INSIDE: DEAR ABBY, HOROSCOPE, PUZZLES & FEATURES
C1
B USINESS
THE BULLETIN • SUNday, MarcH 21, 2021
bendbulletin.com/business
Corporations
become the
unlikely
financiers
of racial equity
BY HALELUYA HADERO
The Associated Press
I
n the months since the police killing of George Floyd sparked a racial
reckoning in the United States, American corporations have emerged as an
unexpected leading source of funding for social justice.
Corporate giving to racial equity causes
has far outpaced donations from founda-
tions and individual philanthropists since
Floyd’s killing in May, according to the
philanthropy research organization Candid.
Companies donated or pledged about
$8.2 billion of the $12 billion in total contri-
butions that were earmarked for racial eq-
uity — the “first time direct corporate giving
to racial equity causes has reached this mag-
nitude” — said Andrew Grabois, Candid’s
corporate philanthropy manager.
Sizable commitments have come from
corporations ranging from JPMorgan
Chase, PayPal and Mastercard to Micro-
soft, Salesforce and the National Football
League. Those pledges don’t even count
other minority-focused investments, like
a JPMorgan initiative to lend to minority
home buyers and small businesses, that
could eventually benefit the corporations
themselves.
The trend signals a shift for large corpo-
rations, fueled by the evolving expectations
of younger employees and consumers about
corporate responsibilities to social causes.
Advocates say the corporate money won’t be
enough to soon achieve the racial equity in
hiring, housing and policing or the invest-
ment in Black communities and institutions
that they’ve sought. But it marks a start.
“The world is changing, and the expecta-
tions of how companies engage are chang-
ing,” said Brandee McHale, Citi’s head of
community investing and development.
The catalyst, of course, was the graphic
and widely viewed killing of Floyd last May
at the hands of the Minneapolis police,
with video footage showing the former
officer Derek Chauvin pressing his knee
against Floyd’s neck for about nine min-
utes. This month, jury selection has been
proceeding in Chauvin’s murder trial.
“When George Floyd was killed, consum-
ers and stakeholders called on companies to
invest in issues related to racial equity, and
many responded,” Grabois said. “Direct cor-
porate funding for racial equity and justice
has become exponentially larger — and more
urgent — than what companies have com-
mitted to in the past.”
Companies tend to be big donors
during times of crisis. But tradi-
tionally, Grabois noted, large
corporations funded mainly ed-
ucational and cultural groups,
while donating comparatively
little to racial equity causes.
Dipanjan Chatterjee, a brand
analyst at Forrester Research,
suggested that “long-simmering
anguish and anger, agitated by
a relentless political rhetoric that
overtly flirted with white suprem-
acy, created a perfect storm for
Floyd’s death to transform Black
Lives Matter from a political to a
human issue.”
Since late May, Grabois said, finan-
cial commitments by companies to ra-
cial equity causes have grown “exponen-
tially larger” than any other cause other
than COVID-19. A report by McKinsey
& Company, which tracked corporate re-
sponses from May to October, found that
of the top 1,000 U.S. companies, 18% made
internal commitments, like diversifying their
hiring, and 22% pledged to promote racial eq-
uity through donations or other means.
Including pledges of business investments,
the report found $66 billion was committed
to such causes. Nearly 80% of those commit-
ments targeted affordable housing and busi-
ness development, with 86% of the money
coming from the financial services industry.
For some brands, like Ben & Jerry’s, the
donations were extensions of long-standing
commitments to racial justice. For others,
the pandemic and protests led them to face
“the kinds of really difficult social issues” that
many had previously preferred not to engage
with, said Melissa Berman, CEO of Rockefel-
ler Philanthropy Advisors.
Berman suggested that some pressure has
come from millennial and Generation Z con-
sumers who increasingly want the money they
spend and invest to be used in ways consistent
with their values. A survey last year by the re-
search firm YPulse found that 69% of these
younger buyers believe that brands should en-
gage with the Black Lives Matter movement.
See Equity / C2
Illustration by 123RF
COVID-19 has been enormous setback in closing wage gap
T
o honor Women’s His-
tory Month, I reached
out to Luann Abrams,
founder and co-CEO of
CEOX, an organization that
connects highly qualified fe-
male CEO-ready candidates
to CEO and board roles, and
Tia Newcomer, a life sciences
board member and executive
who writes LinkedIn articles
with a series called “A Woman
in the Boardroom and C-Suite:
Observations, Learnings and
Brutal Setbacks.”
The topic: Will COVID19
make the gender wage gap and
INSIDE
BUSINESS
By Katy Brooks
workforce equity worse?
Before COVID-19, women’s
earnings and leadership trends
were glacially moving in a bet-
ter direction. The 2020 Pay-
Scale Gender Pay Gap Report
shows U.S. women earned 81
cents for every dollar earned
by men. That’s a decrease by
only 7 cents since 2015. Pay-
Scale also says median salary
across all industries for men
is still 19% higher than that
of women and at this pace of
progress it will take about 100
years to catch up.
Enter COVID-19.
Newcomer sees it as an
enormous setback. In her
LinkedIn blog, she writes that
5.4 million women’s jobs have
disappeared since February
2020 — accounting for more
than half of all net jobs shed
by the U.S. economy over
the course of the pandemic.
Nearly 2.1 million women have
dropped out of the labor force
entirely in that time. What she
finds telling is that there are
three working mothers unem-
ployed for every father.
When families have children,
it’s often the woman who stays
home and leaves the workforce.
This is often due the simple
economics of which parent’s
income is higher. Higher per-
centages of women work in
lower-paying jobs where lay-
offs have been more severe
throughout the pandemic.
And impacts to women
of color are even worse. The
Center for American Prog-
ress cites the economic effects
of COVID-19 on women of
color has exacerbated financial
disparities for minority fami-
lies. They conclude “mothers
in lower-income families —
disproportionately women of
color — are far more likely to be
breadwinners than mothers in
higher-income families.” An es-
timated 70% of mothers in fam-
ilies with the lowest earnings are
primary or sole breadwinners,
compared with 31% of mothers
in families with top incomes.
And once women return to
work, wage loss may continue.
Those who had to leave the
workforce may be asked to ex-
plain the “gap year.” Women
who had to put their careers
on hold or were laid off may
experience bias against being a
working mother or viewed as
more expendable.
This means that some
women reentering the work-
force may earn less than before
they left. According to Pay-
Scale, women often incur a pay
penalty upon returning to work
after an absence —7% less on
average for the same position.
See Wage gap / C2