Archive for August, 2010

Wall Street Mogul to Close Fund, Focus on Philanthropy



Last year, billionaire fund manager Stanley F. Druckenmiller shifted $700 million of his own money to his family foundation. Before the transfer, the foundation had assets of about $6.5 million.

Transferring a quarter of his reported net worth to the nonprofit earned Druckenmiller the Chronicle of Philanthropy’s No. 1 ranking of largest individual charitable contributions in 2009. That year, he and his wife, Fiona, gave $100 million to New York University’s Langone Medical Center to create a neuroscience institute.

“The foundation gives you a billboard that says, ‘These are the causes I support,’” Stacy Palmer, the Chronicle’s editor, said in a phone interview. “It certainly lets nonprofits know what’s available.”

Druckenmiller, 57, said on Aug. 18 that he plans to shut down his hedge fund, Duquesne Capital Management LLC, which oversees $12 billion, and spend more time on philanthropy. Topping his list is serving as chairman of the board of Harlem Children’s Zone, a nonprofit that assist at-risk children and adults.

He gave $25 million to the organization in 2006. A $100,000 gift from his foundation also shows up on its 2004 tax return. Druckenmiller declined a request to speak about his charity work.

“His leadership has been important to helping the group be as successful as it is,” Palmer said about Harlem Children’s Zone, which reported a surplus of $10.6 million in its fiscal year ended June 30, 2008.

Druckenmiller joins other billionaires, including Microsoft Corp. founder Bill Gates and Citigroup Inc. Chairman Emeritus Sanford Weill, who have stepped down from top executive jobs to devote more time to philanthropy.

The Druckenmiller Foundation’s annual gift giving grew to about $26 million last year from $3.6 million in 2000. Druckenmiller ranks No. 354 on Forbes magazine’s 2010 billionaires list, with an estimated net worth of $2.8 billion.

He also serves on the board of the Children’s Scholarship Fund, which has given grants to 111,000 needy grade-school students, and New York’s Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center. Last year, he gave $500,000 to the Children’s Scholarship Fund.

Druckenmiller, who graduated from Bowdoin College in 1975 with a degree in economics, has left a permanent mark on his alma mater as a member of its investment committee. Stanley F. Druckenmiller Hall, a science building on the Brunswick, Maine, campus, is named for his grandfather.

In 1997, he boosted an initial pledge of $14 million to $30 million to set up an unrestricted fund at the institution.

The Pittsburgh native, who dropped out of a Ph.D. program at the University of Michigan, launched his career as an analyst at Pittsburgh National Bank. He made his mark as the lead portfolio manager for George Soros’s Quantum Fund by managing money for Soros beginning in 1988. In 1992 Druckenmiller made a profit of more than $1 billion for Soros by speculating the British pound would be devalued.

Duquesne Capital, the firm Druckenmiller founded in 1980, was a “macro” fund, capitalizing on broad economic trends, trading commodities, bonds, currencies and stocks. He averaged 30 percent returns annually, though his returns in 2008 and 2009 were about one-third of that.

Druckenmiller has given to a range of nonprofits during the past 12 years, including $500,000 to Human Rights Watch; $200,000 to Teach for America, which helps boost student achievement; and $200,000 to the New York Foundling Hospital, which cares for abandoned children.

Last year, he gave $100,000 to the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation, and $50,000 to the poverty-fighting Robin Hood Foundation supported by hedge-fund-industry managers and Wall Street executives.

He also gave 29 grants to students, ranging from $4,500 to $14,500, through his Oakmont Scholarships program, named after the Oakmont Country Club in Pennsylvania where he has golfed for three decades.

“When someone has transferred a lot of wealth to their foundation, they’re sending a clear signal,” Patrick Rooney, executive director of the Center on Philanthropy at Indiana University said in a phone interview. “They’re moving from success to significance.”

Source: Bloomberg

Young Lawyers Turn to Public Service



In August 2008, Nathan Richardson committed to following in the footsteps of so many young lawyers before him: a summer position with a big law firm, followed by a job offer before he ever cracked open a third-year textbook. And then everything changed.

With offers of employment made in August 2008 and the full force of the recession hitting in October, many big law firms — like Latham & Watkins, where Mr. Richardson was a summer associate — had to re-evaluate the job offers made to members of the class of 2009. As a way to keep their costs down while holding on to promising associates, many offered the graduates the chance to take up to a year off before starting as associates, complete with a stipend of $60,000 to $75,000. They could travel, do research, or choose — as many did — to work in the public sector.

