As Thanksgiving approached, Westport-based Save the Children renewed its annual “holiday catalog” initiative under which donors can select specific projects for their dollars to support.
The rest of Fairfield County”™s nonprofits have more than a few items on their own wish lists ”“ most of all, cash.
In November, the Fairfield County Community Foundation released a 50-page report on the status of area nonprofits as of last April and May, with a bleak picture emerging and many reporting no improvement in the months since the survey took place.
About four in five of nonprofits surveyed have seen support drop in the recession, though only one in five reporting cutting staff or hours.
More than half of endowments surveyed said they have no endowment to provide a cushion, and the vast majority said they could not survive the recession without making significant cost cuts, even as demand on their services increased.
Despite the nation entering last year the worst downturn since the Great Depression, charitable giving was down just 2 percent in 2008, according to a report authored by Indiana University”™s Center on Philanthropy and commissioned by Giving USA, a Glenview, Ill.-based organization that tracks the industry.
While that marked the first drop in nearly a quarter century, the $307.7 billion donated was still the second-highest total ever. By virtue of the will she wrote before her death in 2007, former Greenwich resident Leona Helmsley was the country”™s most generous donor last year, according to the Chronicle of Philanthropy, bequeathing an estimated $5.2 billion.
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Corporate giving was down 4.5 percent, with corporate America contributing 5 percent of all charitable donations. As the recession hit, the General Electric Co.-supported GE Foundation announced it would prioritize charities providing basic needs like food. More than half of such charities polled by Indiana University said they have been under-funded this year, many of them severely so.
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Religious organizations were among the few to register an increase, and an impressive one at 5.5 percent according to Indiana University.
Donations to foundations, however, were down 19 percent last year alone, even as the number of charitable causes clamoring for funding has swelled in recent years. Between 1998 and 2008, Connecticut had a net gain of 3,800 charities, giving it more than 20,000 in all, according to data tracked by the National Center for Charitable Statistics. Some 4,500 registered charities are based in Fairfield County.
Among those is the Stamford Hospital Foundation, which recently held an annual holiday fundraiser. As in past years, the foundation created a “giving tree” at the event, allowing people to choose a specific item for the hospital to purchase with their donation.
“In a tough financial year, these are things (doctors) might not ordinarily spend money on,” said Fern Pessin, director of special events for the Stamford Hospital Foundation.
In concept, the giving tree is not unlike the holiday catalog promulgated by Save the Children, whose “holiday catalog” is stocked with ranging from software for schools ($50), to entire school buildings ($42,000). Like many charitable organizations, Save the Children and Stamford Hospital are doing their utmost to find creative ways to draw support.
Many workers are attempting to find their own ways to give even as their family budgets come under pressure; more than half of corporate employees participate in their company”™s volunteer initiatives, according to a study published in November by Stamford-based LBG Associates. More than a third of workers polled indicated they are allowed to volunteer hours during the work day.
