April 3, 2008 | Read Time: 2 minutes
Giving by family foundations increased 21 percent in 2006 from 2005, reaching a total of $17-billion, says a report released last week by the Foundation Center, a New York research group.
Family foundations — independent foundations for which the donor or the donor’s relatives have a measurable role in the management of the fund — accounted for nearly 60 percent of total 2006 giving by independent foundations, according to the report.
After adjusting for inflation, family-foundation giving has nearly doubled since 1998, the report says. The number of family foundations continues to grow as well, increasing by 2 percent from 2005 to 2006, to a total of 34,687.
“Individual donors and donor families have continued to create foundations since the start of the new decade, and have continued to put substantial resources into their existing foundations,” says Steven Lawrence, senior director of research at the Foundation Center.
Mr. Lawrence says the report’s findings counter the notion that the rise and fall of technology stocks (the “tech bubble”) in the late 1990s, together with the recession in 2001, might have curtailed family-foundation philanthropy. “Family foundations are certainly not increasing at the rate we saw in the 1990s, but nonetheless, a quarter of all the family foundations we’re tracking have been established since 2000,” Mr. Lawrence says. “This certainly suggests a very strong continued commitment of donors to choosing these foundations as the vehicle for their philanthropy.”
Gates Foundation Tops List
The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, in Seattle, was the family foundation that gave the most, according to the report. It gave $2.8-billion in 2006. The Lilly Endowment, in Indianapolis, which gave $352-million, and the Annenberg Foundation, in Radnor, Pa., which gave $279-million, were the next largest donors.
Just about half of the family foundations in the report, however, gave less than $50,000 in 2006. And 60 percent of the family foundations reported less than $1-million in assets that year.
When examining giving patterns, the report says that large family foundations tend to provide greater support for educational, health, environmental, and religious causes than independent foundations overall.
Regionally, education was the top priority for family-foundation giving in 2006 for most of the United States, particularly in the South, where it accounted for 35 percent of giving. In the West, however, health was the No. 1 concern, receiving 44 percent of family-foundation dollars that year, followed by education with 21 percent. (That variance was due largely to the Gates Foundation and its emphasis on health issues.)
The report, “Key Facts on Family Foundations,” can be found at http://foundationcenter.org/gainknowledge/research/pdf/key_facts_fam_2007.pdf
