Philanthropy Human Capital North Carolina businesses see customers as neighbors, which explains their rapid response when natural disaster strikes Learn more: Why helping people helps the bottom line Softening the blow for Pillowtex workers

Above: Progress Energy crews worked long hours restoring power to Northeastern North Carolina after Hurricane Isabel. Left: Gov. Mike Easley (left) and United Way President Jim Morrison accept a $1 million donation to hurricane victims from Blue Cross and Blue Shield of North Carolina CEO Bob Greczyn (right)

By Lisa H. Towle

Three days after Hurricane Isabel chewed its way across Northeastern North Carolina, Edenton Town Manager Anne-Marie Knighton watched anxiously as a helicopter thundered to a landing in devastated Chowan County. Steve Wordsworth of Rocky Mount-based MBM Corp., a privately-held food distributor which owned the chopper, and Senate President Pro Tem Marc Basnight alighted and quickly took in the miserable scene of downed power lines, ruined crops and flooded homes.

Wordsworth quickly asked Knighton “What do you need?” Her one-word reply: generators.

Within three hours Edenton had two of the three 400 kilowatt generators the town needed, accompanied by the people skilled in their installation. Barnhill Contracting of Tarboro provided the third generator, and by 10 o’clock that evening they were powering the pumps at Edenton’s water treatment plant. For the first time since Isabel struck, Edenton residents were drinking safe water and the town’s fire department was back in business.

“I will be forever grateful to those people. They just wanted to help their fellow North Carolinians. It was an awesome thing,” Knighton recalls, that Christmas-in-September moment and others like it forever etched in her mind.

While the particulars differ, many scenes like that one in late September play out across the state year round. Business people, sometimes accompanied by political leaders, sometimes not, arrive like latter-day Santas. Transported not by sleigh but by ferry, truck, automobile or aircraft, they dispense cash, relief supplies and lifesaving help because they choose to, not because they have to.

Faye Stone, who works in the governor’s office as deputy executive director of the N.C. Commission on Volunteerism and Community Service, also wears the hat of donations management coordinator for the state’s division of emergency management. As such, she gets up close and personal with the task of collecting, tracking and distributing donations for people whose lives have been upended by disaster. The calculus is complicated, involving numerous public, private and faith-based entities.

But this much is clear, she says. Whenever there’s a natural disaster or a manmade calamity the state’s emergency management system knows who to call. Corporations with a presence in North Carolina are quick to donate money and food and even machinery from the shop floor, like generators.

Relying on memory, Stone quickly recites a partial list of the businesses who contributed to Hurricane Isabel relief: “There was Miller Brewing Co. Even before the storm made landfall they offered to donate bottled water. Wal-Mart sent seven tractor-trailer loads of goods, including water, food, baby supplies and paper products. CVS shipped personal hygiene products and Johnson & Johnson sent several shipments of pharmaceutical supplies. And the N.C. Trucking Association, they’re a great partner. They donate tractor-trailers so goods can be transported.”


Money Matters Most

Pragmatically speaking, it’s money that is necessary to fuel the most successful relief efforts. However, getting money into the right hands at the right time can be a tricky thing, so business and industry, like private citizens, turn to more experienced hands for help.

In mid-October, the Independent Insurance Agents of North Carolina, a professional trade association, presented the Triangle Area Chapter of the American Red Cross with a $25,000 donation for its Disaster Relief Fund. The Red Cross reported that in the month leading up to IIANC’s donation, recovery efforts had resulted in $2.7 million in expenses to provide shelter, meals, relief supplies and financial assistance to disaster victims.

The Progress Energy Foundation and Lowe’s are among many working with the American Red Cross. The foundation has promised to match donations to the Disaster Relief Fund up to $100,000. Similarly, Lowe’s, whose stores were official cash donation sites for the fund through mid-October, said it would match donations up to $50,000.

At the first of October, as it did in the aftermath of Hurricane Floyd, Blue Cross Blue Shield of North Carolina (BCBSNC) gave $1 million to the state’s Hurricane Isabel Relief Fund. Coordinated by the governor’s office and managed by the United Way of North Carolina, this fund will follow the same model used during Hurricane Floyd (to learn more or to make a donation, visit www.governor.state.nc.us).

