Charities look to new sources as corporations vanish.

With Atlantic Richfield Co. and other big corporate givers essentially gone from Los Angeles, local charitable organizations are revamping their decades-old strategies for attracting donations and volunteers.

Today's target: the new breed of entrepreneurs who have come to dominate the local economy.

"With the departure of large corporate givers, non-profit organizations face a pronounced challenge to respond to," said Allan Parachini, vice president of the California Community Foundation, which funds various non-profit organizations. "They will have to become more creative and resourceful in their campaigning."

Parachini says the corporate exodus has created a void - especially for non-profits that rely exclusively on fund-raising efforts, as opposed to endowments, for their annual budgets.

Besides the disappearance of large corporate givers, another challenge faced

by L.A. non-profits is that the family foundations typically dedicate their giving to a particular cause, according to Todd Rosin, spokesman for the United Way of Greater Los Angeles. This splintering of philanthropy, said Rosin, is a concern to organized charities that see a further shrinking of their pool of funding.

"It's a critical challenge for us to appeal to a broad range of people," Rosin said. "We have started to use paid advertising, the Interact and media relations to reach out to a wider audience."

One source of funding and community support for the United Way, according to Rosin, is the relatively new generation of civic leaders and entrepreneurs. many of ethnically diverse backgrounds, who have made a huge contribution to the recovery of the local economy in the '90s.

"Woe betides the charity that doesn't know how to market itself to the Chinese-American and the Hispanic-American communities," said Rosin.

While small and medium-sized companies generally cannot afford to donate anywhere near the resources put up by Arco, Great Western, Home Savings and other corporate givers of years past, they have emerged as a force for civic involvement.

Individuals like Dominic Ng, chief executive of East-West Bank; John Echeveste, principal of Valencia Perez & Echeveste, a leading Hispanic public relations firm: and Edward Avila, regional vice president with Lockheed Martin IMS, have become important donors as well as fund raisers and board members of United Way.

But as a rule, today's entrepreneurs are veering away from umbrella organizations and more toward setting up foundations dedicated to specific causes.

"These people, unlike many of the large corporations, want to have a greater level of control over their donations," said Parachini. "Many of them like to set up funds that specify how the money can be used."

In response, umbrella organizations are increasingly giving donors the option of specifying how their contributions will be used.

The California Community Foundation expects to receive $120 million to $130 million in new endowments this year, more than half of which is earmarked for so-called "donor advice funds," in which the giver specifies ways in which the money is to be used.

Mitchel Moore, executive director of Heart of Los Angeles Youth, a Los Angeles non-profit organization, is pursuing individual contributors. "We don't want to be exclusively dependent on corporations and foundations," said Moore.

Moore is seeking out people in their 20s and 30s who traditionally have not been involved with charities.

While such trends in philanthropy have raised challenges, Parachini said the overall volume of individual giving seems to be increasing. "We think the giving environment is very vibrant in Los Angeles," he said. "Both the size and the number of donations are up from five years ago. We are seeing considerably more donations in the $100,000 to $l million range."

In 1995-96, for example, 170 Angelenos donated more than $10,000 to United Way, but no one donated more than $1 million. In 1997-98, 228 Angelenos donated more than $10,000 and seven locals donated more than $1 million. Over that same period, the number of those donating more than $1,000 went up from 2.039 to 2,848.

The increase of individual contributions does not mean that the departure of corporate foundations is not being felt.

"Smaller organizations with a budget of less than $1 million are feeling the impact," said Rachel Grose, development director with Students Run L.A., a non-profit organization in Van Nuys that helps at-risk youth. "Five years ago, 40 percent of our budget came from corporate sponsors. Now that is down to 15 percent."

Particularly worrisome is the pending acquisition of Arco by BP Amoco Plc. The Arco foundation has an annual budget of $14 million and supports 15,000 non-profit organizations in the United States, most of which are in California.

"Everyone is concerned about what will happen to the program," said Russell Sakaguchi, president of the Arco Foundation. "I don't know one way or the other what the new ownership will decide to do."