Survey Shows How Charities Cope with Recession

Yesterday we blogged about a similar survey.  Today we'll look at a Guidestar survey, completed by 2,279 readers of the Guidestar newsletter.  Most are public charites.  The survey shows results similar to those from a similar survey completed in March.  52% of charities in the survey reported a decrease in contributions, the same percentage reported in the prior survey.  Most (72%) of the charities report fewer individual gifts and smaller individual gifts and some report that private foundation grants, corporate gifts, and government grants were smaller or discontinued.

For the same period, 58% of the charities showed that demand for their services had increased, yet 57% had had to reduce services offered.  Salary freezes and layoffs were among the other strategies for coping with decreased funds, but 36% showed a budget increase from the prior year (36% showed a decrease).

The data does not provide a lot of new information, but it is interesting to see how charities are being affected and how some are trying to cope.

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