Maryland, the nation's fifth-wealthiest state, is cheap when it comes to philanthropy -- particularly among its richest residents.
Considered a national leader in charity at the turn of this century, Maryland is entering the next near the bottom of the current measures of generosity.
Maryland ranks 43rd among the states this year on the Generosity Index -- a national survey that ranks states by income and charitable contributions. That's up from 44th the year before.
Within that parsimonious picture:
Maryland's richest taxpayers contribute proportionally less when compared with the rest of the country. In 1997, those who had more than $200,000 a year in adjusted gross income -- which averaged $483,660 -- claimed an average charitable deduction of $16,455. Nationally, those in the $200,000-plus income range -- with an average of $550,897 -- claimed charitable deductions averaging $20,398.
The United Way of Central Maryland is the 16th-largest in the country -- but its average donation of $195.74 trailed United Way chapters in large metropolitan areas last year. Its 1998 campaign raised $39.4 million, falling short of the $55 million to $60 million board members say a region like this one should be able to generate.
The individual giving gap shows up in donations to the state's nonprofit organizations, which receive only about 4 percent of their money from private giving -- compared with 10 percent nationally.
Marylanders who make less than $100,000 a year are actually giving slightly more than their counterparts around the country, IRS statistics show. But because those with more money are giving relatively less than the nation as a whole, the state's overall average trails the country's by more than $200.
If Maryland taxpayers making more than $100,000 a year gave at the national average for their income brackets, the extra contributions would generate about $200 mil- lion more for charity in one year -- enough, for example, to cover the Maryland Food Bank's annual $700,000 fund-raising budget for the better part of three centuries.
Individual charity is hard to measure. Internal Revenue Service statistics on charitable deductions don't capture some giving, such as informal boosts given to family, friends and neighbors. United Way giving is considered a good indicator because it covers so many workplaces.
But Maryland charity officials have begun a concerted effort to turn around the state's lackluster performance, winning a national grant to promote philanthropy through an awareness campaign called "The Giving Project." Later this summer, Maryland Gives! -- a task force trying to improve giving -- will release the results of a survey of donors and nondonors around the state.
"There have been individuals who've been extremely generous," says Timothy D. Armbruster, president of the Baltimore Community Foundation. "But for some reason, the kind of culture that says it's a requirement of citizenship to volunteer and give -- somehow that didn't take hold here."
Explanations for the giving gap are elusive.
The state, particularly Baltimore, has lost corporate headquarters -- taking away both fertile ground for giving campaigns and the leadership of strong CEOs.
Many Maryland residents work outside the state, dispersing their allegiances. Moreover, among the newly rich, big gains in the stock market or new companies have yet to produce a feeling that their money is "real" enough to give away.
No culture of giving
Most of all, philanthropy experts point to an ineffable but powerful thing called a "giving culture" -- something they say is missing in Maryland.
Robert S. Killebrew Jr., managing director of Deutsche Banc Alex. Brown, who has a family foundation with the Baltimore Community Foundation, which administers a variety of charitable funds, sees a marked difference in attitudes toward charity between Baltimore and his hometown in Tennessee.
"In August, everybody in Chattanooga quits and works for the United Fund," says Killebrew, who gives away 10 percent of his income. "It's not a question -- just everybody does that. The point is that giving is a habit, and it's an acquired habit."
Creating a public culture of giving takes vociferous advocacy from the top, say givers and researchers.
At one of this area's few national corporate headquarters -- Black & Decker Corp. in Towson -- Chief Executive Nolan D. Archibald gives mostly to the Mormon Church and to educational projects, says Barbara B. Lucas, a Black & Decker senior vice president in charge of philanthropy. Mormons typically give 10 percent of their incomes to the church.
But Archibald's charity is a quiet and private affair.
The chief executive, who made $4.35 million last year in salary, bonus and incentives and cashed in another $31.85 million in stock options, lives in Potomac and is notable for being less than visible in philanthropic affairs in the Baltimore community.
Through Lucas, Archibald, who has headed the company for 14 years, declined to be interviewed about philanthropy.
Black & Decker as a company does not like to publicize its giving either, Lucas says. The corporation, which saw its market value rise $1.5 billion last year, has participated in several Habitat for Humanity projects and has endowed scholarships for students pursuing engineering degrees, she says.
Researchers say a public culture of giving can be created -- even in a place where charity hasn't been a prominent fixture in recent years.
In 1976, the Minneapolis Chamber of Commerce and local corporate executives promoted a Five Percent Club, encouraging businesses to give away 5 percent of their profits. Today, the city is known as a leader in philanthropy, with a $356 average annual United Way gift last year -- putting Minneapolis at the top of its United Way category.
"Minneapolis wasn't always that way," says Eugene R. Tempel, executive director of Indiana University's Center on Philanthropy. "They decided they would change, and they began articulating a vision."
Wealth no guarantee
Nationally, wealthier states tend to be less generous. Typically at the bottom of the Generosity Index are such states as Connecticut, Massachusetts and New Jersey -- prosperous places all.
Across the country, United Way chapters "always get more from bank tellers [overall] than we do from bank presidents," said Larry E. Walton, president of the United Way of Central Maryland.
Overall, Americans are giving more dollars than they have before -- almost 11 percent more from 1997 to 1998. But giving has not grown commensurately with the blooming wealth many donors have enjoyed in recent years.
"Oddly enough, the folks who are less well educated, who are less affluent, are giving higher portions of their income," says George McCully, who compiles the Generosity Index for the Catalogue for Philanthropy in Massachusetts. The latest index uses 1997 IRS statistics on charitable deductions, the most recent available.
