The Foundation Centers newest report on 2008 giving foundfoundation funding declined across five of the ten major subject areas among a matched set of 493 funders. You can download the 4 page PDF here ( Foundation Giving Trends and here is the bad news of the analysis of all grants of at least $10,000 awarded during 2008 by nearly 1,500 of the largest private and community foundations in the US
Grant dollars awarded by these funders totaled $25.3 billion in 2008 and represented roughly half of overall giving by U.S. foundations.
- Grants for human services experienced the steepest drop in 2008 — down 12.7 percent among the matched set of funders — followed by science and technology.
- Overall grant dollars increased by 5.4 percent,
- Support for the environment and international affairs each jumped by more than 50 percent.
- Among specific populations, the economically disadvantaged benefited from the largest share of grant dollars — a record 27.5 percent.
"The full force of the economic crisis did not register in 2008 foundation giving," said Steven Lawrence, director of research and the report's principal author. "But losses among half of the major fields showed what would come the following year."
