Arts groups among winners as charitable giving rebounds

Arts and culture were America's fastest growing charitable choices in 2012, bringing relief to many arts groups after some lean years.

Donations to arts organizations jumped nearly 8 percent in 2012, reaching $14 billion, according to Giving USA, the leading national report on charitable giving. It's a sign that funding for everything from music to museums — which took a back seat to social service donations during the recession — is making a comeback.

Many Minnesota nonprofits couldn't help but notice the trend.

"It's a different world out there,'' said Carley Stuber, vice president of philanthropy at the Minnesota Children's Museum in St. Paul. "We're seeing an explosion of growth with visitors and with donors, even donations at the door.''

The Children's Museum, for example, received $2 million in individual and corporate donations during the fiscal year ended June 2008, but $4.4 million in the fiscal year that ended last month, Stuber said.

Giving in all major funding categories went up, the report said, albeit not as quickly. Americans' generosity overall grew by 3.5 percent, or $316 billion, in 2012.

"The arts, culture and humanities subsector, as well as the environment and animals … were among the areas experiencing significant growth in 2012," said Una Osili, director of research at the Lilly Family School of Philanthropy at Indiana University, which researched the report.

Park Square Theatre in St. Paul also reported that fundraising turned a corner. Individual giving jumped from $146,000 in 2011 to $359,000 this fiscal year, said Michael-jon Pease, the theater's executive director. The number of $1,000-plus donations jumped from 39 in 2011 to 73 this year, he said. Gifts from new donors jumped from $49,700 in 2011 to $111,700.

"Individual giving in all categories has trended up," he said.

While arts and education funding topped the growth chart, they still represent only 5 percent and 13 percent of the giving universe, respectively. The biggest slice of the philanthropy pie goes to religious groups, which receive about a third of all donations. Religious donations, however, were flat in 2012 and have been flat for nearly a decade, Osili said.

The report didn't break down giving by state. But Bill King, recently retired president of the Minnesota Council on Foundations, said Minnesotans donated about $4 billion to nonprofits and charities in 2010. Corporations donated about $1.4 billion, King said.

Nationally, Americans' donations to causes and charities peaked in 2007 at $344 billion, Osili said. It then plummeted to a 30-year low of less than $300 million for the next two years. It has climbed slowly since.

The Animal Humane Society of Golden Valley has had mixed reaction to the downturn in the economy, said Katie Nelsen, vice president of marketing and development. One one hand, its annual Walk for Animals — which draws about 10,000 people and 5,000 pets — has failed to reach its more than $1 million annual goal for the past couple of years, she said. But overall donations have slowly grown, even with the economic downturn, going from about $5 million in 2008 to $6.2 million last year, she said. She attributed that in part to the hiring of two staff members to work on digital marketing and communications, as well as someone to solicit major gifts.

The economy's upward trend contributed to Americans' growing generosity, the report said. Likewise, proposals in Washington, D.C., to cap the charitable tax deduction may have nudged some donors to prepay gifts they had intended to make in 2013.

Corporate donations, meanwhile, grew 12 percent, considerably faster than individual donations, the report said. The $18 million donated in 2012 included cash, in-kind donations and grants from corporate foundations. Those donations account for 6 percent of charitable giving.

The growth in corporate giving may be tied to increased profits. For 2012, corporate pretax profits surged to more than 16 percent, according to the Bureau of Economic Analysis, a fact cited in the report.

But corporate funding has become more targeted, the report said, focusing on causes closely aligned to the mission of the corporation. A company that manufactures medical devices, for example, may focus more tightly on health causes.