So did I. And sure enough, it does exist. But why here?

If you put this question to people in Minneapolis, you hear all kinds of theories. “When you live in such a harsh climate, you understand the need for the common good,” said Emmett D. Carson, the former president of the Minneapolis Foundation. Others suggested that the area’s corporate generosity grew out of the Scandinavian culture that took hold in this region, with its deep Lutheran roots.

Christina L. Shea, the senior vice president for external relations at General Mills, thought it had to do with enlightened self-interest. “How do you attract high-powered talent?” she asked. A large part of the answer, she believed, had to do with building communities in which talented people wanted to live. Steve Rothschild, a former General Mills executive who left the company to found an antipoverty group called Twin Cities Rise, said he thought that Minneapolis-St. Paul companies have long viewed their responsibilities broadly. “Most Twin Cities companies have a stakeholder model, not a shareholder model,” he said. There is probably some truth to all of these theories.

The creator of the Five Percent Club was a man named Kenneth N. Dayton, a member of the third generation of Daytons to run the Dayton Corporation, which was then mainly a department store in Minneapolis. (As it grew, it changed its name, first to Dayton-Hudson, and more recently, to Target.)

“It comes from the concept of tithing, which is something he totally believed in,” said Peter C. Hutchinson, who ran the Dayton Foundation for many years. The company had long given away 5 percent of its profits; Mr. Dayton’s purpose in starting the Five Percent Club was to both institutionalize the practice and persuade others to join in.

To that end, he hired Wayne Thompson to be the company’s  and perhaps the country’s  first executive in charge of “corporate affairs.” Mr. Thompson and Mr. Dayton became the ringleaders in rounding up other companies for the Five Percent Club, and in 1976, they expanded it to include companies that wanted to donate 2 percent. “Never resist a generous impulse,” was Mr. Thompson’s rationale for allowing the 2 percenters to join.

The result was that philanthropy  and especially philanthropy aimed at helping Minneapolis and St. Paul  became part of the culture of Twin Cities corporate life. Nate Garvis, the vice president for government affairs at Target, says that executives are expected to join nonprofit boards and serve in the communities. Mr. Rothschild, the former General Mills executive, says that at many companies, including his, a portion of an executive’s bonus was based on community involvement.

When a new chief executive came to town, other chief executives would sit him down and explain how things were done in the Twin Cities. In 1988 when the British firm Grand Metropolitan bought Pillsbury in a $5 billion hostile takeover, people worried that raiders from overseas would cut back on the company’s giving, which was at the 2 percent level. Instead, the city’s corporate leaders met with the Grand Met representatives, where, in Mr. King’s words, “they explained what our culture was.” Pillsbury remained in the Keystone Club.