by Debra E. Blum and Chris Thompson
May 16, 2010
The Chronicle of Philanthropy
http://philanthropy.com/article/Rise-in-Giving-May-Signal/65523/
Donations to the nation’s biggest charities are growing rapidly in the first quarter of 2010, compared with the same time in 2009, a sign that many nonprofit groups are making a strong recovery from the fund-raising troubles they suffered last year, according to a new Chronicle survey.
Giving grew by a median of 11 percent in the first three months of 2010, compared with 2009, meaning that donations to half of the charities grew faster while the other half were faring less well.
To calculate the giving rate, The Chronicle excluded charities that were raising money to help Haiti recover from January’s devastating earthquake. The 18 organizations in the study that raised money for Haiti, such as Mercy Corps and the United States Fund for Unicef, received 57 percent more in donations in the first quarter of 2010 than they did in 2009, largely because of the disaster.
When those groups are combined with other large charities, the median growth rate for all 73 charities in the Chronicle poll tops 14 percent.
The Chronicle’s quarterly survey of giving offers a bellwether of how donations to all charities are doing because it is based on the donation rates to charities that appear on the Philanthropy 400, The Chronicle’s annual tally of the American organizations that raise the most from private sources.
Four of the organizations that provided numbers were among the top 25 recipients of donations last year: Fidelity Charitable Gift Fund (No. 3), World Vision (No. 11), Catholic Charities USA (No. 13) and Nature Conservancy (No. 14).
In another sign that prospects are brightening, the latest installment of the Chronicle of Philanthropy Index, which aggregates quarterly changes in four economic indicators that affect charitable giving, shows an uptick in the economy from the last quarter of 2009 to the first quarter of 2010.
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