What Foundation Grants Support

Each year the Foundation Center indexes individual grants of $10,000 or more for over 1,000 of the largest foundations. Specifically, the grants processing staff identifies the subject of each grant, the type of recipient, types of support provided (e.g., capital or operating), the beneficiary groups served, and the geographic focus. Summary statistics on the grants database sample for the latest year include the following:

• The 2007 grants sample included 150,392 grants awarded by 1,339 foundations totaling $21.6 billion. These grants accounted for roughly half of the grant dollars awarded by over 75,000 active foundations.
• Between 2006 and 2007, grant dollars increased 13.2 percent (from $19.1 billion), while the number of grants increased 7.1 percent (from 140,484).
• In 2007 the sample included a total of 59,987 unique recipient organizations.