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2011 Giving USA Report The 2011 Giving USA report, released last week, provided a brief spark of hope for the nonprofit industry, which has been experiencing major declines in donations since the recession began nearly three years ago. Overall giving increased 3.8%, or 2.1% after adjusting for inflation. Still, as the report points out, it will take five to six years of increases at this rate to return to pre-recession giving levels. According to the report, which tracks eight different nonprofit verticals, all segments except environment/animals experienced increased levels of contributions. This is extremely encouraging news after last year’s report, in which only four of the eight sectors achieved positive growth. The biggest winner in the 2011 report is the arts, a sector that is recovering from 2008-09's slump almost twice as quickly as are charitable contributions overall. Still, “as has been the case for the past 56 years,” the report states, “the religion subsector received the largest share of charitable dollars." Giving from individuals, bequests and corporations also increased over the past year, while foundation giving remained flat. Since the 2009 report, there has been an enormous swing in charitable bequests: in 2009 a big negative fluctuation (down 38.7%); in 2010 a big positive swing (increasing by 18.8%). Patrick Rooney, the report’s lead researcher, suggests that the amount and trend in charitable bequests may be determined by the bequests of the 300 largest estates; he proposes that those few large bequests determine whether the trend will be positive or negative. Overall, individuals made up almost three-fourths of total charitable contributions, although many of these gifts went to foundations, whose donations make up the second-largest share (14%) of the total. Schultz & Williams is a national consulting firm based in Philadelphia providing management, fundraising and marketing consulting for nonprofit organizations, along with full-service direct marketing, database and creative/production services. |
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