3 Priorities for Avoiding the Potholes on the Road to Recovery

With American charitable giving for 2009 estimated at $303.75 billion, or a 3.6 percent drop from 2008 (in current dollars), it's clear donations are down. How does that compare to previous years? Not very favorably. In fact, 2009 and 1974 (-5.5 percent) are the only years to post declining numbers since 1956, when giving stats first started being collected. Meanwhile, 2008 was initially reported as a down year. However, several large year-end bequests caused totals for that 12-month period to be revised to a 1.5 percent increase over 2007.