someone called someone who called someone else, and before long a check for $45,000 for a new vault showed up at the foundation from Target, which is opening a new store in the District.

When I was a kid, it seemed my mother was always working what seemed like full-time on some fundraising event that urgently required me to spend Sunday afternoons with a half-dozen housewives licking stamps or stuffing envelopes. These days, however, the organizing tasks often falls to companies and their employees.

For example, SunTrust's sponsorship of the Greater Washington Heart Walk, which raised more than $1.2 million; the work Cisco Systems did for the Dulles Day Plane Pull that raised $132,000 for the Special Olympics of Virginia; JM Zell Partners' sponsorship of Starlight Starbright Children Foundation's annual gala that raised $725,000 for seriously ill children and their families; Van Metre Cos. underwriting of the annual race for Children's Hospital in Fairfax which raised $150,000 this year; Cardinal Bank's day-long golf and tennis competition, the Cardinal Classic, that raised $1 million over the last four years for Inova Kellar Center; and the annual Real Estate Games sponsored by a confederation of local commercial real estate brokers, which raised $425,000 to benefit the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation.

For sheer ingenuity, its hard to beat the contributions made by the employees of Social and Scientific Systems, a public health contractor in Silver Spring. For the last either years, about 40 SSS employees have knitted more than 1,500 "security blankets" for children who have experienced trauma, illness or loss of a family member. It's all part of a national effort called -- you guessed it -- Project Linus.

And how about this one: DogCentric, a local dog-walking company, sends two employees every weekday morning to give a morning walk to all 120 dogs at the Washington Animal Rescue League.

Thanks to everyone who took the time to let me know about these philanthropically minded local businesses. I was able to use many submissions, but not all. If I've overlooked your company or your nonprofit organization, mark it on your calendar to send me a note next year, just after Thanksgiving.

Happy holidays.

Steven Pearlstein can be reached at pearlsteins@washpost.com.