Haas trusts a quiet helping hand for Phila.

Nancy Kolb, president of the Please Touch Museum, has tapped a source of charitable funding that's as unique to Philadelphia as cheesesteaks.

To help with an expansion of the children's institution in Fairmount Park, she garnered checks for almost $1 million in the last two years from three Haas family charitable trusts.

Kolb didn't have to fill out a slew of paperwork for the grants. And when the private trusts sent the checks, no press announcement trumpeted the gift. The process was discreet and efficient.

"They are not doing it for the recognition," said Kolb, who has a Haas family member on her board. "They are doing it because they think it's the right thing to do."

Now the fate of these Haas charitable trusts - which were established in the 1950s and 1960s by Haas family patriarch Otto Haas and his wife, Phoebe - has been thrown into uncertainty. The four charitable trusts are the biggest shareholders in Rohm & Haas Co.

If Dow Chemical Co. buys the Philadelphia specialty-chemical company at the agreed-upon price of $78 a share, the trusts will be worth $2.7 billion. If the deal collapses, as Dow hopes, the trusts will be worth a lot less. Some say Rohm & Haas stock could plunge to $25 to $30, valuing the trusts at $860 million to $1 billion. Otto Haas founded the Philadelphia chemical company in 1909.

Leaders of area nonprofit organizations say they believe that the merger may produce a bounty of charitable giving in the Philadelphia area as the billions flow into the Haas charitable trusts, which also support the William Penn Foundation.

But hopes of that charitable bounty are temporarily on ice. Dow Chemical has refused to close the $15.3 billion merger negotiated in July. The Michigan giant claims the economic world changed in late 2008 with a deepening recession and a collapse of the chemical industry.

The soured merger agreement recently took an ugly turn when Dow attorney David Bernick blasted the Haas family and the Rohm & Haas management, saying they were interested only in a supersized cash payout and unconcerned about the debt-loaded corporate entity left in the merger's wake.

The comments thrust the Haas family and the trusts into the public eye, maybe for the first time. Family members declined to comment, but sources close to them say the decision to sell the company was wrenching and only taken to diversify Haas assets.

Joele Frank, of the public relations firm Joele Frank, Wilkinson, Brimmer, Katcher in New York, has been hired to speak for the Haas trusts. Frank said the Haas family "has not commented for 60 years, and they are not looking for publicity on their philanthropy.

"Almost all of the trusts, upon their distribution, go to charity," she said, "and a significant portion will be directed to the William Penn Foundation, which benefits Philadelphia."

Besides the charitable trusts, the Haas family controls two income-producing trusts with $2.3 billion, based on the agreed-upon $78-a-share price, in Rohm & Haas stock.

Over an unknown period - maybe decades - the money in these income-producing trusts also will go for charitable purposes, sources close to the Haas trusts say.

Haas family members own about 1 percent of the company's stock unrelated to the trusts, Rohm & Haas executive said. That stock would be about $150 million at the merger price.

Jack Bogle, founder of the Vanguard Group Inc., the mutual fund giant, said the Haas family was on a prudent course. Globalization, new technology, and financial crises can quickly wreck a financial portfolio concentrated in one stock. "It's in the interest of the family trust and the charitable trust to diversify and spread the risk," Bogle said.

Philanthropies can take many approaches to their assets, experts say. The Hershey Trust remains invested heavily in the chocolate company's stock. The Pew Charitable Trusts, on the other hand, divested its founding Sun Oil stock in the 1990s.

Everyone in the charitable community praises the vast Haas philanthropy and its laserlike focus on the Philadelphia region. But they note that the Haas philanthropic structure can be bewildering. This is compounded by the family's reluctance to explain what it is doing, they say.

The William Penn Foundation was launched by the Haas family in the mid-20th century. It has about $1.4 billion in assets, according to its 2007 tax filing. The foundation does not own any Rohm & Haas stock, but it does get huge cash contributions from Haas trusts.

Projects supported by the William Penn Foundation are identified as such, and the foundation files a nonprofit tax form with the Internal Revenue Service.

The Haas charitable trusts operate from an office several blocks from the William Penn Foundation. Recipients of the trusts' funds include the WHYY public radio station, the Philadelphia Orchestra, and the Theatre Alliance of Greater Philadelphia.

Rebecca Rimel, president of the Pew Charitable Trusts, with about $4 billion in assets, said the Haas philanthropy had been "an extraordinary asset to our region." The proposed Dow merger, she said, was "a big deal, really wonderful."

"The Haas family trusts - all of them - are a very important part of the charitable scene in Philadelphia," said Hal Sorgenti, a chemical-industry executive and recent chairman of the board of the Philadelphia Orchestra.

Trusts valued at $5 billion, based a $78-per-share price for Rohm & Haas Co., were created in the names of Otto and Phoebe Haas. The first two are family trusts.

Date Formed      Stock Holdings           Trust Name

Dec. 20, 1945        2.3 million shares    Otto Haas Trust

Dec. 21, 1945      26.8 million shares     Phoebe W. Haas Trust

Aug. 3, 1955          5.8 million shares     Otto Haas Charitable Trust #1

Sept. 28, 1956     21.6 million shares     Otto Haas Charitable Trust #2

Aug. 24, 1961       3.5 million shares      Phoebe W. Haas Charitable Trust A

Aug. 24, 1961      3.5 million shares       Phoebe W. Haas Charitable Trust B

_{SOURCE: Company documents}

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