Share of Foundations That Report on Their Grants Is Dropping, Study Finds

By ZIYA SERDAR TUMGOREN

Over the past decade a declining proportion of foundations has issued

annual reports or other publications that detail their giving, according to a new study by the Foundation Center.

The study, which is based on surveys of more than 18,000 grant makers, found that 3,419 foundations provided information last year on grant making and application procedures, or issued annual reports — nearly double the number that provided such information a decade earlier.

But, the study found, the share of foundations providing such information failed to keep pace with the growth in the number of new foundations, especially small ones that lack the personnel and financial resources to produce annual reports and other publications.

More than 75 percent of foundations with assets of $100-million or more issued such publications in 2000, compared with only about 10 percent of foundations with assets of less than $5-million, the study found. Among all foundations surveyed, about 19 percent issued publications.

Since 1997, the share of larger foundations in the United States that issue publications has declined from about 25 percent to less than 19 percent, according to the Foundation Center.

Loren Renz, vice president for research at the Foundation Center, said that the rapid growth in the number of new foundations, many of them without staff members, suggests that “it may take several years for voluntary foundation reporting to climb back toward the one-in-four level seen throughout most of the 1990’s.”

The study also found that:

• Foundations with headquarters in the West were most likely to issue publications, followed by those in the Midwest.
• Older foundations were more likely to issue publications than new organizations. More than two-fifths of the foundations in the survey that were established before 1950 issued publications in 2000. But about one in four groups established between 1950 and 1979, and one out of eight established since 1979, issued publications.
• Some 840 foundations maintain Web sites, including 104 that provide information and updates to the public exclusively through a site.

Highlights of the report are available on the Foundation Center’s Web site at http://fdncenter.org.

The full copy of the report is available to subscribers of the Foundations Today series, which includes five annual research reports and costs $95 a year.

Orders should be sent to Foundation Center, Department NA14, 79 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10003-3076; (800) 424-9836; fax (212) 807-3691.

Online orders can be made via the center’s Web site.

FOUNDATIONS: HOW THEY REPORT TO THE PUBLIC