Distinguished Corporate Citizenship Award

David Koch

Chairman of the Board, Graco Inc.

May 20, 1997

The Minnesota Center for Corporate Responsibility was founded on a simple but profound premise: that business profitability depends upon the strength and well-being of the communities and society in which businesses operate. Keeping this premise alive and its implications continually examined and discussed has been the Center’s mission.

While easy enough to grasp, the premise is difficult to remember. The pressures of our economic system fill every working day with incentives to forget it. David Koch has not only remembered the premise and mission of this organization, he has lived them — as the head of a successful company and as a citizen of the larger community which he has worked so tirelessly to make better.

• As president of the Greater Minneapolis Chamber of Commerce, he played a key role in establishing what we now know as the Keystone Club. Begun in 1976 with 23 companies that donated at least five percent of pre-tax profits to charity, the Keystone program now includes 121 firms, plus 77 others that donate at least two percent.

• As a head of the 1981 fund campaign for Minneapolis Area United Way, he helped to organize the Cornerstone program to encourage people of means to donate $10,000 or more to the United Way. At that time, no one person had donated more than $3,000. Twenty individuals responded the first year, and in 1995, 173 answered the call. Several contributed between $25,000 and $50,000. David and Barbara Koch have been among the most generous donors every year since the Cornerstone program began.

• In 1981, the University of St. Thomas named David Koch its Distinguished Alumnus of the Year.

• In 1982, the Minneapolis Area United Way recognized Koch’s leadership with its Distinguished Service Award.

• That same year, the Minnesota Chapter of the National Society of Fund Raising Executives named him Outstanding Philanthropist of the Year.

• In 1985, David and Barbara Koch, together with the Graco Foundation, established the Koch Endowed Chair in Business Ethics at the University of St. Thomas.

• Koch chaired the University of St. Thomas Century II capital campaign from 1986 to 1991.

• In 1986, the Greater Minneapolis Chamber of Commerce presented Koch with its Uncommon Citizen Award.

• In 1989, Twin Cities magazine named Koch to its Volunteer Hall of Fame.

• Also in 1989, Financial World magazine named Koch CEO of the Year, Bronze Award.

• David and Barbara Koch helped the University of St. Thomas build its downtown Minneapolis campus, which opened in the fall of 1992.

• In 1996, the University of St. Thomas received a $2.5 million gift from David and Barbara Koch to support and foster the university’s Catholic intellectual tradition. The majority of the gift, $2 million, endowed the newly created Koch Chair in Catholic Studies and the remaining $500,000 will support St. Thomas students majoring in Catholic studies. The Koch gift was among the largest single contributions ever made to St. Thomas.

Koch serves on the boards of directors of the Minneapolis Federal Reserve Bank, BSI Corporation, ReliaStar Financial Corporation, the University of St. Thomas, and the Minnesota Center for Corporate Responsibility.

The Minnesota Center for Corporate Responsibility is proud to recognize David Koch’s unstinting support of this organization and its goals. It is a honor for MCCR to add the 1997 Distinguished Corporate Citizen Award to his exemplary record of business leadership and community contributions.

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