Funding the Usual Suspects

WASHINGTON, D.C.—Now that Nelson Mandela is free, is it permissible for multinationals who pulled out under pressure to resume doing business in South Africa? This is the kind of issue that worries corporate philanthropic officers, for they fear to find themselves given a failing grade in the Council on Economic Priorities’ left-leaning annual “Rating of America’s Corporate Conscience.” Indeed, the men who dole out big business’s big bucks can be counted on to ladle out the corporate boodle even to those groups openly advocating political and economic policies that threaten the firm’s long-term survival.

That was the finding of the Capital Research Center (CRC). For the past three years CRC has charted the giving policies of the top 250 American corporations with respect to public affairs in an annual study called “Patterns of Corporate Philanthropy: Ideas, Advocacy, and the Corporation.” These studies show that the overwhelming majority of such contributions go to liberal organizations.

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Susan Mandel

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WASHINGTON, D.C.—Now that Nelson Mandela is free, is it permissible for multinationals who pulled out under pressure to resume doing business in South Africa? This is the kind of issue that worries corporate philanthropic officers, for they fear to find themselves given a failing grade in the Council on Economic Priorities’ left-leaning annual “Rating of America’s Corporate Conscience.” Indeed, the men who dole out big business’s big bucks can be counted on to ladle out the corporate boodle even to those groups openly advocating political and economic policies that threaten the firm’s long-term survival.

That was the finding of the Capital Research Center (CRC). For the past three years CRC has charted the giving policies of the top 250 American corporations with respect to public affairs in an annual study called “Patterns of Corporate Philanthropy: Ideas, Advocacy, and the Corporation.” These studies show that the overwhelming majority of such contributions go to liberal organizations.