How The Chronicle Compiled Its Donor-Advised Funds Survey
May 4, 2006 | Read Time: 2 minutes
The Chronicle’s seventh annual survey of donor-advised funds is based on information provided by 88 of
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Statistics: Percentage of Assets Donor-Advised Funds Distributed
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the nation’s gift funds, community foundations, and other nonprofit groups.
Donor-advised funds allow people to donate cash, stock, or other assets to special accounts, claim a tax deduction for the gifts, and recommend how, when, and to which charities money in the account should be paid out.
Assets rose by about 22 percent at these funds, growing from $12.7-billion in 2004 to $15.5-billion last year.
Assets in donor-advised accounts declined at only seven of the groups that responded to the survey.
The organizations that participated in the survey awarded a total of $3.3-billion in grants in 2005, an increase of nearly 21 percent over 2004.
The figures in the survey were based on data provided by 18 commercial investment companies, 41 community foundations, and 29 other groups, such as universities and Jewish federations.
All organizations known by The Chronicle to offer donor-advised funds were included in the survey, except for the community foundations, which were selected from the 50 organizations that raised the most money in 2005, based on an annual study by the Columbus Foundation, in Ohio.
Americans continue to create more donor-advised accounts each year, The Chronicle found.
The number of funds in operation at organizations in the survey rose by more than 10 percent from 2004 to 2005, reaching 92,806 at the 86 groups that provided figures.
Eleven of the 86 organizations said the number of accounts they oversee had dropped, but the total number of funds that those organizations lost was just 142.
One group in the survey, Domini Global Giving Fund, was created in late 2005, which explains its lack of data for the 2004 year, the modest size of its assets ($30,000), and the number of accounts it holds (three). Other funds in the survey, such as Horizons Foundation and the OppenheimerFunds Legacy Program, were unable to provide comprehensive figures for both 2004 and 2005.
The survey of donor-advised funds was compiled by Noelle Barton and Candie Jones.
