Foundation Center

The Phoenix-based Lodestar Foundation has announced the Austin-based Adoption Coalition of Texas as the winner of the 2011 Collaboration Prize.

The prize is a national award designed to identify and showcase models of collaboration in the nonprofit sector. The Adoption Council will receive the grand prize of $150,000, while the seven other finalists will receive $12,500 each.

The country's more than 76,000 grantmaking foundations gave an estimated $45.7 billion in 2010, virtually unchanged from 2009. According to Foundation Growth and Giving Estimates (2011 Edition), released today by the Foundation Center, 2010 giving remained just 2.1 percent below the record high of $46.8 billion awarded by foundations in 2008, despite the fact that foundation assets were still close to 10 percent below their 2007 peak.

In honor of World Water Day, the Conrad Hilton Foundation announced a $50 million commitment to clean water initiatives in Sub-Saharan Africa, Mexico and India. According to the World Health Organization (WHO), inadequate access to safe water kills 3,900 children every day who fall prey to waterborne illness.

The Hilton Foundation's $50 million pledge will be divided up into grants awarded to nonprofit organizations to fund projects, such water and sanitation infrastructure, as well as spreading information to at-risk communities.

A majority of charities surveyed saw their fundraising revenue remain stable or increase last year, according to the 2010 Year-End Survey of the Nonprofit Research Collaborative (NRC), a coalition of six fundraising and philanthropic organizations. The survey also showed that strong fundraising results were more likely when organizations invested resources in fundraising staff and infrastructure, including volunteer management.

The New York City-based Foundation Center, the European Foundation Centre in Brussels, and the Ford Foundation have announced that GrantCraft, a Web-based effort to equip grantmakers with an array of tools designed to enhance their effectiveness, is moving from Ford to the two centers. In addition, Ford, which incubated GrantCraft, has awarded $1 million to the two organizations to help expand the initiative.

Despite the down economy, the amount American foundations distributed for international purposes dipped by far less than giving to other causes last year, according to a new report from the Foundation Center and the Council on Foundations.

Foundations in the United States gave $6.7-billion last year for international purposes, a drop of 4 percent from 2008 totals. Over all last year, foundation giving declined by an estimated 8.4 percent after grant makers nationwide lost a total of 17 percent of their assets due to the recession.

Fundraisers are noticing slight increases in donations, but not enough to keep pace with higher demand for charitable services in today's economic environment.

The competition for foundation grants is greater than ever with charitable service demand at an all-time high. So to ensure your organization is in position to grab the attention of grantmakers, make sure you're set up with the pre-grantseeking needs foundations look for.

U.S. nonprofit organizations are seeing a slight increase in donations — a sign they hope is the beginning of economic recovery — but the turnaround hasn’t been strong enough to keep up with higher demand for charitable services, a national report released Monday said. About a third of America’s charities reported an increase in donations during the first nine months of 2010, and they said they expect more good news in the fourth quarter, according to data collected by a coalition called the Nonprofit Research Collaborative.

Foundation giving is expected to tick up modestly in 2011, but it may take several years before grants match pre-recession levels, according to a survey by the Foundation Center, in New York. The survey of more than 700 grant makers found that a slightly higher share planned to give more next year than in 2009 (21 percent) than planned to give less (15 percent). Fifty-nine percent predicted that their giving would be flat. (The remaining 6 percent of respondents were uncertain.)