With the deferral year ending, some of these newly minted lawyers are surprised to find themselves reconsidering their career goals and thinking about staying with public interest law. When Latham & Watkins asked Mr. Richardson to defer his start date until at least October 2010, he took his interest in environmental issues to Resources for the Future, a nonprofit policy group based in Washington, where he did legal research on the Deepwater Horizon oil spill and climate change.

Now, despite heavy student-loan debt and a family to support, he has decided to say no to Latham and stay with public interest law, even though it pays far less.

“This is an amazing work environment,” said Mr. Richardson, who graduated from the University of Chicago Law School. “I’m working with a lot of really smart people and getting published. I’m not sure if there’s anywhere else I could do this, at least at this point in my career.”

Mr. Richardson claims that everyone he knows has at least considered staying in public interest — and law school faculty members confirm that they are seeing a growing interest in that field.

Other deferred associates like Avi Singh see public interest law as a “sustaining motivation” that keeps him coming to work every day. Mr. Singh is a 2009 Harvard Law School graduate who decided to stay on with the Santa Clara County public defender’s office in San Jose, Calif., instead of returning to the firm Quinn Emmanuel after a four-month deferral. “Here, I’m helping clients on a very basic level,” he said.

“What’s interesting about the deferral process is that, even though I thought it wasn’t right, it got me to pursue what I wanted to do in the first place,” Mr. Singh said.

Educators say more students are holding on to their attraction to public interest law throughout law school.

“For the first time, there is now a public interest lawyer in the Oval Office,” said Diane T. Chin, the director of the John and Terry Levin Center for Public Service and Public Interest Law at Stanford Law School, as one explanation for why more young lawyers are considering service careers.

In 2009, 25 students entering their third year at Stanford Law indicated a commitment to public service. In 2010, that number was 36, according to Ms. Chin. The average class size is 180.

Alexa Shabecoff, the assistant dean for public service at Harvard Law School, said: “There is an uptick in global interest in public service that has trickled down to the high school level, and students go on to college and law school with a public service ethos.”

For some, an interest in public service is why they go to law school, but a load of debt and a traditional pipeline move them toward the private sector.

David Stern, executive director of Equal Justice Works, an organization devoted to getting new legal talent in the nonprofit and public sectors, notes that the pay gap between public interest and private firm work is steep. “The gap is multiples of the public interest salary, with a public interest attorney starting at, on average, $35,000 to $39,000 a year,” he said. “In a big law firm, these attorneys are starting at $140,000 to $150,000.”

Someone who took a stipend from a law firm and then opted for public service law could also find themselves negotiating a payback plan for the stipend; policies differ from firm to firm on whether or how much of a stipend must be repaid.

Jennifer Romig, another 2009 University of Chicago graduate, decided to return to the Washington office of Ropes & Gray after her deferral year, but said her experience at Southeast Louisiana Legal Services in New Orleans would color the rest of her career.

“Like most law students, I had intentions of doing pro bono work,” Ms. Romig said. “Now, after having spent an entire year seeing what a difference you can make, the theoretical has become real. And I cannot imagine forgetting that.”

Some in the legal community perceive a sense of competition among recent graduates who were once on different career paths. “I think it is hard for those wholly committed to public interest to see their deferred friends getting jobs at great public interest organizations while they struggle to land their dream jobs,” said Ms. Shabecoff, the assistant dean at Harvard.

But it could be that nonprofits would have few, if any jobs, for entry-level lawyers because of the economic climate, and deferred associates are picking up the work for public interest groups that would otherwise be slashing services because of budget cuts.

Tiela Chalmers, the executive director of the Volunteer Legal Services Program of the San Francisco Bar Association, said the seven deferred associates who worked there for a year were invaluable in providing legal services for the indigent. After three full-time employees left in 2009, Ms. Chalmers was prepared to freeze hiring and make do with a depleted staff. Then she heard about this wave of graduates being offered stipends from law firms to work in the public interest sector, often with salaries higher than those of an entry-level legal aid attorney.

Her group, like other nonprofits, was able to offer training and substantive work without the burden of paying a salary.

“It’s a win-win, even if public interest firms have to take on the training,” Ms. Chalmers said. “Given the realities of the economic climate, a year is a long time to have these very bright folks. We get eight or nine months of really strong work out of them” before they return to their firms. Without the deferral program, she believes her group would have handled only half of the landlord-tenant disputes and domestic violence cases from the past year.

