Novemberr 17, 2009         

GOOD DAY!    

This is MONDAYMEMO, the weekly report from the RCGA President to Board members and other key investors. MONDAYMEMO is published by the St. Louis Regional Chamber and Growth Association, One Metropolitan Square, Suite 1300, St. Louis, MO 63102. To unsubscribe or change your address or method of delivery, reply to mondaymemo@stlrcga.org.

New, Interactive St. Louis Commerce Magazine Online Debuts: St. Louis Commerce Magazine readers now have a new tool to make Commerce online quite reader-friendly.  The magazine has moved from the traditional html to a much more interactive format, starting with the November/December issue.  Thanks to the efforts of RCGA Webmaster Doc Lei, Commerce Magazine’s new software creates a reader experience that is more like reading the hardcopy magazine.  Readers can flip pages, zoom in, and search Commerce articles by keywords.  Rolling your mouse over the table of contents will take you directly to the article.  Commerce also has the ability to sell live links from advertisers’ pages to their company web sites.

In addition to the nearly 13,000 hardcopies of every issue distributed to the St. Louis region’s most affluent readers, Commerce online is viewed some 300,000 times annually.  For questions about adding interactivity to your ad, please email Commerce Account Executive John Bilhorn at bilhorn@stlrcga.org.

Speaking of Commerce, this annual special edition of Commerce Magazine announces the 2009 Greater St. Louis Top 50 award recipients.  This is the 14th year that the St. Louis top companies are being honored in what has become an annual civic tradition dating back to the inaugural program in 1996, which the RCGA and RubinBrown LLP are pleased to co-present, in cooperation with Ameren, Edward Jones, Southwest Bank and Thompson Coburn.  The media partners for the awards include are the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, NewsRadio 1120 KMOX and St. Louis Commerce Magazine.

Over 650 attendees are already planning to join us for Wednesday evening’s festivities.   Please plan to join us as we present the 2009 Ameren Corporate Citizenship Award to Edward Jones and Edward Jones Managing Partner Jim Weddle, and the 2009 Spirit of St. Louis Technology Award to Savvis, Inc. and CEO Phil Koen, at the Greater St. Louis Top 50 Awards Gala & Dinner tomorrow evening, November 18th, at the Hyatt Regency St. Louis Riverfront Hotel. 

Jim Weddle	Phil Koen

For reservations for the Greater St. Louis Top 50 Dinner, please contact RCGA Vice President for Membership Services Colin Stahlhut today, at 314.444.1145, or email him at cstahlhut@stlrcga.org.

Future Of Financial Services Sector Is Subject Of “International Business Conference: Global Business Outlook” This Friday, November 20th:  The RCGA is once again partnering with The Boeing Institute of International Business at the John Cook School of Business at Saint Louis University to present the 2009 “International Business Conference: Global Business Outlook” on Friday, November 20th, beginning at 7:30 a.m., in the Busch Center Wool Ballroom at the corner of Grand and Laclede Avenues.

The keynote luncheon speaker is John Stumpf, President & CEO of Wells Fargo & Company, San Francisco, who will speak on, “U.S. Financial Services – Then and Now.”

John Stumpf

Among the other topics and presenters are: “AB InBev: Global Brand Management” by Andrew Sneyd, Global Advertising Director-Budweiser at AB InBev, St. Louis; “The Future of Global Food Security and the Responsibility of Food Suppliers: the Case of ADM” by Matt Jansen, Vice President, Risk Management,Ethanol Trade and Sales at Archer-Daniels-MidlandCompany (ADM), Decatur, Illinois; “Wal-Mart: Meeting Customer Needs in Today’s Global Reality” by Charles Zimmerman, Vice Presidentat Wal-Mart International, Bentonville, Arkansas; and “Clean Energy: A Call to Leadership” by Rudolf Araneda, CEO at GasAtacama, Santiago, Chile.

For reservations and more information, please contact Karen Schneider Carpentier, Associate Director, Boeing Institute of International Business at the John Cook School of Business, at 314.977.3630.

2009 United Way Campaign Raises More Than $67.08 Million, Surpasses Its Ambitious Goal:  The United Way of Greater St. Louis celebrated its 2009 campaign victory at the St. Louis Zoo on Thursday evening announcing that, together, our region raised $67,086,726 million in gifts and pledges, exceeding the United Way's fund-raising goal of $66.5 million.  Even amidst a struggling national economy, the St. Louis region's business community and the more than 200,000 individual contributors to United Way have once again demonstrated the level of generosity that helps to define St. Louis.

