Foundation Giving Declined by Record 8.4 Percent in 2009, Study Finds

April 19, 2010, Philanthropy News Digest — Challenged by a prolonged economic downturn, the nation's grantmaking foundations cut their giving by an estimated 8.4 percent in 2009, a new report from the Foundation Center finds. The decline is the steepest since the center began tracking the data in 1975.

Based on a survey of more than 1,200 large and midsize foundations, the 2010 edition of Foundation Growth and Giving Estimates (16 pages, PDF) found that grant dollars awarded fell from $46.8 billion in 2008 to $42.9 billion in 2009, and that the decline in giving totaled less than half the 17 percent loss in foundation assets recorded in 2008. The report also found that independent and family foundations, which represent nearly 90 percent of foundations, reduced their giving by 8.9 percent to $30.8 billion in 2009, corporate foundation giving decreased by 3.3 percent to $4.4 billion, and community foundation giving declined by 9.6 percent to $4.1 billion.