This fall, the Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Louisiana Foundation concluded a three-year grant called Challenge for a Healthier Louisiana, in which the foundation granted $10.2 million to 12 statewide projects that addressed one of Louisiana’s most pervasive and expensive problems, childhood obesity.
In the Capital Region, those projects included the Mayor’s Healthy Cities initiative and BREC’s Capital Parkways Project. The BCBSLA Foundation’s approach is significant on several levels, and it portends just how much the landscape of corporate philanthropy is changing in the greater Baton Rouge area.
The project required grantees to create proposals that included numerous community partners who could work together to tackle obesity, a complex problem with no easy solution. In addition, grantees had to secure matching funds, ultimately raising an additional $16.8 million and bringing the total statewide impact of the grant to $27 million.
Moreover, the project was conducted with help from the Pennington Biomedical Research Center, which served as an adviser to the BCBSLA Foundation in both design and evaluation. The results of Pennington’s evaluations, currently underway, could help shape future grantmaking by the foundation, and could also spark research opportunities among the center’s scientists as they grapple for workable methods to curb obesity.
As Business Report details in its new cover story, “A Mission in Mind,” it’s a far different approach than the days of detached corporate giving. More than ever, say corporate philanthropy managers and nonprofit executives, companies are more strategic about the causes they support, opting for a smaller number of causes with which they can make a tangible impact rather than the traditional scattershot approach.
In addition, the internal structure of corporate giving has changed as well, both nationally and in Baton Rouge. More companies, including about half of the country’s Blue Cross and Blue Shield affiliates and numerous other large corporations, have established their own foundations. Those foundations are not just interested in writing checks. In many cases they want to lend their expertise and help find solutions to nagging social issues.
Similarly, a growing number of smaller companies are established funds at community foundations, turning over the tedious administrative functions and gaining insight to strategic giving. One of the biggest areas of growth for the Baton Rouge Area Foundation has been its Corporate Advised Funds, including those established by Cox Communications, Community Coffee, Lamar Advertising and others.
“We can help manage the back end of the process, and that tends to be an attractive approach for many companies,” says BRAF President and CEO John Davies. “At the end of the day, they have a clear idea whom they want to give to and they still make those decisions.”
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