The money collected will be allocated to affected counties on a formula, with all counties getting a base amount, plus a designated amount based on the numbers of FEMA registrants in each county. Local officials will make their own spending decisions.

“As North Carolina’s largest health insurer, it’s important that we serve all North Carolinians. “We want to get aid into the hands of the people who need it as soon as possible, but we don’t just want to engage in checkbook philanthropy,” explains Kathy Higgins, senior director of community relations for BCBSNC.

That’s why, she adds, employees — among other things — donate 20,000 volunteer hours per year in their communities and participate in four organized corporate drives per year.


Time Also Counts

Indeed, the commitment of human capital is a critical measure of the significance companies place on philanthropic enterprise. At Charlotte-based Crosland, no less than Todd Mansfield, the CEO, sits on the board of directors of the Nature Conservancy’s North Carolina chapter. “We’re in the real estate development business. That brings with it a commensurate obligation to protect natural resources. . . .  The state is becoming more urbanized and that means increased prosperity. I, for one, believe that harmony can exist between economic prosperity and conservation stewardship, and I feel the Conservancy believes that as well,” says Mansfield, who devotes a portion of every week to Nature Conservancy work, some 20 percent of his company’s charitable dollars to environmental causes, and much time ensuring that business strategy aligns with environmental needs.

Nancy Temple, Progress Energy’s vice president for corporate communications, is another North Carolina Nature Conservancy board member who appreciates the organization’s “practical approach” to business and is therefore more than happy to spend on average a couple of hours of every week working on its behalf. Since joining the board six years ago, she has helped oversee a number of land conservation deals, including one that involved Progress Energy contributing to the purchase of Department of Defense property in the Sandhills. The acreage, located in Progress Energy’s service area, is filled with endangered long leaf pines and is also home to the imperiled red-cockaded woodpecker.

That the energy company is, as Temple puts it, “of the land” — “you can’t pick up a power plant and move it, land surrounds our assets” — gives impetus for the donations to environmental projects by the Progress Energy Foundation. In fact, the environment is one of the foundation’s philanthropic priorities, otherwise known as the “4 E’s.” The others are education, economic development and employee involvement.

Often, Temple says, it is company employees volunteering in communities around the state who draw the foundation’s attention to worthwhile projects in a particular service area. In 2002-03, for instance, the Pigeon River Fund, which provides grants for water quality improvement projects in Haywood, Buncombe and Madison counties, was given nearly $600,000 by Progress Energy.

Martin Marietta Materials of Raleigh, the nation’s second largest producer of construction aggregates and a producer of magnesia-based chemical products used in a variety of businesses, certainly can’t quarry without disturbing the land. But it too has shown it is willing to give back as well as take.

In 2000, the N.C. Mining Commission gave its Mining Stewardship Award for Outstanding Reclamation to Martin Marietta Aggregates in honor of its†“exceptional reclamation efforts” at its New Bern Quarry adjacent to the Neuse River in Craven County. Opened in 1958, the site, which had over 909 acres of mined land, has been reclaimed into a wildlife refuge and recreation area containing water resources and plant life. The reclamation occurred in three stages over a 10-year period beginning in 1989.


Committed to Communities

Surveys, such as one funded by The Hitachi Foundation and conducted earlier this year by the Center for Corporate Citizenship at Boston College and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, reveal that regardless of a general economic malaise a majority of businesses across America are committed to the communities in which they operate. Regardless of size, they provide cash, volunteers and/or goods and services. (See related story, page 44.)

It is also true that often times it’s only when a community has been knocked to its knees by disaster does such beneficence — driven not so much by laws or political pressures as tradition, values, strategy and customer expectations — become clear.

Arguably, nothing better illustrates the nimbleness of North Carolina’s business philanthropists than ruinous weather events, an unfortunate string of which have struck the state over the past seven years.

Consider Hurricane Floyd, which blew into North Carolina in 1999. One of the deluged communities was Princeville, the first township in the United States to be incorporated by African Americans. Lowe’s Home Improvement Warehouse donated $1 million to help rebuild the town. That amount included $350,000 in building materials for 12 houses that were constructed as part of a partnership between Lowe’s, Tarboro/Edgecombe Habitat for Humanity and the Federal Emergency Management Agency.

