More than a year after the fifty largest U.S. public companies and their foundations collectively pledged $49.5 billion to address systemic racism in the wake of nationwide calls for racial justice, an analysis of those commitments reveals the limits of corporate philanthropy, the Washington Post reports.

Based on data from forty-four of the fifty companies, the analysis found that $45.2 billion, or more than 90 percent of the total, is being allocated as loans or investments the companies could profit from, more than half in the form of mortgages, with JPMorgan Chase and Bank of America accounting for the vast majority. Only $4.2 billion — which amounts to less than 1 percent of the firms' combined net income of $525.6 billion — is in the form of outright grants, with $2.1 billion pledged in support of economic equality, $502 million for education, $304 million for health initiatives, $233 million for arts and culture, $102 million for community investment, $84 million for civil rights, and just $71 million for criminal justice reform. To date, thirty-seven companies have confirmed disbursing at least $1.7 billion of the $49.5 billion pledged.

Among the commitments aimed at narrowing the racial wealth gap is JPMorgan Chase's $28 billion in housing and business loans in Black and Latinx communities, which some critics told the Post could actually widen racial disparities and accelerate gentrification because it targets place, not race. To make a significant difference, homeownership grants should be tied to Black borrowers, not just majority-Black neighborhoods, they said.

PayPal's $500 million initiative in support of African-American and underrepresented minority businesses includes a $400 million commitment to Black- and Latinx-focused financial institutions, including pledges to deposit $10 million in Hope Credit Union in Jackson, Mississippi, and $50 million in Optus in Columbia, South Carolina. While corporate deposits into Black-owned financial institutions are meant to enable the undercapitalized banks to make more home and small-business loans, many such banks lack the shareholder equity required by regulators to cover potential losses and protect deposits, the Post reports. Without additional equity — long-term investments that allow them to take on more deposits that they can use to make loans, said Hope Credit Union founder CEO Bill Bynum, Black banks remain limited in their ability to lend to Black families, who are then forced to rely on predatory lenders.

Despite the fact that companies were responding to calls for racial justice sparked by the police killing of George Floyd, they pledged much smaller amounts to groups focused on criminal justice and police reform, including those connected to Black Lives Matter, the Post analysis found. Moreover, companies that did contribute appear more interested in putting money toward efforts to change habitual offender laws and reduce cash bail than toward police reform, said Ford Foundation president Darren Walker, with whom CEOs have consulted widely on their responses to Floyd's murder. "Black Lives Matter involves more issues around policing," said Walker. "It's a more combustible issue." According to the Post, just eight of the fifty companies — Apple, Microsoft, Amazon, Google, Oracle, Coca-Cola, PepsiCo, and Qualcomm — disclosed contributions to nonprofits directly connected to the Black Lives Matter movement.

Cisco, whose CEO Chuck Robbins tweeted in June 2020 the company's commitment of $5 million to groups including Black Lives Matter, has yet to do so, and chief inclusion and collaboration officer Shari Slate said in a statement that "[a]fter further consideration and assessing where we'd have the biggest impact, Cisco committed funding to several social justice organizations including NAACP Legal Defense Fund and Equal Justice Initiative."

"Because these are pledges, there isn't any one entity that will be holding these organizations accountable," said Una Osili, the Efroymson Chair in Philanthropy at Indiana University Lilly Family School of Philanthropy. "I wonder about the follow-through — whether the will will be there in three to four years to continue to lift up these issues."

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