Smaller, emerging, and growing community foundations that may be focused on asset growth typically have a relatively high proportion of endowed assets. Larger community foundations, with an increased focus on diversifying their portfolios and providing flexible options for donors to engage in philanthropy, are more likely to have a higher proportion of pass-through funds.
An economy of scale is achieved by larger community foundations, resulting in higher rates of fundraising and grantmaking per capita even as they tend to serve regions with more populous urban centers. Smaller community foundations, several of which had strong fundraising years of their own and serving typically smaller populations, reported similar per capita totals to cohorts other than the very largest community foundations. (n=234)
The median FY19 survey respondent saw gift totals remain relatively flat from FY18, with a modest increase of just above two percent. One-fifth of all respondents saw fundraising totals remain within 10 percent of FY18 levels, while 37 percent of respondents reported a moderate or dramatic decrease in their gifts received.
Longitudinal tracking of growth in assets, gifts, and grants is done using a consistent sample of the largest 100 community foundations by asset size, that nonetheless reflects the overall trends experienced by the broader field. Within this group, assets grew by more than 11 percent over their collective FY18 total. The group's collective fundraising total decreased – for the first time since 2015 – by seven percent, while the grantmaking total decreased for the first time in eight years, by roughly five percent.