For Mr. Stern and Equal Justice Works, the short-term benefit is evident: “In the relay race for justice you always need fresh legs, because it’s really hard work.”

Source: The New York Times

Rewards and Development Top List of Retention Tools



As the economy recovers and workforce expansion rises, concerns about engaging employees and retaining critical talent are top of mind for many organizations, amid continuing cost pressures.

Mercer’s 2010 Attraction and Retention Survey found that more than one-quarter (27 percent) of participating organizations are expanding their overall workforce, while only 3 percent have instituted broad-based reductions. By comparison, Mercer’s Leading through Unprecedented Times Survey, conducted in May 2009, showed fewer firms (12 percent) indicated they were hiring/expanding overall, while more firms (15 percent) instituted broad-based reductions. Cautious optimism prevails, however, as almost half (45 percent) of organizations are hiring to replacement levels only, while another 25 percent are hiring just for critical areas among select staff reductions.

Conducted in April, Mercer’s survey assesses the talent and rewards challenges organizations are facing as the economy recovers along with the tactics they are using to promote employee attraction, retention and engagement. It includes responses from more than 320 employers across all industries throughout the U.S. and Canada.

According to the survey findings, almost half (47 percent) of organizations that assessed employee engagement over the past 12 to 18 months report that levels of employee engagement have increased.

“Higher levels of engagement can be a result of reward and talent programs adopted by employers that creatively seek a balance between responding to employee needs and coping with cost pressures,” said Loree Griffith, a principal with Mercer’s rewards consulting business. “Employees’ desire to preserve their jobs may have also contributed to higher engagement levels demonstrated by a willingness to go the extra mile, be resilient and embrace change.”

While the most common way to assess employee engagement is through employee surveys, more than half (53 percent) of organizations also gauge employee engagement through informal interactions with leaders, managers and employees. Focus groups and online forums are used by 33 percent and 7 percent of organizations, respectively.

Despite efforts to engage employees during a difficult year, organizations have growing concerns about whether their valued employees will stay once the economy recovers. Almost two-thirds (62 percent) of companies believe that voluntary turnover will increase as the economy and job market continue to improve. Moreover, Mercer’s survey shows that certain positions are more sought after than others because of skill shortage or market demand. These roles include R&D/scientific engineering and sales, followed by information technology and executives/top management.

“Typically, engaged employees are less likely to seek job opportunities outside the company and therefore have a more positive impact on both individual and business performance,” said Griffith. “By identifying talent needs necessary for future growth, employers can implement the appropriate steps for developing employees internally or hiring staff externally.”

With regard to the workforce, Mercer’s survey shows that the majority (75 percent) of organizations have an even balance between hiring externally and building from within. However, trends to develop employees internally are more prevalent than relying solely on new hires.

Rewards

As the job market picks up and concerns about engagement and retention remain at the forefront, cost pressures still loom. According to Mercer’s survey, slightly more than two-thirds (67 percent) of organizations will be influenced equally by external competitiveness and internal affordability when making pay decisions. However, about one-quarter (24 percent) of organizations report that affordability will have a greater impact on pay decisions.

Over the past 18 months, amid limited pay budgets, organizations increased their use of non-cash rewards as a means to enhance employee retention and engagement. Rewards offered more during this time period include communicating the value of total rewards to employees (27 percent), work-life programs (22 percent), formalized career paths (21 percent) and special project opportunities (20 percent).

Despite past emphasis on non-cash rewards, for 2010 and beyond, organizations plan to focus on money as well as career development to retain and engage the right talent. Leading reward elements perceived to have the strongest impact on employee retention and engagement for 2010 are base salary increases (41 percent), short- and long-term variable pay (36 percent), and training and career development (35 percent). Interestingly, approximately one-quarter of organizations report that programs such as work-life initiatives, employee communication campaigns and time-off plans – elements of importance during the past year and a half – will have less impact on employee retention and engagement going forward.

“Non-cash programs like career pathing, increased communication to employees and work-life initiatives are important in fostering employee retention and engagement regardless of the economic environment,” said Griffith. “However, as recovery occurs, employers want to revisit pay as a means to staying competitive and retaining top-performing employees.”

Source: Talent Management

What Small Businesses and Organizations Can Learn from the Space Shuttle Program



A disastrous NASA space shuttle mission, compared with a successful mission, has yielded advice for how any organization, including small businesses, can learn from mistakes.

Researchers studied NASA’s response to a October 2002 Atlantis flight in which a piece of insulation broke off and damaged the left solid rocket booster but did not impede the mission or the program. According to the researchers, there was little follow-up or investigation in response to the Atlantis incident.

