United Way to Focus on L.A. Demographic ‘Mosaic’

The steady influx of foreign investments into Los Angeles County and a population boom among the region’s minorities is prompting the United Way of Los Angeles to refocus the aims and tactics of its fund-raising programs, a report by the charity showed Monday.

Findings in the report--United Way’s Environmental Scan 1990--show that 75% of all births in the county are to minorities, an increase that will make whites a minority in metropolitan Los Angeles in about three years. The report also projected a county population increase from the 8.7 million recorded in the 1980 census to 9.9 million by the year 2000.

“The United Way has to be more receptive to the changes in our community,” said Maurice J. DeWald, chairman of United Way’s Strategic Planning Committee.

Members of the task force that wrote the report said the study will be instrumental in shaping policies of the United Way, which raises more than $80 million annually for more than 350 health and social welfare agencies.

Among other things, they said, the findings will force United Way of Los Angeles to improve fund-raising efforts among foreign-owned concerns and small businesses. The report says 95% of all companies in the county have fewer than 50 employees.

Mark Pisano, chairman of the task force, said many foreign-owned companies do not donate to United Way because “giving isn’t necessarily part of those companies.”

“The study is an effort to understand the economic and social forces so that, as the United Way plans and does work, they’ll have a basis on which to plan,” said Pisano.

He said the growing ethnic diversity in the region offers many advantages but could create several problems for both government and the local United Way, the second-largest United Way branch in the nation.

“We’re a mosaic of people, and that’s a strength,” said Pisano, whose task force--made up of business, government and community leaders--initiated the study 18 months ago to formulate more effective relief and fund-raising policies.

“But that strength could become a weakness. The community could grow apart. Diversity could become divisiveness.”

Glaring signs of division already are evident, the report found.

Figures in the study show that a declining need for low-skilled laborers now threatens to permanently trap many of the county’s 1.3 million poor in a cycle of poverty and crime. “It means you have a maldistribution of income,” said Pisano.

He also noted that “it’s more difficult for workers to climb up from low-paying, low-skilled jobs. They cannot scale the corporate ladder.”

Such findings parallel a recent report by UCLA which also shows a widening gap between the rich and the poor.

In addition, the United Way study found that:

* The city’s population is aging slower than in many other cities because of the predominantly young ethnic residents.

* Two out of five households countywide have incomes of less than $20,000 a year.

* Nearly 40% of all single-parent households in the county live below the poverty level.

* Dropout levels at county high schools are lowest among Asian and white students.