Key Facts on Corporate Foundations (April 2011)

Giving by the nation's approximately 2,700 grantmaking corporate foundations remained basically unchanged in 2010, at $4.7 billion.

According to Key Facts on Corporate Foundations (6 pages, PDF), giving by corporate foundations (in current dollars) increased 0.2 percent year-over-year in 2010 -- but fell 1.6 percent when adjusted for inflation.

 
 

Other key facts from the survey:

• 2,733 -- Number of grantmaking corporate foundations in 2009
• 18.7 percent -- Share of corporate foundations reporting more than $1 million in giving in 2009
• 10 percent -- Corporate foundation giving as a share of all foundation giving in 2009

 

As the chart below shows, education (22 percent) and human services (20 percent) were the top funding priorities of corporate foundations in 2009 (the trough of the economic downturn), followed by public affairs/society benefit (19 percent), health (15 percent), arts and culture (14 percent), international affairs (4 percent), environment and animals (4 percent), and science and technology (2 percent).

 
 
Compared to community and independent foundations, however, the larger corporate foundations included in the Foundation Center's grants sample were more likely to allocate funding for the arts and public affairs/society benefit. Indeed, much of the support for the latter reflected giving for philanthropy/voluntarism, including federated funds.

 

According to the report, the top corporate foundation by total giving (includes grants, scholarships, and employee-matching gifts) was the Sanofi-Aventis Patient Assistance Foundation ($321,376,881), followed by:

• Bank of America Charitable Foundation ($186,149,230)
• Novartis Patient Assistance Foundation ($177,195,258)
• GE Foundation ($103,573,293)
• Wachovia Wells Fargo Foundation ($99,435,085)
• JP Morgan Chase Foundation ($77,145,399)
• ExxonMobil Foundation ($73,544,150)
• Wells Fargo Foundation ($68,367,615)
• Citi Foundation ($66,507,524)
• Verizon Foundation ($56,289,332) 

Looking ahead, just over half (52 percent) of corporate foundations responding to the Foundation Center's annual forecasting survey expect to increase their giving in 2011.

 

For a list of the top twenty-five corporate foundations by total giving and/or to download a copy of the report, click here.