The shuttle Columbia was launched next and another piece of insulation broke off and damaged the shuttle’s left wing. This time the shuttle and its seven-person crew were destroyed on re-entry on Feb. 1, 2003. This disaster prompted the suspension of shuttle flights and led to a major investigation resulting in 29 recommended changes to prevent future calamities.

The difference in response to the two cases, the researchers said, came down to this: The Atlantis was considered a success and the Columbia a failure.

The research focused on companies and organizations that launch satellites, rockets and shuttles into space — an arena where failures are high profile and hard to conceal. But it has implications for even the smallest businesses, said Vinit Desai of the University of Colorado Denver who worked with Brigham Young University’s Peter Madsen on the project.

“Small organizations should work to actively identify and seek to learn from small mistakes,” Desai told BusinessNewsDaily. “Small mistakes are sometimes more frequent than larger ones, but since they are often less costly, they can be easy to dismiss.”

Desai contends that paying attention to small mistakes will help prevent larger ones.

“Larger or more devastating failures can often be prevented by paying attention to small mistakes and fixing the underlying problems. It’s even more important for small and growing businesses to detect and correct errors, since large problems can often be catastrophic and directly threaten the organizations’ viability,” Desai said.

The pair’s work was published in the Academy of Management Journal.

Desai said that small businesses, which can be more nimble in reacting to failures, can buck the trend of organizations ignoring failure or try not to focus on it.

Managers may fire people or turn over the entire workforce while they should be treating the failure as a learning opportunity, Desai said. Employers should be sure to include employees who are responsible for mistakes in the learning process, he added.

“It is essential for employees who cause or are involved in failures to be involved in recovery efforts. The insights they bring to the table can be invaluable at preventing future errors, since they have firsthand knowledge of what went wrong. It often is not any one single employee who is responsible, but rather a chain of events involving how various people and technologies interacted,” Desai said. “In these cases, it is particularly important to involve employees, since each person can bring his or her own specific perspective to bear on learning efforts.”

Source: The Christian Science Monitor

Job Market May Be Better Than It Seems



The job market’s recovery has received a mountain of negative press in recent days, but according to a new report from Challenger, Gray & Christmas Inc., the news may not be all bad.

The Chicago-based placement firm notes that several positive trends point to a strong job market recovery, including a slowdown in the pace of layoffs and an increase in new jobs.

Indeed, layoffs have greatly slowed down since the second half of 2009. “Through the first half of 2009, employers announced 896,675 job cuts. In the second half of 2009, total job cuts dropped 56 percent to 391,355. The number of planned layoffs fell another 24 percent in the first half of 2010, with employers announcing workforce reductions totaling 297,677,” according to the report.

This year payrolls in the U.S. have also begun to make gains. Starting in January of this year, payrolls saw “five consecutive months of net growth and more than one million new jobs added to the economy,” per Challenger, Gray & Christmas.

And while the nation’s unemployment rate is still high at 9.5 percent, it seems to have peaked at 10.1 percent in October of 2009.

“By most accounts, we are barely a year into the recovery. At this point in the previous two recoveries – following the 1991 and 2001 recessions – the job market was actually getting worse. Many people are so caught up looking at the weekly and monthly numbers, that they fail to look at the bigger trends, which indicate just how much the job market has improved over the last 12 months,” said John A. Challenger, chief executive officer of Challenger, Gray & Christmas, in a statement.

Source: Boston Business Journal

Nonprofits Pay Up



Despite the dicey economy, nonprofit CEO pay rose nationwide, according to a study of 3,005 charities, with a median compensation of $147,273, up 4.7 percent from the previous year.

Charity Navigator used data from the nonprofits’ Form 990 filings with the Internal Revenue Service for the 2008 fiscal year for its sixth annual study.

Among the findings released August 18:

  • Only 14 charities paid their CEO more than $1 million.
  • CEOs in the Northeastern United States drew the highest salaries, a median $185,000, followed by the Mid-Atlantic region at $164,575. Mid-Atlantic CEOs had the highest median raise among geographic regions at 5.9 percent.
  • Education nonprofits were the highest-paying sector, with average CEO compensation of $272,645 and raises of 5.9 percent.
  • Religious nonprofit CEO pay was the lowest, at an average of $90,000. Raises were 1 percent.
  • Charities with more than $500 million in total expenses reported median CEO pay of $695,379. Nonprofits with expenses ranging from $1 million to $3.5 million reported median pay of $95,481.

