Giving USA’s annual report on charitable donations is almost the holy grail for many who watch philanthropic institutions. As a comprehensive examination, it tells us about trends as well as recent moments. Some of the results for 2009 were a surprise and even controversial, to the point that Indiana University’s Patrick Rooney has had to explain the numbers and the record of Giving USA.
I encourage interested readers to refer to Ruth McCambridge and Rick Cohen’s analysis in the Nonprofit Newswire of what they see as “cognitive dissonance’” In a two part series, they look at significant different slants on the same information within philanthropy, charities and academics. McCambridge writes, “…many were surprised to see that corporate giving had gone up. No one much believed that but that number includes in-kind donations in two areas—pharmaceuticals and information technology.”
One paragraph in McCambridge’s Giving USA and You – Cognitive Dissonance Anyone? Part I has particular interest to those of us in community organizing. Many if not most community organizing groups fall under the “public society benefit” category. McCambridge writes: “…philanthropic dollars are hardly equitably distributed across fields or the country. While giving to “public society benefit organizations” (including the United Way and the various commercial gift funds such as Fidelity and Vanguard) was down only 2.6 percent, giving to human services was down by 13.5 percent and to both arts and education by 11.9 percent. Focusing just for a moment on the human services field, we also know that many human service organizations were slammed with higher levels of need so that the revenue against need equation was even more radically changed than the revenue decline by itself would suggest.”
Of course, corporate giving will not determine whether there is community organizing but many of the service and advocate groups created out of successful organizing do attract corporate donations.
Other concerns examined by McCambridge are how regions are impacted. For the areas that have hit hard economic times, he writes about a “cascade of revenue problems.” She specifically examines Kentucky, 49th in per capita Foundation giving, which is facing even worse conditions this year and next in available government funding.
In Giving USA and You – Cognitive Dissonance Anyone? Part II, Rick Cohen asks,
“Why was corporate giving up 5.5 percent in 2009 just as corporations were taking their damaged P&Ls into federal bailout swan dives, hostile acquisitions, and chapter 11 bankruptcies?”
These two articles do a service in dissecting how corporate giving is calculated. They also raise the issue of how to separate tax write offs and actual cash exchanges. As Cohen writes, “But the overall picture is not as rosy as Giving USA’s estimate of a 5.5 percent increase in corporate charity. Corporate cash grantmaking is down, corporate giving is down for most corporations in general, and some old standby donors have shrunk or even gone out of business. If you’re on the receiving end of pharmaceutical generosity, you’re a corporate philanthropy winner.”
Nonprofit Newswire is an example of the importance of an independent media within the philantrophic sector.
Walter Davis
