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Corporate Philanthropy's Biggest Givers

Who are the big givers in corporate philanthropy, and where are they giving? BusinessWeek set out to find out how funding and giving priorities had changed since we last surveyed companies in the Standard & Poor's 500-stock index two years ago.

Our invitation for companies to report on their philanthropy yielded 200 responses. Of those, 190 reported numbers reflecting cash gifts; 125 provided values for in-kind gifts such as products and services. We used the information to rank companies by cash and in-kind gifts, cash gifts as a percentage of pre-tax profits and in-kind gifts as a percentage of pre-tax profits. Our survey aims to track new money being spent on philanthropic efforts. Some foundations, however, are endowed, and so get a big lump of funding in one year and aren't designed to get yearly allotments of "new" money from a corporate parent. Since some companies counted foundation outlays as new cash in our survey two years ago, their giving may appear to have dropped dramatically when, in fact, it has not.

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* fiscal year ** Walt Disney would not separate cash and in-kind giving ** Altria/Kraft have overlapping giving (Altria owned Kraft for the giving period, but Kraft is now a separate entity) *** Company may not have reported according to our methodology in the past. **** AT&T as merged entity with SBC Communications

Data: Company reports, Standard & Poor's

Methodology: We surveyed companies in the Standard & Poor's 500 stock-index to measure the amount spent on philanthropic activities, and 200 responded. For in-kind gifts, companies have some leeway in how to value donations. With cash, it may go directly to a recipient or to a company's foundation. For gifts to a foundation, we count money when it's donated--not when it flows out in grants. The exception is with "pass-through" foundations, where all the money put in flows out in the same fiscal year. Where we found companies counting foundation grants as new money, we tried to separate out grants.