• They will act swiftly in times of urgent need. After the United States declared a national emergency in March 2020 due to COVID-19, foundations nearly doubled their year-over-year grant volume in April from 5.6% to 9.7% of total activity. They also increased their giving to human services and public/societal benefits charities, regardless of whether or not it aligned with their usual missions.
• They're loosening the reins on how their dollars are spent. Typically, philanthropists carefully define how they want their foundation dollars to be used by issuing “specific-purpose” grants. However, as they endeavored to meet the urgent needs in 2020, they gave more unrestricted “general purpose” grants to afford charities maximum flexibility in how to use the funding. At 46% of all grants in 2020, it’s the most balanced split we’ve seen since 2010 when general purpose grants represented just 32% of giving. And given the recent unrestricted grantmaking activity of billionaire MacKenzie Scott and the Chan-Zuckerberg Initiative, we’re considering this behavior a trend.
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