The Pursuit of Real Cash or Fool’s Gold? : Fund-raising: The demands on corporate giving should spark a reassessment of how resources are spread around.

Daily, invitations are received for investment in projects and causes for community needs--capital requests ranging from $5 million to more than $100 million. The cumulative total of these projects may well exceed half a billion dollars.

There has also been an expansion of new initiatives and new organizations to address community, economic and social issues needing corporate and foundation investments.

In addition, Southern California has many existing organizations working on major community objectives. Most of the organizations have experienced a reduction in both membership and financial support.

Similarly, many of the existing business-related organizations are finding that they, too, must reduce both staff and budget.

The traditional method of raising funds, outside of membership recruitment, has been fund-raising events. A review of the most recent edition of the Master Planner publication lists 106 fund-raising events between Sept. 9 and Oct. 9, with tickets costing from $50 to more than $1,000. A good corporate citizen could easily spend $50,000 in a month to support these events.

The public sector has also faced major reductions in funds for necessary community needs. Political leaders have suggested that these needs can now be met by corporate support in a public/private sector model. Voluntary contributions are generally viewed to be in addition to any new tax resources levied on the private sector to meet shortfalls.

Unfortunately, the resources available to meet the soaring expectations of capital campaigns, ongoing organizational support, new community initiatives and support for previously tax-supported services come at a time of shrinking corporate and foundation resources. For example, one major company has reduced by 25% its funding of all government-relations activity and will freeze at that level for the next three years. Another major foundation reduced its funding from $19 million annually in 1992 to $12 million for 1994.

Where does this lead us? Is there a way for the corporate community to balance the competing interests and come out with a rational approach to a severe problem of expectations that cannot be met with current reality?

Here are some suggestions for an approach to deal with the short-term dilemma in a down economy:

* There should be a comprehensive review of community needs, the range of requests that are being made and the extent of resources available.

* There should be a mechanism within the corporate community for establishing priorities among competing requests.

* There is a need for a much broader look at overlapping and competing interests of various programs and organizations. Existing organizations should be subjected to an in-depth review of their goals, objectives and accomplishments. Those that have marginal performance should show improvement or be eliminated from corporate support.

* New programs should be subjected to the same rigorous analysis and should be launched only if they offer substantial new benefits to the community and don’t compete with existing activity.

* There is a need to expand the base of giving to community causes. There are many growing corporations, as well as individuals of personal wealth, who have not financially participated in funding community programs. We must expand our base to include those individuals and corporations.

Without sensible and tough steps, the pursuit of “other peoples’ money” will unfortunately lead us to a pocket of fool’s gold.