Foundation Giving in '08 Defied Huge Asset Decline

The nation's foundations lost nearly $150 billion in assets last year, or almost as much as they have given away over the last four years, a new study has found. The study, by the Foundation Center, a chief authority on American philanthropy, determined that foundation giving for the year nonetheless held steady at an estimated $45.6 billion, falling by just 1 percent on an inflation-adjusted basis. Still, without the $2.8 billion given away by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, the nation's largest, the decline would have been almost 3 percent. Moreover, the center cautioned that because the steep loss of asset value happened so late in 2008, giving in the current year was likely to drop much more.