Four days after Floyd, T. Jerry Williams, a lobbyist and consultant for the N.C. Restaurant Association, received a phone call from Sen. Marc Basnight. “We need some help,” he said. A SOS went out to the association’s 7,000 or so members, and help in the form of food, refrigerated trucks, money, even toys poured in. K&W Cafeteria led the pack when it came to fundraising— their customers contributed $130,000. 

Last December, an unexpectedly intense ice storm cut a wide swath through the central part of the state, coating roadways and power lines, snapping tree limbs and leaving more than a million people in the cold and dark. In some cases, it took weeks for electricity to be restored.

The state’s largest utility companies, Duke Power and Progress Energy, would be called to task by some customers and the N.C. Utilities Commission for their response to the damage created by the storm. Ultimately, they revamped their emergency policies and procedures. What didn’t get equal time was the news that in the middle of the ice event, the Progress Energy Foundation donated $50,000 to both the American Red Cross and the Food Bank of North Carolina in order to further those organizations’ efforts to assist people impacted by the storm. In addition, Progress employees held a food drive to benefit the food bank. 

And last but not least was the damage from Isabel — nearly 50 counties were declared disaster areas— the response to which drove home the point that commitment to philanthropy as a core business imperative is not dependent on size and budget.

A crew from Mills Construction Co. Inc. of Raleigh drove to Edenton one day to cook for 300 emergency workers. Claude E. Pope Jr., founder and president of Getitquick.com, a Raleigh-based office supply company with about 30 employees, shipped 10 cases of copy paper to Edenton’s mayor, whose office, like others around it, had flooded.

The historic town and surrounding county also were on the receiving end of a portion of more than one million pounds of ice and 18,000 gallons of water as well as canned foods, crackers, breakfast items and diapers sent by Food Lion to hard-hit areas of North Carolina and Virginia. The supplies were handed out on a first-come first-served basis.

Other philanthropic acts, while visible, nevertheless are not always easy to spot. Time Warner Cable supported the governor’s office by donating significant commercial time to cablecast Gov. Easley’s three appeals for assistance more than 23,700 times, reaching viewers in 48 counties.

  

Left:Food Lion sent truck loads of water and food to hurricane victims

Doing Good Comes Naturally

On the Outer Banks, Tim Midgett and his two brothers, whose family business, Midgett Bros. Inc., includes realty, construction and restaurants, faced significant losses as a result of Isabel. Yet they have remained focused on helping to put demolished Hatteras Village back together. Toward that end, one of their 40-room motels was given over for use as an emergency command center. They created space for county offices; donated a large storage unit as space for relief supplies such as generators, tarps and tools; kept employees on the payroll while they performed “mercy missions” for fellow islanders; and spent days transporting various volunteers and officials around the village. “We did what anyone in our position would do, that’s all,” says Midgett with a shrug.

In fact, the list of contributors to the Hatteras Village relief and restoration effort numbers 103 as of this writing. A majority of those are businesses, and Sprint’s name was prominent on the list. The communication company’s equipment was severely damaged in the Outer Banks, Edenton and Windsor areas. Estimates for the cost of making repairs, rebuilding facilities and waiving reconnection fees for residential and business customers are running at $10 million-plus.

To help displaced families, Sprint’s crews distributed several thousand prepaid calling cards. To Hatteras residents, who had phone service but were without power and thus unable to use cordless phones, the company provided about 300 new corded telephones. And emergency workers were given PCS phones with free service. Then, working through the Salvation Army, Sprint had food and supply vouchers distributed to nearly 400 families in Edenton and Windsor. For the people of Hatteras, it ferried over a caterer who prepared a barbecue dinner. 

It was a deft show of understanding and support, and it was appreciated. Tracy Shisler, a teacher, opened a letter to Sprint by introducing herself as a resident of Hatteras Village who experienced Hurricane Isabel. “The afternoon of the hurricane, as I looked at all the devastation, I thought there would be no way that life could be normal again.”

