Rants About Grants

Philanthropy Statistics - A Few Numbers to Share

  

 Email Article  

Tweet  

  

A few interesting philanthropy statistics:

• 98,428 grantmakers (Foundation Center)
• 114 new grantmakers in the past month (Foundation Center)
• 997,579 public charities (National Center for Charitable Statistics)
• 293,000 nonprofits that could lose their exempt status due to not meeting new IRS filing requirements (National Center for Charitable Statistics)
• Over 372,000 grants awarded in 2008 by foundations (from Foundation Center data, some analysis mine)
• Charitable giving dropped 3.9% in 2009 (GivingUSA)
• Corporate giving rose 5.5% in 2009, fueled in part by in-kind giving (GivingUSA)
• Total giving in the US was an estimated $303.75 billion (GvingUSA)
• Of that, individuals are by far the largest single component.  Foundation and corporate giving was $52.54 billion, which is nothing to sneeze at (GivingUSA; sneezing comment mine)
• Only 3-4% of donors do research on nonprofit performance before they give, yet 85% say they care about an organization's performance (Hope Consulting, referenced on TacticalPhilanthropy.com)

I'll track changes in these stats periodically.  If there are other philanthropy statistics you want to know about, leave a comment and I'll see what I can find.

References:

Foundation Center

National Center for Charitable Statistics

GivingUSA

Hope Consulting

Tactical Philanthropy