The SEC estimates that there are between 12,000 and 15,000 public companies in the United States. The legislation ignores the fact that corporate foundation and chief contributions officers are members of a professional group that makes sure their companies' giving is in the shareholders' interest and supportive of corporate strategic goals 3. Focused giving is providing the best return on corporate contributions. The multitude of shareholder interests and the vast numbers of shareholders that would have to be involved in the HR 945 approach would undercut focus and eliminate a return to the corporation on its investment. Direct shareholder involvement would disincent corporate giving by making it complex, inordinately expensive and less relevant to overall corporate goals because of the multitude of differing shareholder interests.
Institutional investors are by far the largest block of shareholders.
They do not necessarily represent millions of individual shareholders, but they would have a disproportionate impact on giving decisions because of their enormous holdings. Neither institutional nor individual shareholders are necessarily knowledgeable about the communities in which a corporation operates, the more than 600,000 charitable organizations in the United States, or the companies' international activities and business needs. To support the HR495 approach, new and costly corporate and government bureaucracies would need to be created. Imagine what it would take just to publish the names of 600,000 US charities and distribute this large telephone directory size book to 60 million shareholders so they could pick and choose between charities to support. Most importantly, the requirements of these bills are so vague that corporations may simply eliminate charitable contributions in order to avoid the cost of compliance.