The holidays are here and so are the appeals to our altruistic side.No doubt the small checks are appreciated at Metropolitan Ministries in Tampa or the Florida West Coast Symphony in Sarasota. But larger donations are more crucial to keeping food in the soup kitchens and violinists in the orchestra pit.
That means good causes like Metropolitan Ministries and the Florida West Coast Symphony look to, among other places, people in the region whose pluck and luck have pushed them into the higher tax brackets.
Many American millionaires take some of the sting out of dealing with the taxman by organizing their own foundations. These grantmaking creatures of the tax code have the added benefit of enabling the financially successful to give something back to their communities.
Florida has almost 4,000 private foundations, according to a study of the state's tax-exempt economy released last spring by the Philanthropy & Nonprofit Leadership Center at Rollins College. But only about 1,700 of these independent foundations are active, the study's authors estimated.
As of 1999, the study found that private foundations in Florida counted almost $9- billion in assets and annual income of nearly $2-billion. Of course, the stock market tumble has diminished foundation investment portfolios in the three years since that high-water mark of the high-tech boom.
Foundations are supposed to give away 5 percent of their net investment assets annually in order to retain their tax exemption. Weekly Planet wondered where all that local foundation money goes.
The Planet focused on what are known as private, non-operating foundations, one of the most common types. These independent foundations, most financed initially by wealthy families, dispense grants to numerous charities rather than exclusively supporting a single entity that they might operate, such as an art museum.
Sorting through Internal Revenue Service data, the Planet pulled out the 10 largest of these foundations, by total assets, that file returns from addresses in Hillsborough, Manatee, Pinellas or Sarasota counties. At the top of the list was Sarasota's venerable William G. and Marie Selby Foundation, with more than $78-million in reported assets.
Next, the newspaper examined every donation of $5,000 or higher that these 10 foundations reported on their latest tax return, more than $12-million in gifts. Finally, the Planet looked at how much of this money went to organizations operating within Florida.
"I would hope the family foundations that we have in our area would give to charities in the area," said Doug Weber, president and chief executive of United Way of Tampa Bay, when told of the Planet survey.
But only the Selby foundation and Tampa's Conn Memorial Foundation donated every dime of their $5,000-and-up grants to Florida recipients. Five of the top 10 foundations kept less than 45 percent of their big-grant money in the Sunshine State.
Local executives in the nonprofit sector weren't exactly shocked by the findings.
"The institutional dollars are not what they should be," said Conn Memorial Foundation President Sheffield Crowder, speaking of local philanthropy.
That may be the understatement of the holiday season.
Florida's Cheap RichThe most damning evidence to back up Crowder's assertion comes from the New Tithing Group.
A philanthropic research service in San Francisco, New Tithing was founded by Claude Rosenberg Jr., a highly successful investment manager who has turned his attention to encouraging Americans to contribute more to charity.
In 1999, New Tithing sliced and diced IRS and other data to figure out, essentially, which states have the most generous rich folks.
Using a complicated blend of factors, New Tithing claimed to estimate conservatively what would be an affordable annual charitable donation level for high-income taxpayers in all 50 states and the District of Columbia. New Tithing then compared that to what taxpayers with adjusted gross incomes of $200,000 and above actually took for charitable deductions on their federal income tax returns.
Surprisingly, Alabama and Mississippi scored among the 10 most charitable. But the four states with the most high-income filers — California, Florida, New York and Texas — finished down on the bottom half of what might be called the generosity scale.
In fact, Florida finished 49th, with its highest-earners donating just 14 percent of what New Tithing thought they could comfortably afford to give away to charity. Only Nevada and Delaware were worse.
The New Tithing Group didn't isolate metropolitan areas for the same treatment. However, anecdotal and other statistical evidence suggests the Tampa Bay area may be home to some of the cheapest rich people around when it comes to charitable giving.
Nonprofit executives say local United Way campaigns historically have set lower fundraising goals than similar-size cities across the country. Yet the United Way of Tampa Bay is struggling this year to meet even its comparatively modest target of $25-million.
