Just as individuals can be overwhelmed by the charitable appeals filling their mailboxes, area foundations face similar, if super-sized, selection problems, and welcome ways to increase the bang in their donor bucks.
And that?s the kind of order-out-of-chaos work that the 130-member Association of Greater Baltimore Grantmakers specializes in.
“We are a membership organization of foundations and corporate giving programs that provides an opportunity for funders to learn about community needs and how best to address these needs ? and, if appropriate, find ways that they might partner together,” said ABAG Director Betsy Nelson of the 23-year-old educational, professional development and peer networking group for area grantmakers.
ABAG also participates ? as it does with sponsored charter schools and the Baltimore Neighborhood Collaborative ? in several direct assistance and funding programs, and sometimes provides fee-based, proposal-writing advice to grant-seekers in a philanthropic arena that, according to latest Internal Revenue Service data, registered $31.8 billion nationally and $686 million statewide in foundation giving in 2004.
There are 1,412 foundations in Maryland, and almost half of them in the greater Baltimore area, representing $11.3 billion in assets. Nationwide there are almost 68,000 foundations, comprising $510 billion in assets. Between 1997 and 2004, foundation giving in Maryland grew by 117 percent.
Individually ? which is 75 percent of all U.S. charitable giving ? Americans donated $162 billion to charities in 2004, or 2.40 percent of their adjusted gross income. In 2004 Marylanders contributed $4.8 billion, or 3.08 percent of their adjusted gross income, to charities ? thereby making the state fifth nationally in giving.
ABAG implements its core mission, Nelson said, through an array of customized programs in grantmaking skills-building; seminars and ongoing research in program issues and trends; discounted giving-related products and services offered by partnering organizations; and through ABAG?s 10 “affinity groups,” which allow members to sound out other member-foundations in similar outreach areas.
“We?ve had a wonderful partnership over the years with ABAG,” said Barbara Blount Armstrong, chief operating officer of the Associated Black Charities, which collaborated with ABAG in a donor development initiative called the Baltimore Giving Project and the African-American Philanthropy Initiative. ABC now manages the latter initiative.
Nelson said ABAG?s core budget is $465,000 annually and almost $1 million when counting its several direct-support projects.
