Is your business a Pennsylvania company or a company based in Pennsylvania?
The Team Pennsylvania Foundation has noticed there’s actually a difference between the two, and it boils down to how much effort a business puts into investing in the development and well-being of its community. When the foundation started analyzing its own donors and partners about two years ago, it noticed that small- and medium-sized companies with roots as family businesses tended to be more invested in Pennsylvania’s future.
Larger corporations, as a rule, don’t share that sense of place. “They don’t think of themselves as a Pennsylvania company,” says Matt Zieger, the foundation’s executive director. “They think of themselves as a corporation that happens to be based in Pennsylvania.”
So this summer, foundation intern Becca Geiger, a sociology major at California University of Pennsylvania, will choose 25 Pennsylvania family-owned businesses that are active donors. She’ll then study what prompts these companies to devote resources to philanthropy.
Zieger says Winner International, the western PA company run by foundation co-chairwoman Karen Winner Sed, is the perfect example of the type of business it plans to study. Winner has employed generations of workers from the same families at its facility in Sharon and has a history of charitable community involvement.
The foundation hopes the study will identify major corporate players in Pennsylvania communities and show ways to engage small and medium family-owned businesses in state policy decisions.
Source: Matt Zieger, Team Pennsylvania Foundation
Writer: Rebecca VanderMeulen