Colleges and other big nonprofit organizations expect fund raising to rise in 2011, but the increase won't come close to making up the donations they lost in the downturn.
Nonprofits that appear on The Chronicle of Philanthropy's ranking of the 400 organizations that raise the most from private sources expect a median rise of 4.7 percent—meaning that half expect more and half expect less.
More than one in four of the organizations that appear on the Philanthropy 400 list was a college or university. Some 112 higher-education institutions were included in this year's ranking. Donations to those organizations dropped by 1 percent. Over all, donations to the 400 groups increased 3.5 percent in 2010.
But that figure masks the situation facing colleges and other organizations that depend heavily on cash gifts. When The Chronicle of Philanthropy examined just groups that rely mainly on cash, giving was flat last year. (International-relief organizations and other groups that raise a lot in medicine, food, and similar products, as well as charity funds that rely heavily on stock donations, were excluded from that calculation.)
The picture is even starker when compared with fund raising before the recession. Charities on the list together raised 8 percent less last year (after in inflation) than they did in 2007, just before the recession took hold.
Charities on the Philanthropy 400 list are an important bellwether for the state of giving, and how American donors are responding to the bad economy. The nonprofits on the list raise $1 of every $4 contributed to nonprofit causes.
Inside the List
Stanford University was the highest-ranking higher-education institution on the list at No. 20, followed by Harvard University at No. 21. The Johns Hopkins University was the third highest, at No. 30. The organizations at the top of the list were United Way Worldwide, the Salvation Army, and the Fidelity Charitable Gift Fund.
Organizations on the list said they found that every type of fund raising was harder in 2010, including efforts to find corporate and foundation money or collect small individual gifts. Donations from the wealthy are also slowing; last year colleges and other nonprofits received 361 gifts of $1-million or more, while in 2008 they received 574 such gifts.
Despite the challenges colleges and other nonprofits faced, some institutions have managed significant increases. Among them is Amherst College, which raised $60-million last year, compared with $29-million in 2007. The Massachusetts institution started a capital campaign in the fall of 2008, just as the financial crisis erupted on Wall Street. It knew the timing would make fund raising tough, and things got even harder when budget woes forced the fund-raising department to lay off five full-time workers.
Amherst asked trustees and alumni to step in to help. For example, a volunteer who was traveling to Hong Kong and China for work-related reasons met with donors there to follow up on groundwork laid by the fund-raising staff.
"The most important element of our success was was that we kept showing up," said Megan Morey, Amherst's chief advancement oficer. "We kept telling the story, and we used the downturn and how Amherst was deciding to respond to it as an opportunity."
This article was reported by Noelle Barton, Raymund Flandez, and Holly Hall of The Chronicle of Philanthropy.