Take a look at Alabama -- rated fifth on the Generosity Index.
Wage growth in Alabama trails the rest of the country; so does school spending. Yet citizens of the Heart of Dixie are some of the nation's most generous, giving an average of $3,643 based on itemized tax returns, compared with the national average of $2,967 and Maryland's average of $2,721.
Former philanthropic giant
Maryland didn't always rate so poorly. The state was once considered the seat of modern American philanthropy.
By the end of the 19th century, the wealthy triumvirate of George Peabody, Johns Hopkins and Enoch Pratt had sparked a charitable renaissance, beginning with an 1844 fund-raising drive to erect what is now the Maryland Historical Society. They used their estates to establish universities, hospitals and libraries.
That tradition continued through the first half of this century, when families with names such as Blaustein, Meyerhoff and Straus invested their fortunes in foundations that expanded Johns Hopkins University and gave the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra a home. William and Henry Walters left their Mount Vernon house full of European and Asian art, creating the Walters Art Gallery.
The Abell Foundation, fueled by the sale of The Baltimore Sun Co. in the late 1980s, grew into a powerful grant maker that today focuses on local problems from educational underachievement to drug abuse. The Harry and Jeanette Weinberg Foundation became one of the largest in the country, and the Annie E. Casey Foundation -- a large national foundation focusing on children -- moved to town.
Maryland now has more than 800 foundations, many of them small and family-run.
But even as these foundations have grown and national nonprofit organizations have moved to Maryland, the spirit of individual generosity has waned in Maryland, says Samuel Hopkins, a great-great-nephew of Johns Hopkins who is compiling information on the history of Maryland philanthropy.
"People are getting more and more segregated by income," says Hopkins, who lives in Guilford. "They get a little more money, they're moving to Baltimore County. A lot of the natural leadership doesn't live in the city."
Lester M. Salamon, a professor at the Institute for Policy Studies at Johns Hopkins University who has studied Maryland's nonprofit sector, says much of the state's wealth, especially in the Washington suburbs, is held by people with few roots in the cities, where social issues are most pressing.
"I think the people in Montgomery County don't think of themselves as responsible for the problems of central city Washington or central city Baltimore," Salamon says.
For some Marylanders with money, the giving gap arises from caution that can date from childhood, says Donald P. Hutchinson, president of the Greater Baltimore Committee and voluntary chairman of last year's local United Way campaign.
Those who have made their money in the past 20 years -- in the financial sector, for example -- in many cases were raised in modest circumstances that affect their spending today, Hutchinson says. "I think that when they write a check for $100,000 or $50,000, I think it seems like an extraordinary amount of money to them," he said.
Complicating the picture is the fact that Maryland, particularly Baltimore, has become something of a center for nonprofit organizations. Nonprofits provide one of every 12 jobs in the state, according to a 1997 study, and new organizations are being created here at a rapid rate.
While that may indicate more charitable activity in the area, it also may spread gifts -- and givers -- thin, said Hutchinson. "There are clearly fewer big companies that are getting greater numbers of asks," he says. "It makes it harder for them to react and to identify the real needs."
United Way of Central Maryland has been trying for years to attract a giver that will commit $250,000 or more a year to its campaign. So far, it has only one consistent donor over the $100,000 level -- the Bunting Family Foundation, a legacy of the Noxell cosmetics fortune.
But part of the problem, United Way supporters and officials are beginning to recognize, is that they haven't been willing to ask for much more money than they are used to raising.
"Baltimore has never, throughout its entire United Way history, been willing to risk major failure and to establish extraordinary goals for the organization," Hutchinson says.
The most notable exceptions to Maryland's giving gap are religious charities, which tend to do well here.
For example, the Archdiocese of Baltimore's capital campaign, "Heritage of Hope," brought in $107 million last year for renovations to schools and group homes -- $27 million more than its goal.
The Associated: Jewish Community Federation of Baltimore remains a local and national charitable powerhouse. Among Jewish charities last year, it had the seventh-largest share of private fund raising in the country, according to The Chronicle of Philanthropy's annual ranking. Among such charities, the federation ranks in the top three in per capita giving, when donations are divided by communities' populations of Jews.
The Associated recently concluded a campaign that took in $26.8 million, a record amount that included 12 givers of $250,000 or more willing to be listed in their annual report. It also included 1,400 gifts from people who had never given.
Darrell D. Friedman, president of The Associated for the past 13 years, says the data on giving in Maryland are reason for concern, despite his organization's success.
"We all need to do a good job in trying to improve our record," he says. "I think there's plenty of capacity, particularly on the top."
Less affluent doing their part
On the bottom, Marylanders are already doing their part. The poorer state residents are, according to IRS statistics, the more they give relative to the rest of the country.
Mark A. Warren, a Baltimore police officer for the past 10 years, gave away between $1,000 and $1,500 of his $39,000 salary through the city's Combined Charity Campaign last year -- putting him in the same gift category for that campaign as Baltimore Fire Chief Herman Williams Jr., public works director George G. Balog and Mayor Kurt L. Schmoke.
He says that since the money comes straight out of his paycheck, he doesn't miss it. Having grown up without a father in East Baltimore and now patrolling the rough O'Donnell Heights neighborhood, Warren has seen firsthand where his gifts should go -- to AIDS programs, shelters for victims of domestic violence, and the United Negro College Fund, among other agencies.
"I honestly see the need out there for giving," says the 33-year-old officer, who lives in Harford County. "I see living conditions that are unbelievable. I think it's such a shame that a man can have a million dollars and never see the conditions people are living in."
Pub Date: 7/25/99