Small Family Foundations Becoming Popular With Younger Donors
Small Family Foundations Become Growth Area
While for many Americans the phrase "family foundation" suggests images of great wealth and multi-million-dollar endowments, more than a third of the family foundations in the United States have less than $250,000 in assets — and their number is the growing increasing rapidly, the Baltimore Sun reports.
According to preliminary estimates from the Foundation Center in New York City, the number of family foundations increased nearly 40 percent between 2000 and 2005. Moreover, new family foundations are being established at a rate of about six per day, according to the Council on Foundations.
Betsy S. Nelson, executive director of the Association of Baltimore Area Grantmakers, said she is seeing more people in their forties and fifties forming family foundations, as opposed to waiting to establish them in their wills. Others that age are choosing to create donor-advised funds at community foundations or for-profit financial service firms, which typically offer administrative support in exchange for somewhat less flexibility.
But small family foundations remain a critical element of the nonprofit ecosystem because the grants they award tend to be recurring. "They're important to us...those smaller gifts," said Courtney B. Wilson, executive director of the Baltimore & Ohio Railroad Museum, which receives approximately fifty gifts a year from family foundations. "If a family foundation either has a connection to or likes what an institution is doing, they'll give pretty freely to it without restrictions."
Smith Hopkins, Jamie.
“Small Family Foundations Become Growth Industry.”
Baltimore Sun
2/23/07.
Primary Subject: Philanthropy and Voluntarism
Location(s): National
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