Are Private Sector Foundations Contributing to Faith-Based Organizations? Analyzing Grants for Faith-Based Social Service This is a summary of the report, Private-Sector Contributions to Faith-Based Social Service, by Jason Scott, published by the Roundtable on Religion and Social Welfare Policy. Scott examined nearly 3,000 private foundations to learn about the extent and nature of their giving to faith-based organizations. Multiple searches of the 2,740 private independent foundations and 230 community foundations with total annual giving of $1,000,000 or more revealed 368 with an expressed interest in funding both social services and religious activities. Most of these entities – 351, or 95 percent – were independent foundations, while 17 were community foundations. The mean annual giving of these foundations was $8,073,704. Because of large annual giving by the top foundations (such as $652,091,000 by the Ford Foundation), this average is highly skewed. The median total annual giving of $2,068,924 is more representative of the typical foundation on this list. We next examined all the grants awarded by the 100 largest of these faith-friendly foundations, to determine the percentage of their giving that supports faith-based social services. While these foundations indicated an interest in funding both social service and religious activities, the criteria listed above eliminated a large proportion – if not all – of the grants of some foundations (Footnote 12). We focused the rest of our analysis on the 837 grants awarded for faith-based social service by the 50 foundations that ranked the highest in their total annual giving to faith-based social service. We found that the majority of these foundations are independent; only three are classified as community foundations. Their median annual total philanthropic giving was $8,605,504. In total, these 50 foundations awarded $68,851,811 annually to support faith-based social services. These foundations award an average of 17 grants annually for faith-based social service, and vary substantially in the total amounts they devote to such grants, with median faith-based giving amounting to $652,000 annually. To put this finding in perspective, we calculated faith-based giving as a percentage of each foundation’s total annual giving. We found that the average foundation in this sample devoted 10 percent of its gifts to faith-based social service, while 32 percent (16) devoted more than 10 percent. Because we coded each grant according to the categories in Table 2 (see below), we were able to analyze the distribution of these grants across social service areas (see Table 3). We found that the foundations awarded the largest amount in the “human services” category – not surprising given the breadth of this category. Many of the grants classified as human services supported multiple service domains. For example, a grant supporting a neighborhood center that contains a food pantry, a daycare center, a community health clinic, and an after-school program would be classified as a human services grant. (A large proportion of the grants awarded to the Salvation Army were classified as human services.) The totals for each category may therefore partly be a reflection of the breadth of activity it includes. Table 2: Grant Subject Descriptions GRANT SUBJECT | DECRIPTION/EXAMPLES | AIDS Outreach | Education, medical care, housing and shelter | Child Care | Early childhood education, daycare center | Child Welfare | Foster care, residential/custodial care, abuse/neglect | Civil Rights/Advocacy | Legal services, immigration assistance | Community Development | Economic and neighborhood improvement | Community Organizing | Leadership development, labor advocacy | Community Health Care | Community health clinics, pharmacy, education | Crime/Violence Prevention | Education, youth programs, victim services | Disaster Relief | Financial aid, food, shelter and clothing | Emergency Food Assistance | Food pantry, holiday food assistance | Employment Assistance | Job training, welfare-to-work programs | Family Services | Family planning, pregnancy assistance, adoption | Homeless Services | Transitional housing, shelter, food and clothing | Housing Development | Housing construction, Habitat for Humanity | Human Services | Multiple subject human services, Salvation Army | Mental Health Services | Family counseling, drug and alcohol treatment | Offender/Ex-Offender Services | Prison programs, post-release re-entry services | Parish Nursing | Health education, nursing care, health clinics | Senior Citizen Services | Residential care, nursing services, home aid | Youth Development | After school programs, mentoring, scholarship fund | Table 3: Total Grant Amount By Subject Area SUBJECT AREA TOTAL AMOUNT AWARDED Human Services $ 16,167,320 Community Health Care $ 8,718,820 Youth Development $ 6,673,921 Community Development $ 6,668,538 Homeless Services $ 5,658,789 Senior Citizen Services $ 3,851,889 Child Welfare $ 3,795,174 Parish Nursing $ 2,850,895 Housing Development $ 2,002,409 Offender/Ex-Offender Services $ 1,963,196 Family Services $ 1,869,827 Crime/Violence Prevention $ 1,562,500 Mental Health Services $ 1,470,224 Child Care $ 1,438,698 Community Organizing $ 1,156,383 AIDS Outreach $ 1,067,528 Civil Rights/Advocacy $ 752,500 Employment Assistance $ 653,200 Disaster Relief $ 325,000 Emergency Food Assistance $ 205,000 |
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