Often, people ask me about the difference between individual giving and foundation giving. They want to know if they can focus on individual giving only instead of foundation grants. What I say is that for most nonprofits, individual giving is decreasing and will continue to decrease. Your mission needs the right kind of foundation grants to support your operations. Once again, philanthropic researchers confirm my prediction.
The Chronicle of Philanthropy has a new article from Indiana University’s Lilly School of Philanthropy has found that individual giving is at the lowest level in the last 20 years. Further, the study states that most individual giving is happening in very wealthy households. The most wealthy households will create family or private foundations to accomplish this giving or they will give through community foundations.
The researchers state that individual giving started to decrease during the Great Recession and never recovered. What has recovered at extremely high rates since the Great Recession is the stock market–where foundations will invest at least 5% of their increased returns into nonprofits. The stock market is twice as high now as it was in 2014. This means that very wealthy people–and foundations– will have more to give in the coming years. The high returns of the stock market are also why wealthy people will put their philanthropic investment into a foundation–where the money can grow and then they can give more. As long as stock market prices returns remain this high, foundation grants will be a better return on your investment than individual donor requests.
Your mission needs foundation grant funding to support your operations. If you need help, Millionaire Grant Lady can help you to position your programs for success and write winning grant applications. You can schedule a meeting with our team to learn more here.
