Giving by Foundations Topped $40-Billion Last Year, Posted by Robert Paisola, Director, The Western Capital Foundation

Giving by Foundations Topped $40-Billion Last Year, Report Says

Giving by foundations soared to more than $40-billion last year and broke the $36.4-billion giving record set in 2005, according to estimates by the Foundation Center, The New York Times reports.

The center, a New York research group that educates grant seekers, attributed the increase to a combination of a strong stock market and the establishment of new foundations.

“The new foundations being created today are much bigger,” said Sara L. Engelhardt, the center’s president, “and much more money is moving through them at a faster pace than through older foundations.”

Many of the new foundations, Ms. Engelhardt said, are controlled by living donors who want to give away more than the minimum 5 percent of assets required by law.

The Foundation Center’s data were released a day after The Chronicle issued the results of its annual survey of big foundations, which found that giving in 2007 is likely to continue to be at least as strong as it was last year.