United Way Rolling With the Punches

Corporate mergers and downsizing in Ventura County are changing how the United Way attracts and receives donations.

In much the same way declining charitable donations were a barometer of the region’s recession, so too does United Way continue to reflect an evolving business climate.

“We’re looking at places we haven’t looked at before,” said Priscilla Partridge de Garcia, United Way’s volunteer campaign chairwoman. “We are now looking at smaller companies and individual gifts to replace companies that are leaving or downsizing.”

United Way is running $400,000 short of last year’s donations and its officials are scrambling for new ways to make up the difference.

The campaign is important, they say, because United Way supports 62 agencies ranging from Boys & Girls Clubs to seniors’ groups throughout the county. In that way, the United Way’s efforts touch one out of every three residents.

To be sure, there have been some corporate bright spots for the annual fund-raising drive.

The continued growth of Thousand Oaks’ biotechnology company Amgen has helped boost donations from the health-care industry by 41% contrasted with last year.

But for the most part, United Way has been losing ground.

Nowhere has the economic restructuring been more pronounced than in such established industries as banking, oil and aerospace, United Way officials said.

“Traditionally, we were looking at 10 big companies and they were 90% of our funds,” spokeswoman Debbie Giles said. “Now we’re needing to go to 100 companies.”

In some industries, the jobs and sometimes the companies have vanished from the local economy.

For instance, jobs in aerospace manufacturing declined by more than 1,000 between 1992 and 1994, according to a UC Santa Barbara economic forecast project. The trend has continued in the past year with the sale of Teledyne Electronics, which resulted in the loss of all 250 jobs. Such moves have meant that for every $1 United Way has gained in the aerospace sector, $12 has been lost, said David Harris, director of resource development for United Way of Ventura County.

“As an industry seven to 10 years ago, aerospace might have represented 20% to 25% of what this United Way raised,” he said. “This year it’s in the neighborhood of 5%.”

The list goes on. When Nabisco closed its Oxnard plant and fired more than 150 employees, United Way lost the $8,000 a year its employees contributed. When G.E. Plastics was sold and its 78 employees vanished, so too did the company’s annual $16,000 contribution.

Mergers have exacerbated the downward spiral.

Gone is the Bank of A. Levy’s $100,000 contribution. First Interstate, which purchased the 112-year-old Ventura-based bank in January 1995, contributes about $50,000 a year to United Way. Now First Interstate is being swallowed by Wells Fargo. That bank’s yearly contribution to the United Way is $15,000.

Still, that doesn’t mean the hundreds of employees who formerly worked for the companies have all fled the county. They can still be tapped as individuals. But United Way officials say it is more difficult to persuade these people to contribute.

Don Yunker, a United Way board member, voluntarily retired from Chevron in 1992 as part of that company’s downsizing of its oil operations. He believes people outside a structured corporate environment are less likely to open their pocketbooks.

“And what is the reason for that?” he said. “It could be just a lack of connection with the organization.”

Donations are also less forthcoming when workers are anxious about their jobs and economic well-being.

For instance, United Way has lost large portions of the usual contributions from civil servants, a decline attributed to federal government shutdowns and uncertainty over the fate of local Navy bases.

As reliable sources have dwindled, United Way has sought to expand its list of corporate sponsors. By necessity, that list includes smaller, entrepreneurial companies with fewer workers.

These leaner companies are less likely to offer corporate-sponsored volunteers to help with the annual campaign, said Mary Kaiser, United Way board chairwoman who found herself out of her job as a Bank of A. Levy executive vice president last year.

Furthermore, smaller companies are less likely to have formal systems that allow employees to automatically deduct contributions from their paychecks, Kaiser said.

What this all means is that it takes more effort to pull in each charitable dollar.

United Way itself has slimmed down, dropping from 22 paid staff members to 14. It now must rely more on volunteers to carry out the annual donation campaign.

“We have to be very, very efficient, efficient with our volunteer time and efficient with our dollars and their dollars,” Kaiser said. “We have to do things faster and better with fewer and fewer resources.”