May 11, 2011 | Read Time: 2 minutes
A new survey shows community foundations are continuing to recover from the economic downturn. Assets rose last year, as did the amount community foundations gave away to local causes and the sums they raised from donors.
The survey of more than 250 community foundations, including 99 of the 100 largest, shows the organizations grew by 13 percent on average last year, compared with a 12-percent decline in 2009.
The findings come in the latest Columbus Survey, an annual study of community foundations formerly conducted by Ohio’s Columbus Foundation and now a project of the Council on Foundations, in Arlington, Va., and CF Insights, in Boston, a group of foundations that shares research about grant-making. Assets, gifts received, and grants made grew for community foundations of all sizes, although the increase in grants and gifts was more modest at smaller foundations. Assets among large community foundations rose by $4-billion in the past year.
Despite the growth, however, 52 percent of foundations in the survey said their assets had not climbed back to historic totals posted in 2007.
Gifts to the community funds rose from $3.5-billion to $3.8-billion, though that total still represents a 21-percent decline from 2006.
“The picture from 2010 suggests an optimistic outlook for 2011, with resources for community philanthropy growing and donor activity increasing,” said Rebecca Graves, executive director of CF Insights.
Stronger Growth
Growth at community foundation appears to be outstripping the growth at large private foundations, the survey found. Median asset growth was 10.1 percent for the 97 large U.S. community foundations that participated in the Columbus Survey in both 2009 and 2010. That compares with median asset growth of 3.4 percent last year for the largest U.S. foundations responding to a recent Chronicle of Philanthropy survey.
Other findings from the Columbus Survey:
- Grants from the 99 largest community foundations totaled $3.7-billion, a 19-percent increase from 2006 levels.
- Giving to the community funds was uneven. About a third of the foundations achieved an increase in gifts of 11 to 49 percent, while 17 percent saw increases of 50 percent or more. Just 6 percent reported decreases of 50 percent or more in their gifts, while 27 percent said they had faced more moderate declines of 11 to 49 percent.
- Community foundations were split almost evenly among those that gave the same as last year, those that gave more, and those that decreased their gifts.
- The amount of donations raised by the community foundations from people in the cities and towns that each fund served were highest in the West, where the amount of donations represented $36.05 per resident, and the Midwest ($33.52), trailed by the South ($20.31) and the Northeast ($13.49).
Copies of the “Columbus Survey 2010 Results” are available for free download on the CF Insights Web site. Go to: http://www.cfinsights.org.
