Nonprofit Literature Blog

Comparing Family Foundation Giving (US and UK)

Are you trying to compare U.S. philanthropy with giving in other countries? You can start off with a new report that examines the top 100 family foundations in the United States, United Kingdom, Germany, and Italy based on 2006/2007 data.

In Family Foundation Philanthropy 2009, you will learn that total charitable giving at the largest U.S. family foundations was three times greater than the top grantmakers in the United Kingdom. When the charitable spending was measured as a percentage of GDP however, the UK ranked higher (0.1% of GDP in the UK, 0.03% in Germany, and 0.05% in the United States).

This report also contains qualitative analyses, including several case studies for each country.

Click here to read the full report. 

For more information about family foundations in the U.S., remember to read the Foundation Center’s latest Key Facts report.

What Can Foundations Do About Risk?

Helmut Anheier, Director of the Center for Civil Society at UCLA's School of Public Affairs, recently wrote an essay on the economic downturn and role of foundations in addressing risk in a global community. He noted that, “Foundations can create arenas where risks are enunciated, exaggerated, discounted, debunked, assessed and debated. They can build arenas that encompass information, expert knowledge and reasoned deduction as well as fears and prejudice, but above all, they can help provide forums for expressing and communicating differential knowledge about risk, be it in the field of finance, health care, the environment, communication or housing.” He also points out that since foundations are independent from election politics and market forces, they are in a unique position to advance this dialogue.

Indeed, an ongoing discussion on risk management can help local and global communities anticipate outcomes and understand systemic risk in various sectors.

What are your thoughts on this topic? Who is the risk manager at your organization?

The full essay can be found in the 2009 edition of The Europa International Foundation Directory (published by Routledge) and is also available on several web sites. (Google Search)

Mental Health Grantmaking

In the paper “What Do We Really Know About Foundations' Funding of Mental Health?” Ruth Tebbets Rousseau and Andrew D. Hyman present findings from their brief scan of quantitative data from the Foundation Center and qualitative information from foundation leaders. The authors note that grantmaking for mental health continues to decline as a proportion of health funding through 2006, with the top ten grantmakers in this area providing nearly 50% of grant dollars.

How can the mental health community and funders address this decline in giving, and identify areas to focus on? As mentioned in our last blog post, the nonprofit sector is gravitating toward integrated systems to assess nonprofit impact at the field level, and these approaches may help discover successful mental health programs and priority areas where more funding can be directed to.

In addition, Brousseau and Hyman note that since mental health is often an aspect of broader program areas, tracking and analyzing grant data is challenging and requires more information and analysis. As the mental health community further explores giving in the field, the authors suggest key questions to consider:

“How is mental health defined?”

“How are grants for mental health counted?”

“How do foundations make decisions about funding mental health, and what are the strategies underlying their approaches to the field?”

You can read more about Brousseau and Hyman’s findings in their GrantWatch essay in the July-August 2009 issue of Health Affairs (p. 1210-1214).

For other readings related to health funding, view our topical resource list.