Charitable giving fell last year by the largest percentage in five decades, according to a new study by the Giving USA Foundation.
    Individuals and institutions made gifts and pledges of $307.65 billion, a decrease of 5.7 percent on an inflation-adjusted basis over the $314 billion given in 2007, according to the foundation, a research organization backed by the fundraising industry.
    Some experts said they were surprised the drop was not even bigger, given that endowments fell by as much as 40 percent, the stock market declined by a similar margin, corporations posted unheard-of losses and unemployment was rising at a fast clip.
    "So far, my clients are holding their own, by and large," said Robert F. Sharpe, a fundraising consultant whose clients include St. Jude's Children's Research Hospital and Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center.
    The Giving USA Foundation study found that the drop in giving accelerated in the fall, as the impact of the economic crisis and the steep decline in stock markets took hold.
     "In the first half of the year, it was more or less business as usual for our clients, which is to say pretty good," said Del Martin, the chairwoman of the foundation and a partner at Alexander Haas, a fund-raising advisory firm in Atlanta. "Then, as we got into the last quarter, we saw corporations begin rethinking their giving in greatly different ways, and we saw individuals begin to revisit their philanthropic priorities."
     Even with the steep drop, charitable giving remained strong. Last year's giving outstripped all previous years on record except 2007, though the outlook for next year remains uncertain.
    Giving USA estimated that donations to educational institutions fell 9 percent on an inflation-adjusted basis to $40.94 billion.
     About two-thirds of public charities saw donations decrease in 2008, the foundation said. Most surprising, Martin said, was the decline in gifts to organizations working to meet basic needs, like food banks and homeless shelters, which are seeing a big increase in demand for their services.
     Many fundraising experts had predicted that donors would increase giving to those types of charities at the expense of others, like arts groups. But the foundation estimated that gifts to those organizations fell by an inflation-adjusted 15.9 percent, to $25.88 billion. (NYT)