General Mills, Medtronic on BusinessWeek's List of Most Generous Companies

Two Minnesota-based companies - General Mills and Medtronic - appear on BusinessWeek magazine's latest rankings of America's top ten most generous companies. The two companies also appeared in the magazine's top ten rankings last year.

BusinessWeek compiled its corporate philanthropy rankings by looking at each company's cash contributions (as reported by the company) as a percentage of its fiscal year 2003 revenues (as measured by the S&P 500). General Mills was No. 6 on the list at 0.469 percent and Medtronic was No. 10 at 0.404 percent. Topping the list was Freeport-McMoRan Copper & Gold, followed by Corning, Avon Products, Newmont Mining and Computer Associates.

Four other companies that are based in Minnesota or have a strong Minnesota presence are among the top 50 companies in the rankings: Guidant (No. 13), Wells Fargo (No. 21), ADC (No. 26) and Deluxe (No. 41).

General Mills was also the top Minnesota company in BusinessWeek's rankings of America's most generous in-kind corporate givers, coming in at No. 18 with in-kind donations representing 0.21 percent of its 2003 revenue. Also among the top 50 companies for in-kind giving are 3M (No. 24), IBM (No. 29), Medtronic (No. 32) and Supervalu (No. 42). HCA topped the list of in-kind givers, followed by Genzyme, Merck, Parametric Technology and Eli Lilly.

The corporate giving rankings appeared in the November 29, 2004, issue of BusinessWeek, which features a special report on philanthropy. To view the complete BusinessWeek rankings and related content, visit BusinessWeek's Web site.

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