"I think there are some issues there," said Dan Kane, executive director of Tampa Crossroads Inc., a nonprofit agency that assists criminal offenders who are trying to become law-abiding and productive citizens.
The Tampa Bay area starts behind other cities in the South.
The Foundation Center, which is dedicated to improving institutional philanthropy in America, surveys the 50 biggest nonprofit recipients of major foundation grants within the most populous U.S. metropolitan areas. In 2000, Tampa area nonprofits received 181 grants worth a collective $16-million from America's 1,015 biggest foundations. By contrast, Miami area nonprofits were awarded 200 foundation grants worth $25-million.
"We have been below other areas," said Crowder.
The Florida cities were swamped by two Sun Belt rivals. Dallas nonprofits collected $84-million from 419 grants. Atlanta nonprofits accepted $281-million from 639 grants.
Tampa's lack of Fortune 500-size companies hurts in the charity department. Corporate foundation gifts were just 6 percent of all 2000 foundation giving in Tampa. The corporate component of foundation giving was 23 percent in Dallas and 15 percent in Atlanta, according to the Foundation Center.
In Florida, the relative scarcity of foundations, and the dollars distributed by homegrown foundations, makes the picture even grimmer.
Florida foundation giving in 2000 amounted to $41 for every resident of the state, which ranked 35th in the nation. Foundation giving in Georgia was $76 per-capita and North Carolina $72, both closer to the national average of $86.
"We need to know what we can do to encourage more foundation giving," said the United Way of Tampa Bay's Doug Weber.
And the Winners Are…So where do the 10 biggest independent foundations in the region distribute their grants?
The Selby foundation has parlayed the $3-million that oil tycoon William Selby left in the 1950s into an annual windfall for charities in Sarasota, as well as in the adjoining counties of Manatee, Charlotte and DeSoto. For the year ending May 31, 2001, the foundation gave away more than $3-million.
The two largest Selby recipients were two other foundations. The Community Foundation of Sarasota County got $305,000 and the Ringling Museum of Art's foundation got $300,000.
Another 13 nonprofits, all local, collected at least $100,000 from the Selby foundation. They ranged from the Community AIDS Network to Mote Marine Laboratory.
The Conn Memorial Foundation was also established in the 1950s. Tampa philanthropists Fred K. and Edith F. Conn wanted to help society's less fortunate. The Conn foundation doesn't have even half the assets of the Selby foundation. So gifts tend to be smaller.
With no family members on the foundation's board any longer, Conn Memorial has evolved into a quasi-community foundation.
The Conn foundation, too, concentrates on its own neighborhood by just giving to groups in Hillsborough or Pinellas counties. Crowder, Conn Memorial's president, says the foundation gets 200 annual inquiries and funds 50 of them, mostly with grants of less than $50,000.
Among the luckiest recipients for the year that ended July 31, 2001, were Tampa United Methodist Centers at $55,000, and the Boys and Girls Clubs of Tampa, Metropolitan Ministries and the Tampa Metropolitan YMCA at $50,000 each.
Home Shopping Network co-founder Roy M. Speer, who usually turns up on Forbes magazine's annual list of the 400 richest Americans, started a foundation in 1986.
The Speer foundation gave more than 80 percent of its contributions to Florida groups for the year ended June 30, 2001. But much of that went for religious work. The other 20 percent went for projects like the Ronald Reagan presidential library in California, which received $26,000.
The Speer foundation did give $50,000 to each of two Florida hospital groups, Shands in Gainesville and Morton Plant Mease in Clearwater.
The Alfred & Ann Goldstein Foundation and the Culverhouse Family Foundation gave to Florida charities not quite $4 of every $5 that they donated.
The Goldsteins, who have the smallest of the foundations examined by the Planet, wrote their biggest check, for $325,000, to the Mote lab.
The Culverhouse foundation was recently renamed the Joy McCann Foundation. Joy McCann is the maiden name of former Tampa Bay Buccaneers owner Hugh F. Culverhouse's widow.
The foundation was started in 1996, around the time of the controversial settlement of the $380-million estate of Culverhouse, a tax attorney who had died two years earlier.
