$12 Billion Pledged Worldwide to Fight Covid-19 in First Half of 2020

At least $11.9 billion has been donated to charities worldwide in response to the coronavirus pandemic, according to a new report from the Center for Disaster Philanthropy and Candid.

The report details how foundations, corporations, high-net-worth donors, and selected donor-advised-fund sponsors have responded to the global crisis. It’s a historic sum that defies comparison, far exceeding the philanthropic response to other disasters.

Because the report didn’t track small-dollar individual giving, the authors say the true extent of the philanthropic response to the pandemic is likely several billion dollars more.

The pervasive scale of the pandemic and its effects means the fundraising total, impressive as it may be, still likely falls far short of the needs at charities across the world, particularly smaller ones, said Regine Webster, vice president of the Center for Disaster Philanthropy.

“Small community-based organizations, even large multi-state community organizations that are providing wraparound services, a social safety net, they are struggling big time,” Webster said. “Nonprofit organizations are being hit really hard.”

The report is derived from Candid’s database of charitable giving, which tracks English-language publicly announced gifts by individuals and major institutions. Globally, the report identified gifts from donors in 38 countries to recipients in 52 countries. The authors found corporations accounted for nearly two-thirds of the $11.9 billion. In terms of the number of grants, community foundations awarded the most, accounting for 47 percent.

“This happened after Hurricane Sandy. The corporations gave a lot in terms of dollar amount, but the community foundations and the public charities tend to distribute smaller awards but more of them,” said Grace Sato, director of research for Candid. “They are the ones giving smaller grants, but they’re really targeted locally and community-based.”

Corporate foundations accounted for $1.1 billion of the Covid-19 grants, or 14 percent of all corporate giving. More commonly, corporations made donations directly. Google claimed the largest corporate gift identified so far, a $340 million donation of Google Ad credits for small and midsize businesses. Other large gifts include $20 million in health and hygiene products donated by Colgate-Palmolive to U.S. community foundations.

High-net-worth individuals chipped in at least $1.6 billion in publicly announced gifts, and account holders at donor-advised-fund sponsors Fidelity Charitable, Schwab Charitable, and Vanguard Charitable contributed $452.9 million.

For individual giving, the data captured disclosed gifts exceeding $50,000 from high-net-worth individuals. This group of philanthropists accounted for $1.6 billion of the $11.9 billion. The biggest individual gift was a $1 billion commitment by Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey. As of June 30, $163 million had been distributed, though some had been directed toward social-justice causes.

Recipient Details Scarce

Less is known about where the money is going and how it will be used. Among the gifts from institutional donors, $8.6 billion was awarded to “unknown” or “multiple” recipients, with few other details. Among the roughly 10 percent of donations that mentioned a cause or purpose, health organizations received 32 percent, while human-service charities got 25 percent.

The report found relatively few awards specified for “general support.” Nonprofit advocates have been pushing institutional donors to loosen grant restrictions to help nonprofits that may be facing existential crises posed by the pandemic. Only 2 percent of grant funding to identified organizations explicitly mentioned flexible or unrestricted uses, though the authors caution the figure could be misleading.

The report also found that only 5 percent of total funding and 13 percent of awards were earmarked for people of color or Indigenous people. Likewise, among specified gifts, only 3 percent were earmarked for organizations serving women and girls, 1 percent for immigrants, refugees, and the groups that serve them, and 1 percent for people with disabilities.