Current Research

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Disaster Giving
Beginning in early January 2005, the Center on Philanthropy began tracking charitable support from the United States for relief efforts in Southeast Asia following the tsunami of December 2004. The Center continued tracking charitable giving for disaster relief efforts after Hurricanes Katrina, Rita, and Wilma, and after the Pakistan Earthquake in October of 2005.

Philanthropic Giving Index
The Philanthropic Giving Index (PGI) reveals current trends and future expectations in American philanthropic giving. The PGI measures attitudes about the philanthropic giving climate twice yearly. In the Summer 2006 survey, fundraisers’ overall optimism about the climate for giving in the United States increased 4.3 percent over this time last year and was up 3 percent from December 2005.

Differentiation in foundations' policies and practices towards unrestricted grants and overhead cost funding
The study is part one in a three part look at the impact and consequences of foundations' overhead cost policies on educational and social services organizations being conducted by the Center on Philanthropy at Indiana University in 2006-2007. The presentation presents results from a national mail survey of foundations conducted in January 2006. The study examines whether variation in the type and size of foundations influence the existence of policies on funding of administrative and fundraising costs or unrestricted grants, attitudes behind by those policies, and tracks whether there has been a recent shift in funding of overhead costs.

This presentation examines:

• Current policies on unrestricted grants, full and/or partial funding of overhead, or any funding of indirect project costs by U.S. foundations;
• The foundation’s attitude towards funding nonprofit overhead costs;
• Recent change in overhead cost policies and why those changes were made; and
• Whether or not the foundations conduct periodic (or one-time) assessments of the impacts of their indirect cost or unrestricted grant policy on either the grant recipients and/or the constituents served by the grant request.