Charity Navigator President and CEO Ken Berger said relatively high CEO compensation is a key factor in causing a donor not to support a charity.

“That is especially true now, given the recession’s impact on many donors’ paychecks,” Berger said in a prepared statement.

“Donors want to know that their charitable donations will go as far as possible to support the charity’s good works, rather than pad a CEO’s wallet.”

He said the study’s results provide strong evidence that the majority of nonprofit CEOs are not “excessively compensated.”

Charity Navigator’s numbers surprised two nonprofit recruiters who believe local pay is much lower.

“We’re seeing some increases, but they’re very modest, smaller than they were three or four years ago,” said Robert Teeter, president of Greensburg, Pennsylvania-based Teeter Associates. “It’s something like 2 percent. A few nonprofits are still frozen.”

Todd Owens, a principal of Dewey & Kaye, part of McCrory & McDowell in Pittsburgh, said the median salary “seems a little high.” He said that fiscal 2008 data would have been budgeted before the downturn.

“If you looked at fiscal year 2009, you’d probably see increases that were much smaller,” Owens said.

“I know many CEOs in this region who have not had pay increases in two or three years.”

Owens said his clients are spending “considerable time” defining a salary range prior to beginning a CEO search and are assessing what comparable nonprofits pay their leaders.

“We are also seeing a reduction in benefits such as automobiles, health and golf club memberships, and other perks that are now viewed as nonessential, given the current economic climate,” he said.

John Thornburgh, executive vice president and director of the higher education practice at nonprofit recruitment firm Witt/Kieffer, said scrutiny has increased when it comes to executive compensation in the education sector.

“That’s going to be a factor for the foreseeable future,” Thornburgh said. “We’re not going to see a rollback, but the heyday of uncapped compensation packages with all sorts of perks, benefits, and bonuses is long gone.”

Because nonprofits are recruiting more heavily from the corporate sector, Thornburgh said, salaries have become “as competitive as possible to get the best leaders” but boards also are much more focused on performance and results.

Source: Portfolio.com

Best Workers May Be Poached by Rival



It seems employers are getting aggressive at going out and trying to find new talent as the top performers are increasingly important to companies trying to grow during the economic uncertainty.

That’s according to a new study from Right Management that says more than half of all employees claim they have been approached within the past 12 months by another employer with a possible job offer.

Right Management, the talent and career management unit of Manpower (NYSE: MAN), analyzed responses from more than 3,000 individuals throughout North America via an online poll conducted in partnership with LinkedIn.

Some 52 percent of employees said they had been offered a new role with another employer sometime within the past year.

“Our findings suggest there’s some movement in the job market and that employment prospects are beginning to improve,” said Katherine Ponds, Senior Vice President and Regional Practice Leader – Career Management at Right Management. “This is further confirmed by research from Manpower’s Employment Outlook Survey, which showed that as many as 18 percent of U.S. employers anticipate an increase in new hires during the third quarter.”

Ponds warned that the hyper-competitive marketplace means everyone is pressing for an edge, especially if that edge comes from poaching talent.

“Without doubt, right now one or more of your competitors is probably gunning for your high performers — your workforce elite,” she said. “Without an effective workforce strategy in place, a lot of intellectual property will be moving on to better opportunities.”

Among other key findings from the survey:

Those who held managerial titles and higher were most in demand, with 56 percent being approached by another company to discuss job opportunities.

The largest organizations were most at risk of employee defection, with 60 percent of employees being approached.

Individuals in consulting, engineering, sales and business development were most in demand, as were workers 24 to 35 years of age.

“While hiring is likely to remain conservative for the rest of the year with many organizations holding the line on costs, managers need to balance that against the need to invest in their employees,” Ponds said.

Source: Dayton Business Journal

League of Women Voters Celebrates 90th Anniversary Around the World





WASHINGTON, D.C. – The League of Women Voters of the U.S. is co-hosting a series of events with valued partners around the world to celebrate its 90th Anniversary.

For the first event, scheduled for August 9th and 10th in Buenos Aires, Argentina, the League has partnered with Fundación Directorio Legislativo to discuss the importance of strengthening the work of the women’s caucuses with elected women in Argentina.

Directorio Legislativo is a nonprofit organization that since 1999 has worked in generating, analyzing, and disseminating legislative information of public interest, promoting transparency and responsibility in Argentina.

The program includes presentations by former Argentine Senator, María Cristina Perceval; former senator from Colombia, Cecilia López Montaño, and former congresswoman from Perú, Ana Elena Townsend.

