Gifts from donor-advised funds housed at some of the largest community foundations in the nation soared 42 percent in March through August compared with the same period last year, according to new data.
Community foundation officials said they were surprised by the scale of the response, attributing most or all of the increased giving to donors wanting to help nonprofits and people hurt by the Covid-19 pandemic.
“We’re just really proud of these donors,” said Debbie Wilkerson, CEO of the Greater Kansas City Community Foundation. “It’s exactly what they’re supposed to be doing at a time like this.”
However, Wilkerson and other community foundation leaders say they don’t know yet whether some donors are simply giving earlier in the year than normal because of the crises facing communities or if they plan to give more by year’s end.
At the request of the Chronicle, Peter Panepento, a consultant who assists community foundations with their communications strategies, contacted the 10 largest community foundations in the nation by asset size for the data. The Chicago Community Trust, Cleveland Foundation, Foundation for the Carolinas, Greater Kansas City Community Foundation, New York Community Trust, Oregon Community Foundation, Silicon Valley Community Foundation, and Tulsa Community Foundation provided data. The Marin Community Foundation and the Columbus Foundation declined to provide data.
The eight community foundations that provided data reported that their supporters had channeled $1.22 billion from their donor-advised funds in March through August, compared with $860 million the during the same period last year.
The community foundations provided the data on the condition that it be aggregated, without individual results released. However, the underlying data shows that the increase in distributions from donor-advised funds was a broad-based phenomenon, not the result of a few unusually large gifts.
New Money
Like Wilkerson, Jason Baxendale, chief development officer at the Chicago Community Trust, said he was uncertain whether donors were advancing rather than increasing the amount they distribute. However, he said the money flowing into donor-advised-fund accounts has been growing rapidly in recent months, suggesting that donors are increasing their overall giving this year.
“My feeling is that it’s primarily new money,” Baxendale said. “In March, things looked terrifying. We were hoping donors would step up through their DAFs, and they’ve done so.”
Kirsten Kilchenstein, chief philanthropy officer at Oregon Community Foundation, said her organization contacted every donor in its database — some in writing, some by phone, and some by email — to encourage them to boost their giving.
“It was a full-court press to make sure we were promoting philanthropy at this important time,” she said. Kilchenstein said she believed the burst of giving was a combination of new money and acceleration of giving that people had planned to do later in the year.
Baxendale, Kilchenstein, and Wilkerson all said it was hard to assess whether the increased outflows from donor-advised-fund accounts is keeping up with demand. The scale and the impact of the pandemic are still unfolding, Baxendale said.
“There is a greater need,” he said. “Philanthropy as a whole can do more.”
Kilchenstein said that in addition to dealing with fallout from the pandemic, the Oregon Community Foundation is responding to huge needs created by the West Coast wildfires.
“We’re looking ahead to rebuilding and recovery for the next several years,” Kilchenstein said.
Meanwhile, the Lilly School of Philanthropy at Indiana University reports that community foundations and local United Ways have raised more than $1.05 billion for Covid-19 relief funds and distributed at least $589 million so far. A new Lilly data project tracking Covid-19 funds found that as of June 30, at least 1,119 organizations were supporting Covid-19 relief funds. The Lilly School says the data likely undercounts the magnitude of the response.