Top US charities see 9 pc drop in fund raising this year

NEW YORK: Philanthropy this year may not be on large scale as a survey said big fund raisers anticipated nine per cent decline in money collected for charity.

"The nation's most-successful fund-raising organisations anticipate that giving will decline this year by a median of 9 per cent," the survey by 'The Chronicle of Philanthropy' said.

Interestingly, around half of the charities in the survey expect an even steeper drop in their fund raising activity this year.

Going forward, in the year 2010 as well the fund-raising outlook for these organisations is not much better, said the survey, which took into consideration 400 organisations that raise the most money from private sources.

It further highlighted that the United States' biggest and most sophisticated fund-raising operations were not as badly hit by the recession as smaller charities.

Last year, donations to the 400 top fund-raising groups rose by 1 per cent to USD 76.2-billion, at a time when overall charitable giving dropped by 5.7 percent in 2008.

The top ten list of organisations that raised the most last year, as per the The Chronicle of Philanthropy, was topped by United Way Worldwide (with USD 4,023 million), followed by Salvation Army (USD 1,876 million).