Are progressive nonprofits too dependent on foundations?

According to Giving USA last year Americans gave $260.28 billion, a rise of 6.1%, which approaches the inflation-adjusted high of $260.53 billion that was reached in 2000. 2005 giving was estimated to be 2.1% of GDP.

To those of you who are professional fundraisers, this is old news, as is the fact that individuals continue to play the most significant role in philanthropy. Last year, excluding bequests, they gave 76.5% of all gifts.

But a very interesting article recently published by In These Times will put these figures on end for many of you.

When you ask Daniel Faber [who teaches sociology at Boston’s Northeastern University and edited Foundations for Social Change: Critical Perspectives on Philanthropy and Popular Movements] who funds the left, he bluntly says that the dirty little secret is that most of the money comes from large foundations. Faber estimates that “foundation dollars provide 70 to 90 percent of funding support for most social movements.”

... “The Heritage Foundation has 275,000 individual donors,” says Kim Klein. “The Right-To-Life organizations have thousands of small donors. The grassroots of the right wing is actually funded by the grassroots and the grassroots of the left wing is funded by foundations, and I think it’s an enormous problem."

Though Kim stands firmly on the left, on this point, she is absolutely right.