Firms turning to charitable funds

GOOD FOUNDATION: William P. McGillvray, chief financial officer at Starkweather & Shepley Insurance Brokerage, says that partnering with The Rhode Island Foundation allows the firm to make the most of its giving. /
GOOD FOUNDATION: William P. McGillvray, chief financial officer at Starkweather & Shepley Insurance Brokerage, says that partnering with The Rhode Island Foundation allows the firm to make the most of its giving. /

In order to create a more efficient, cost-effective system of charitable giving, Starkweather & Shepley Insurance Brokerage Inc., recently created a corporate-advised charitable fund at The Rhode Island Foundation.
The East Providence-based company is one of almost 20 local corporations that have set up charitable funds with the foundation. Others include Blue Cross & Blue Shield of Rhode Island, Cox Communications, Delta Dental and Hinckley, Allen & Snyder LLP. A minimum amount – $10,000 – is required to set up such a charitable fund, according to foundation spokeswoman Melanie Coon.
Starkweather earned $33 million in gross revenue in 2009, employing 175 insurance professionals in seven offices in Rhode Island and Massachusetts, according to company officials.
“From Starkweather & Shepley’s point of view, we are a very successful company. We’ve been doing business in Rhode Island for more than 131 years,” said William P. McGillivray, 59, the firm’s chairman and chief financial officer, who has worked at the insurance company for more than three decades. “We’ve always given back to the community. We’ve supported many charities. But now, we wanted to do it in a more organized way. We wanted a more formalized way of giving back to the community for [its] support of us for all these years.”
Part of the decision, he said, was recognition that the challenging economy of the last few years has hurt many Rhode Islanders, and Starkweather & Shepley wanted to be able to continue its long-standing charitable contributions to the community. “In today’s economy, I don’t know how many companies are increasing or maintaining their charitable giving. We are making a commitment to continue what we’ve done in the past,” McGillivray said. The company did an investigation, McGillivray continued, and found that partnering with The Rhode Island Foundation made the most sense. A strong recommendation to set up this kind of charitable fund came from Bill Preston, president of the Preston Insurance Agency, a firm that Starkweather & Shepley acquired in 2009 and which had previously established such a charitable fund with the foundation.
A new employee committee has been formed at Starkweather & Shepley to work with senior management to decide what particular charities will be the beneficiaries of the new fund, McGillivray said. “Employees will have significant input,” he said. “We hope that it will help stimulate their giving.”
Starkweather & Shepley will also continue its United Way of Rhode Island workplace campaign, McGillivray said. Along with all of the normal offerings that United Way has for all of their funds, it will be possible for employees to direct some of their money to the company’s new charitable fund.
The Rhode Island Foundation, one of the nation’s largest community foundations, distributed $27.5 million in grants to nonprofit organizations in 2009, including two emergency grants to address the community needs in response to what the foundation’s Coon termed “the challenging economy.”
In addition to tax benefits, Coon cited a number of reasons for companies to pursue a charitable partnership with the foundation: “We offer professional management of investments, professional grant-making,” she said. “You get the advantage of our real view of the nonprofit landscape in Rhode Island.
In terms of performance, Coon said that in 2009, expected returns on investment were “a little better than 20 percent,” measured over a 16-quarter trailing average. •

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