Joy McCann Culverhouse denounced her late husband after the legal proceedings revealed his philandering during their marriage. "I'd like to pull him out of the grave and shoot him with every bullet I could get," she told The Tampa Tribune in 1997.
McCann Culverhouse remarried this year at age 81. She wed Robert Daughtery, a dean at the University of South Florida, where the now-Joy Daughtery has given millions of dollars.
After those top 10 Planet foundations, the local commitment starts to wane.
The only others on the Planet list that gave at least 35 percent of their latest reported round of donations to Florida charities were the David A. Straz Jr. and the Schoenbaum Family foundations.
Straz chairs Southern Exchange Bank in Tampa. But he has ties to Milwaukee, where he has served as a Marquette University trustee. So Marquette and other Wisconsin causes benefit along with Florida ones.
Still, the Straz foundation, which was the region's second-largest independent family foundation in terms of assets at $47-million at the time of the Planet's review, gave its most generous 2001 grant, $255,000, to Lowry Park Zoo in Tampa. Straz serves on the zoo's endowment board.
The Schoenbaum Family Foundation, with $24-million in assets, was started with money from the late founder of the Shoney's restaurant chain, Alex Schoenbaum.
The Sarasota foundation gave its biggest 2001 gift to the county government in Charleston, W.V., where the Schoenbaum family has maintained a summer home for years. But the next-biggest grant was for $100,000 to the Pinellas County Jewish Day School in Clearwater.
The lone local foundation of the bunch to give nothing in Florida was the Sarasota-based Dorothy B. Hersh Foundation, which restricts its giving to northern New Jersey.
Kicking AssetsOne local foundation that didn't make the Planet's top 10 was the Eckerd Family Foundation in Clearwater. The reason? This particular Eckerd philanthropic vehicle seems like it cannot give away money fast enough.
According to its latest tax return, the Eckerd Family Foundation had just $163,796 in assets left on July 31, 2001. The 15-year-old foundation, chaired by drugstore magnate Jack Eckerd, handed out $2.7-million in the previous 12 months. The biggest Eckerd award was a $1.2-million endowment challenge to Academy Prep in St. Petersburg.
Apparently, the Eckerd Family Foundation is big on challenge grants, which are contingent on recipient organizations coming up with a like sum of money from another funding source.
Tampa Crossroads, the program for offenders, won a $22,500 Eckerd grant earlier this year that it must match with another donation. The grant and the match would fund a new program designed to prevent the offspring of the law-breakers from following their parents into a life of crime.
A week before Thanksgiving, another local foundation that Tampa Crossroads was counting on for the match withdrew its pledge. Dan Kane, the executive director of Tampa Crossroads, wouldn't name the foundation. But Kane says executives of the unnamed foundation told him that their investment losses had forced them to cancel some pledges. "Their principal has taken a hit and they are cutting back on what they can do," he said.
For Kane, it's back to his Rolodex. "We are under some pressure," said Kane, noting the expiration date for the Eckerd challenge grant is approaching.
"Many of us have gotten killed in the stock market," said the Conn Memorial Foundation's Crowder. "That adds a whole other pressure."
Tampa automobile dealer Frank Morsani, whose foundation gave away $709,500 to mostly local charities during one recent 12-month period, says Florida is still a young state and struggles at getting its nouveau riche to realize the civic responsibilities that come with wealth.
"That may be why we've lagged somewhat," Morsani said.
Newer philanthropists in Tampa are taking some of the burden off the shoulders of perennial charity-supporting stalwarts like New York Yankees owner George Steinbrenner. The names of tech-support call-center entrepreneur John Sykes and recreational vehicle dealer Don Wallace are frequently mentioned as examples. "John Sykes has been an inspiration to everybody and so has Don," said Morsani.
As more transplants either make a fortune here or bring millions with them from somewhere else, Morsani believes Florida charities will reap positive results. Florida did lead the Southeast in incorporating new foundations during the 1990s.
If Morsani is right, the Dan Kanes of Florida's nonprofit world will have a lot more options for finding funds for their valuable community work.
Contact News Editor Francis X. Gilpin at 813-248-8888, ext. 130, or frangilpin@weeklyplanet.com.
This article appears in Dec 11-17, 2002.