On Wednesday’s (1/4) NPR radio program “Morning Edition,” Pam Fessler reports on charitable-giving trends in 2011 and 2012. “Ever since the recession, the talk among charities has been pretty much doom. But recently there’s been a teeny bit less doom. ‘We’re doing well,’ says Nancy Leopold, executive director of College Tracks, a small charity in Montgomery County, Maryland. ‘By that I mean we’re doing as well as we were doing at this time last year, or a little better, and that’s despite having to make up for some foundation money.’ Which isn’t as plentiful as it used to be in the bad economy. So Leopold’s group, which helps hundreds of low-income teens get into and stay in college, has turned its attention to wealthy individuals, who still have money to give, with striking results: their individual gifts have doubled over the past year…. In a survey last month, the Chronicle of Philanthropy that a slight majority of nonprofits were seeing an increase in end-of-year giving, some as high as 20 percent. But editor Stacy Palmer says most groups are not raising nearly as much as they did before the recession…. ‘Most groups get a lot of their money from state and federal governments, and that’s where they’re seeing very big cuts.’ Which are expected to continue and even grow in 2012.”
Posted January 5, 2012
