Charities Ended 2011 on High Note
Several major charities ended 2011 on a high, with some nonprofits conducting record-breaking holiday-season campaigns. Fund-raisers said the early numbers could signal a continued bounce-back for charitable giving this year after falling in 2008 and 2009 from its prerecession peak. more ...

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Metropolitan Opera Donations Hit $182 Million
In the warren of Met administrative offices, the people who run one of the world’s busiest opera houses had something to applaud: a record amount of contributions for the fiscal year that ended in July. According to preliminary figures released for the first time, the Met hauled in $182 million, an astonishing amount in a tough economic climate and 50 percent more than it raised just the year before.
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Met management said that much of this success with donors can be credited to the work of the Met assistant manager in charge of fund-raising, Coralie S. Toevs, who is considered a master of wooing and strategizing.
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The Met reported that the $182 million raised last year came from 49,100 donors, although Met trustee David G. Knott acknowledged that the bulk of the Met’s big gifts comes from a small number of donors. "A lot of the very wealthiest can give year in and year out," he said. more ...

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U.S. charitable giving shows modest uptick in 2010 following two years of declines
Total charitable contributions from American individuals, corporations and foundations were an estimated $290.89 billion in 2010, up from a revised estimate of $280.30 billion for 2009. The 2010 estimate represents growth of 3.8 percent in current dollars and 2.1 percent in inflation-adjusted dollars. more ...

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U.S. charitable giving falls 3.6 percent in 2009 to $303.75 billion
The Giving USA Foundation and its research partner, the Center on Philanthropy at Indiana University, today announced that estimated total charitable contributions from American individuals, corporations and foundations fell to $303.75 billion in 2009, down from a revised total of $315.08 billion for 2008. The 2009 drop represents a fall of 3.6 percent in current dollars. In 2009 the overall economy saw slight price deflation, which makes the adjusted change in giving year-over-year a decline of 3.2 percent. more ...

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U.S. charitable giving estimated at $307.65 billion in 2008
Charitable giving in the United States exceeded $300 billion for the second year in a row in 2008, according to Giving USA 2009. Donations to charitable causes in the United States reached an estimated $307.65 billion in 2008, a 2 percent drop in current dollars over 2007.

The 2008 number is the first decline in giving in current dollars since 1987. more ...

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Family Charities Get Focused
When Charlie Brink sold his stock in Mona Vie, a beverage company that he co-founded in 2005, he wanted to use $5 million from his windfall to fund his family's charity work. But when the family launched the Brink Family Foundation, "everyone in the family had their ideas," of where to direct the funds, but there is "only so much our dollars can do in these economic conditions," he says. So the family decided to focus their giving with a formal mission statement directed toward two areas: access to education and their hometown of Tampa, Fla.

"If our foundation is going to weather this economic storm, we need to be serious and focused," Mr. Brink says. more ...

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When Rosenwald Asks, The Wealthy Can't Say No He swears that in the half-century since his mother pressed a single, tiny mustard seed into his hand, not a day has gone by that he has not touched that ancient symbol of faith and good fortune.

Fifty years is a long time, but given the persistent providence that has accented E. John Rosenwald Jr.'s life, it is possible to believe that he never left behind the seed for a second. Straight out of Dartmouth College's business school, he joined Bear, Stearns & Company, and raced lickety-split to the Wall Street brokerage's highest offices, becoming co-president, then vice-chairman, while amassing a fortune that he promptly started giving away.

Along the way, he found that he also had a knack for getting others to give away their money, often in prodigious amounts. more ...