A 'corporate philanthropy' red herring
Lurie touts private sector largesse in restoring and expanding programs—but the whole truth is rather embarrassing.
Welcome to The Agenda, Tim Redmond's news and politics newsletter, delivered to your inbox every Monday for free and Thursday (with a special weekly news analysis from Tim) for our paid subscribers.
Good morning, and welcome to our special Thursday newsletter for paid Agenda subscribers. I appreciate all of you who have subscribed, since that's what keeps us going. Please tell your friends to subscribe here and support our work. Of note this week:
Mayor Daniel Lurie just announced a $3.4 million grant to increase the immigration defense unit at the Public Defender's Office. From his press release:
"Mayor Daniel Lurie today announced another step taken to protect San Francisco’s immigrant communities, securing $3.4 million in philanthropic funding to support immigrant legal defense work. The new funding will allow the San Francisco Public Defender’s Office to hire additional attorneys and staff to support immigration legal defense efforts.
"With the additional support from philanthropic partners, San Francisco is now funding immigrant legal defense at higher levels than the previous budget."
Lurie didn't mention it, but that money comes from Michael Moritz, the venture capital billionaire who has been supporting generally conservative candidates in San Francisco and who founded and funds the SF Standard.
The immigration unit does critical work, and this is a lifeline, after Lurie declined to increase city spending on the office in this year's budget. I'm glad Mortiz is putting his money toward city programs that benefit some of the most vulnerable populations.
But it's worth noting that the model of the mayor relying on rich friends to fund the city is never going to work in the long term, and in some cases will make things worse.
Philanthropy typically comes with strings attached: If it's Princeton and the strings are you let my (maybe unqualified) kids in and you name a building after me, that's kind of unpleasant.
If the strings are you support my political efforts in the future, that's dangerous territory for a mayor.
I read that news release the same day I got my weekly copy of the San Francisco Business Times, which has a special edition on corporate philanthropy. The main headline: "Amid a crisis of confidence, companies are still giving back."
Really? On page 46, the paper has a fascinating list of the Bay Area's largest corporate donors—and it shows the percentage of their annual profit that goes to charity.
Number one: Google. Total contributions in the Bay Area: $70 million. Today companywide: $765 million.
Percentage of profits given to charity? 0.64 percent. Less than one percent of the giant company's net income goes to philanthropy. For comparison, Sundar Pichai, the CEO, made $226 million in 2022.
You can run down the whole list: Hardly any company donates more than 1 percent to charity. Some are embarrassing: Oracle had $11.2 billion in profits, and $27 million in giving; that's 0.2 percent.
And yet, we celebrate these folks.
If they paid even a fraction of the taxes they should, we wouldn't need to beg for these crumbs.
We rely on word of mouth to grow. Please share this newsletter with people you know will appreciate it.