Multi-Year Grants
The NonProfit Times
August 30, 2013
The National Committee for Responsive Philanthropy’s The State of Multi-Year Funding 2011 shows that the more things change the more they stay the same when it comes to the long-term, flexible grant dollars that nonprofits need to succeed.
Since 2004, only one-tenth of sampled funders reported multi-year grantmaking. The same is true of 2011: Fully 89 percent of sampled funders reported no multi-year grants.
Though multi-year funding amounted to $7.2 billion or 29 percent of grant dollars, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation alone provided 60 percent of those dollars. In short, multi-year grants remain scarce despite the broad acknowledgment of the benefits of having predictable levels of support over several years.
Grantmakers’ aversion to multi-year giving debunks several hackneyed myths about institutional philanthropy.
