Recent data investigations by The Chronicle include deep looks at diversity, nonprofit endowments, charitable giving, and more. Here are key findings pointing to trends that will influence philanthropy in the next year and beyond.
40 percent
That’s the share of trustees at large foundations who have an Ivy League degree. It’s just one of the data points from a first-of-its-kind Chronicle analysis of board demographics at America’s 20 largest grant makers. The study supports the criticism that foundations are elite, insular, and out of touch with average Americans.
“Given the fact that many of these foundations attempt to address issues affecting working families and the poor, there’s no good excuse for not having significant socioeconomic diversity on their boards,” says Albert Ruesga, former president of the Greater New Orleans Foundation. “It’s a cop-out if they don’t, and their missions suffer as a result.”
450 percent
This number raised eyebrows when our Philanthropy 400 ranking of nonprofits came out this fall. It represents the one-year growth in giving to the Goldman Sachs Philanthropy Fund, whose contributions climbed from just $580 million in 2015 to $3.2 billion in 2016. Such a leap — the other nonprofits in the Philanthropy 400 grew an average of 5 percent — is just the latest sign of the runaway popularity of donor-advised funds as a means of giving.
Six of the Philanthropy 400’s top 10 groups are built primarily on the funds. Fidelity Charitable Gift Fund claimed the No. 1 spot for the second year in a row; in fiscal 2017, it raised $6.85 billion, a 65 percent increase from 2016.
$149.5 million
The figure represents the total giving of John Malone, a media and communications mogul, since 2000. He joined a host of relatively unknown philanthropists in our compilation of the biggest living donors in every state and the District of Columbia. Bill Gates (Washington State) and Oprah Winfrey (Illinois) made the list, obviously, but so did a dermatologist who founded a pharmaceutical company; a Midwest ranch operator; and the top executive of a brick-manufacturing company.
This work drew on The Chronicle’s annual ranking of the country’s most generous donors, what we call the Philanthropy 50. Collectively, the donors on that list have given more than $84.7 billion since the early 2000s.
$350 billion
That’s the combined value of endowments at America’s private colleges, which are being lambasted as hoarders and targeted by Congress in the tax-overhaul legislation moving through Congress. But a Chronicle analysis found plenty of nonprofits amassing huge endowments. At more than 253, dollars flowing into their endowments over six years exceeded the dollars flowing out by a ratio of more than four to one.
“There is a natural tendency to see the permanence of the institution, the nonprofit, as being much more important than the people it serves,” one critic told The Chronicle.
75 percent
This is just one of many numbers generated by our study How America Gives. It’s the share of all itemized charitable giving in 2015 coming from American households earning $100,000 or more, according to a Chronicle analysis of tax data. Just 15 years ago, those high-income earners contributed only a little more than half of all itemized gifts.
What’s happened? The number of low- and moderate-income households making room in their budgets for charitable giving is shrinking and support for philanthropy is narrowing. The upshot: Nonprofits are increasingly relying on wealthy donors, and experts are worried that the recession broke a generations-old habit of giving to charity.