Representing the League of Women Voters is Zaida Arguedas, Deputy Executive Director and Senior Director of Global Democracy Programs.

This event is a follow up to the successful conference Women in the Americas: Paths to Political Power, held in 2007 and the 2008 publication: A Report Card on Women in Political Leadership.

The next event will be held in Ganja, Azerbaijan, on August 24 and 25th with former LWVUS president Kay Maxwell and former national board member Xandra Kayden.

Other events are planned to take place in Colombia, Brazil, and Kenya. The series will conclude in April 2011.

Source: League of Women Voters

Pledge to Give Away Half Gains Billionaire Adherents




By STEPHANIE STROM

More than three dozen billionaires, including well-known philanthropists like David Rockefeller and Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg of New York and less familiar big donors like Lorry I. Lokey, founder of Business Wire, have promised at least half of their fortunes to charity, joining a program that Bill and Melinda Gates and Warren Buffett started in June to encourage other wealthy people to give.

“During even the Depression’s worst years, my parents gave money — about 8 percent of their annual income of $2,200,” Mr. Lokey wrote in a letter posted on the Web site of the program, the Giving Pledge. “I remember saying to my mother that we can’t afford that. But she said we have to share with others. I learned from that to share.”

The pledge has been a matter of some debate in philanthropic and nonprofit circles, with some experts dismissing it as a publicity stunt and others predicting that it would produce a flood of new money to support nonprofit groups.

The program has predicted that it will draw $600 billion into philanthropy — or about twice the estimated total amount given by Americans last year — although in a telephone interview on Wednesday, Mr. Buffett acknowledged that some of the money would have been donated anyway.

“It’s not like all or half of the money represented is added money,” he said, “but some of it is added.”

He said he thought the real value of the pledge was found in the example that it set and in the sentiments expressed in the letters posted on the Web site.

Perhaps the biggest surprise on the list was Larry Ellison, the founder of Oracle, who became the bad boy of philanthropy after he withdrew a $115 million gift from Harvard in protest over the resignation of Lawrence H. Summers as president.

In a brief note addressed “To Whom It May Concern,” Mr. Ellison disclosed that he had already assigned 95 percent of his wealth to a trust and noted that he had already given hundreds of millions of dollars away for medical research and education.

“Until now, I have done this giving quietly — because I have long believed that charitable giving is a personal and private matter,” Mr. Ellison wrote. “So why am I going public now? Warren Buffett personally asked me to write this letter because he said I would be ‘setting an example’ and ‘influencing others’ to give. I hope he’s right.”

Mr. Buffett said that the number of people who had agreed to sign on was at the high end of his expectations. He said some people who did not agree to sign the pledge were planning to give away most of their wealth but did not want to draw attention to those plans.

Some went on “a tirade” about the government and rising taxes, Mr. Buffett said — declining, of course, to name them.

“A few got into that, and there are some that have a dynastic attitude toward wealth,” he said. “That tends to be the case where they themselves inherited this money and maybe feel some sort of intergenerational compact about it.”

Source: NY Times

Funding Patterns ‘Stable’ in 2008



While grant dollars among foundations grew 5.4 percent in 2008, the first year of the economic downturn, foundation funding fell in five of 10 big fields of interest, a new report says.

Foundation funding for human services showed the biggest decline, 12.7 percent, followed by funding for science and technology, says the 2010 edition of Foundation Giving Trends.

The study looked at grantmaking by nearly 1,500 foundations and, in some categories, among smaller groups of foundations.

The fields of environment and animals, international affairs, and health all posted double-digit gains, while the fields of human services and of science and technology reported double-digit declines.

Health accounted for the largest share of 2008 grant dollars, followed by education, human services and the arts.

The field of environment and animals posted the fastest rate of growth in foundation funding, nearly 30 percent, and international giving grew to a record-high 24.4 percent of grant dollars.

The economically disadvantaged benefited from the biggest share of grant dollars, 27.5 percent, while funding for women and girls grew 56 percent.

Funders awarded a record-high total of 214 grants of $10 million or more, with the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation providing six of the 10 largest grants, mainly for health and international development.

Still, data for 2008 suggest grantmaking priorities have remain “largely stable” over the long term.

Steve Lawrence, director of research at the Foundation Center and principal author of the report, says in a statement that while the “full force of the economic crisis did not register in 2008 foundation giving,” losses among half the major fields of interest “showed what would come the following year.”

Source: Philanthropy Journal

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