Edward Jones Managing Partner Jim Weddle, left, and 2009 United Way Campaign Chairman Hugh Grant, center front, join festive victory party announcing raising $67,086,726 for the 2009 United Way of Greater St. Louis Campaign.

United Way Board Chair Doug Yaeger	United Way Campaign Chair Hugh Grant

While St. Louis is the 18th largest metro area of 361 metros, United Way funding here is the 5th largest in the nation, notably ahead of several much larger regions, including New York, Chicago and Los Angeles.  Support by the region's corporate community is a major factor in St. Louis' performance.  St. Louis is #1 in the percent of the St. Louis campaign that comes from corporate giving.

A study produced several years ago by Gateway to Giving --- a coalition including the Community Foundation of Greater St. Louis, the RCGA, and other business, nonprofit and foundation leaders, convened by the St. Louis Metropolitan Association for Philanthropy (MAP), examined our region's generosity using information from all types of donors. The study, Private Dollars for Public Good: A Report on Giving in the St. Louis Region, revealed that:

• More individual St. Louisans give to charities when compared to the national average (83.5% v. 70%). Those who give do so at a higher rate than national averages. (15% or $300 more).
  
  
• Total business giving in the community outpaces the national average by nearly 3 times, and exceeds or meets the national average when compared to contributions on a per employee basis. Locally, larger companies donated over 7 times more than the national per employee-giving benchmark.
  
  
• 70% of philanthropic dollars generated from St. Louis stay in the St. Louis region.
  
  
• The majority of donations were made to educational institutions, religious organizations and combined campaigns such as the United Way of Greater St. Louis, Jewish Federation of St. Louis and the Arts & Education Council of Greater St. Louis.

Congratulations to United Way Board Chair Doug Yaeger, Chairman, President & CEO of The Laclede Group and 2003-2005 RCGA Board Chair, and to 2009 United Way Campaign Chair Hugh Grant, Chairman, President & CEO of Monsanto.  Special thanks also to RCGA Board member Arnold Donald, Principal of AWD Group, and to his spouse, Hazel, for Co-Chairing a very successful Alexis de Tocqueville Society giving effort, which raised more than $10 million.

November 16th Business Leaders Summit Focuses On Compelling “ROI” And Overall Importance Of Early Childhood Investment To Economic Competitiveness:  RCGA Board member and Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis President and CEO Dr. Jim Bullard hosted a very timely and compelling Business Leaders Summit on Early Childhood Investment Monday morning at the Federal Reserve Bank. 

A number of other current and incoming RCGA Board members participated in the summit.  In addition to Jim Bullard were Lawrence Group President Steve Smith, Mayor Francis Slay, McCormack Baron Salazar Chairman and CEO Richard Baron, St. Louis American newspaper President and Publisher Don Suggs, Energizer Holdings Inc. CEO Ward Klein, PNC Financial Services Group President and CEO Rick Sems, and Tom Chulick, Chairman and CEO, UMB. 

A compelling case was presented by Nobel Laureate economist Dr. James Heckman of the University of Chicago on the fundamental economic development imperative for substantial redirection of many existing resources into early childhood education.  Heckman’s extensive long term research documented a $7 to $10 return on investment per annum for every dollar invested in early childhood education before age 4 (by comparison, post war ROI for private equity has been 5.8%).  This ROI calculation accounted for the full variety of costs. His analysis also showed significant positive impacts from early childhood education investments on such issues as teen pregnancy, crime, cognitive and non-cognitive skills, and minority achievement.

Dr. Heckman did an extensive presentation, entitled, “The Economic Case for Investing in Disadvantaged Young Children,” showing that many major economic and social problems in American society such as crime, teen pregnancy, dropping out of high school and adverse health conditions can be directly traced to low levels of skill and ability in society.

Two of the Four Strategic Initiatives that the RCGA Board adopted earlier this year as going forward priorities revolve around Sharpening the Region’s Economic Development Products and Attracting, Developing and Retaining Top Talent.

As we complete the major work under Agenda One with the Market Street Services analysis, which was the product of extensive focus groups and meetings with RCGA Board members and Economic Development Campaign investors last week with Market Street Services founder and CEO Mac Holladay, and as we continue to move forward aggressively with the Regional Talent Initiative, under the leadership of RCGA Board member Doug Koch, Senior Vice President and Chief Talent Officer at Brown Shoe Co, and as the RCGA Board focuses on priorities for the 2010 legislative session --- it occurs to me that the issue of investing in early childhood education is a cross-cutting issue on which the RCGA and the business community should appropriately focus in the new year and years ahead.  More on this in upcoming issues of Monday Memo.

Have a good week,



Richard C.D. Fleming
President and CEO