Giving USA Report

Below is a report I found from GIVING USA about trends in contributions from different sources. The article was also in this quarter’s ECFA Newsletter.

Americans donated $306 billion in 2007 according to the Giving USA report released in July 2008. This was a one percent increase after inflation.

Among other key findings from the Giving USA report:

• Individuals donated an estimated $229-billion, a drop of 0.1 percent from 2006. Individuals who died donated $23.2-bilion through their wills, or 4 percent more than in 2006.All told, donations by individuals, including contributions to family foundations, made up 88 percent of donations last year.
• Corporate gifts declined by 0.9 percent, to $15.7-billion. Those contributions accounted for 5.1 percent of all donations.
• Giving by foundations increased by 7.3 percent to $38.5-billion, accounting for 12.6 percent of all donations. The growth was fueled in part by a nearly 12 percent rise in the value of foundation assets last year, according to the Foundation Center. But new money is not flowing into foundations at those kinds of rates: Gifts to family and other foundations declined by 11.9 percent to $27.7-billion. That could be the effect of the stock market’s ups and downs, researchers say, since many people donate stock to their foundations and are deterred from giving by market volatility.