She continued, “Imagine my surprise Thursday, Oct. 9, when I got off the Miss Hatteras, our village ‘school boat,’ rode my bike through the village and saw a meal being served by Sprint to the community. Obviously the meal was good but more importantly it was the spirit of Sprint that was so impressive. They had been working long and tiring hours and there they were serving us dinner.”

Walking that extra philanthropic mile has no doubt given Sprint a customer for life. And as for all those corporate Santas out there, those businesspeople who show up at the right time with the right solution for an overwhelming situation, Patricia Madry is a grateful professional and a grateful consumer.

Says the assistant director of Chowan County Emergency Services, “It’s horrible to go through something like a hurricane, but then the response we got was unbelievable. It renews your faith. You see people — and businesses — in a different light.”


Helping People Helps the Bottom Line

This past summer, the American Association of Fundraising Counsel Trust for Philanthropy released its annual Giving USA report. Among its findings: Total charitable giving reached an estimated $240.92 billion for 2002, an historic level lifted by growth in giving from corporations and estates.

The report added that giving by corporations in 2002 grew by 10.5 percent to $12.19 billion, from $11.03 billion for 2001. Adjusted for inflation, that’s up 8.8 percent.

In early 2003, more than 500 companies, including small and medium size businesses, were surveyed by the Center for Corporate Citizenship at Boston College and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. The results of this first of its kind survey, funded by The Hitachi Foundation, indicate that traditional strategic philanthropy, employee volunteerism and community involvement programs are all considered defining aspects of corporate citizenship.

The survey also found that:

82 percent believe that good corporate citizenship helps the bottom line.

82 percent believe that corporate citizenship needs to be a priority.

74 percent believe the public has a right to expect good citizenship.

85 percent believe that many companies do a great deal more for their communities than is talked about.

80 percent also believe corporate citizenship should be completely voluntary.  — Lisa H. Towle




Softening the Blow for Pillowtex Workers

Kannapolis, the city that Cannon Mills built, has put a lot of effort into shaping a vision for its future. So, when officials from Kannapolis-based Pillowtex announced they were closing their 16 facilities nationwide and in Canada, the city declared it had “entered a new era.”

The largest layoff in North Carolina history wasn’t quite that simple for many people, though. Close to 7,000 employees were displaced by the July announcement. Just over 1,500 lived within the Kannapolis city limits, but more than 4,000 were in Cabarrus and Rowan counties. At the time of the bankruptcy, it was reported that the maker of household textiles owed its workers almost $7 million in unpaid benefits.

Philanthropy seemed the best way to stop a disaster in the making, by bridging the gap between government assistance and meager personal resources. Gov. Mike Easley’s office generated corporate donations to assist Pillowtex and other displaced workers across the state. Contributing, with the amount in parentheses, were:

Bank of America ($100,000)

Blue Cross Blue Shield ($100,000)

Wachovia ($100,000)

Duke Energy ($50,000)

Public Service of North Carolina ($20,000)

Piedmont Natural Gas ($10,000)

Sprint ($10,000)

These monies went into the Job Loss Crisis Fund, which is managed, as are three related funds, by the Foundation for The Carolinas in Charlotte.

In separate giving, Philip Morris donated $25,000 as did Wal-Mart, which also sent truckloads of food and paper supplies. Various charitable organizations gave food as well. And then in August came an unprecedented move by the medical staff at the regional NorthEast Medical Center in Concord. After determining that many former Pillowtex employees had been left without the medical insurance necessary to sustain their prescription medication regimen, they contributed $20,000 toward the purchase of medications for those employees and their family members.

Two months later, the NorthEast Medical Center Foundation elected to add $25,000 to the medical staff’s donation. Administered on a case-by-case basis by the Cooperative Christian Ministries, the medications are dispensed by professional pharmacists at a given pharmacy.

Other companies have stepped in as well. Food Lion and its vendor partners — Campbell’s, Kraft Foods, Merita, Pepperidge Farms and Carriage House — have donated more than 28 tons of food to assist the families of displaced workers in the two counties. The Rowan County United Way, Rowan Helping Ministries, the Salvation Army, Rowan Department of Social Services, and Cooperative Christian Ministries of Cabarrus County have worked with Food Lion to distribute the items. — Lisa H. Towle


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