Most disaster giving goes to relief efforts
The COVID-19 pandemic greatly accelerated a longrunning pattern in giving by foundations and charities for health and natural disasters, a new Chronicle analysis of nine years of data show.
Ninety percent of the $5.2 billion donated in 2020, the most recent year for which data is available, went to dealing with immediate disaster needs. In other years, about half of disaster grantmaking went to such purposes. The rest went to helping communities prepare for hurricanes, droughts, life-threatening spread of disease, and other problems as well as to recovery and rebuilding.
The amount of money foundations and charities gave in response to COVID-19 is stunning compared with the past. The 2020 figures are 15 times as much as the contributions in 2019. To be sure, grantmakers aren’t keeping up that pace: Preliminary figures for more recent giving show foundations are slowing their giving considerably.
The review of data from the Center for Disaster Philanthropy and Candid, a research organization that tracks giving of all kinds, shows the sums flowing to disasters aren’t always going where they are most needed, namely for long-term recovery efforts and ensuring communities are resilient enough to withstand the growing number of natural disasters caused by climate change.
Here are five trends revealed by the Chronicle’s analysis:
› The spike in COVID-19 giving cooled quickly.
Private and community foundations, along with United Ways and other groups, gave $5.2 billion to disaster relief in 2020 compared with $352 million in 2019, primarily due to the urgency and the severity of the Covid-19 pandemic.
“There’s nobody who wasn’t affected in some way by the pandemic,” said Tanya GulliverGarcia, director of learning and partnerships at the Center for Disaster Philanthropy. “And I think philanthropy saw that as a moment to step up and make a change and respond.”
The money went to a wide variety COVID-19 relief efforts, such as vaccine research, hunger relief, and direct cash payments to people in need.
Grace Sato, Candid’s director of research, said it is already clear that the increase in giving fueled by Covid-19 has subsided. A survey of foundations released by Candid in May found Covid-19-related funding declined by 31% from 2020 to 2021.
› The focus is mostly on immediate relief.
Our review of the nine years of data found funding for immediate relief was far more abundant than for anything else, including preparing for disasters or helping communities recover and rebuild. Those efforts have consistently received about half of the giving on average in the eight years before 2020.
Gulliver-Garcia said media coverage helps fuel grant makers’ and donors’ interest in spending more on response and relief. Most of the philanthropic funding for disasters is given within the first five days of a crisis and is earmarked for immediate relief, she said, so it can’t be used later.
“Long-term recovery doesn’t paint a dramatic picture for the 6 o’clock news,” she said. “Our goal is to help funders understand they can give money now, but they should also save some money and think about what long-term investments communities are going to need.”
That disparity is apparent in places like New Orleans, where she lives. “There is still damage and loss that you can trace directly back to (Hurricane) Katrina,” she said. “There’s infrastructure that hasn’t been repaired, and that’s because the focus was all in those immediate first few days.”
Providing more funding to local grassroots organizations working over the long term to rebuild communities is essential, said Sandrina da Cruz, director of disaster response at GlobalGiving, which connects donors and companies to community-led organizations.
“We need to be able to trust that community leaders are in the best position to respond to longer-term needs, and we must invest in infrastructure,” said da Cruz. “And all that hard work is happening long after a crisis has made headlines.”
› Giving doesn’t keep up with climate change.
The reports over nine years show natural disasters, particularly storms, usually received the most philanthropic funding. Philanthropic support shifted year-to-year depending on which disasters were more prevalent. Funding spiked in 2017 after Hurricanes Harvey, Irma, and Maria, which devastated communities in the United States and the Caribbean.
Climate change is expected to make such natural disasters, including wildfires and droughts, more common and more severe. Extreme weather events have doubled in the past decade, according to the National Centers for Environmental Information.
Beth Gazley, a professor who has researched disaster philanthropy at Indiana University, said the latest report’s findings demonstrate the need to fund planning and resiliency efforts for disasters caused by climate change. That means foundations must examine whether their funding “addresses the symptoms and not the problem itself.”
› The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation reigns as top donor.
The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation has given more to disaster relief than any other grant maker each year except in 2017 and 2018. The Howard G. Buffett Foundation took the number one spot in 2017 as it awarded two grants totaling $38.1 million to support the removal of land mines in Colombia. And the Texas-based OneStar Foundation, which was founded in 1974 by then-Gov. Dolph Briscoe, overtook Gates in 2018 when it collected and distributed money for Hurricane Harvey relief efforts.
In 2020, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation gave six times as much as the year before. The global grant maker contributed $485.9 million to support research into Covid-19 testing, treatments, vaccines, and other relief efforts.
The American Red Cross, which provides support in the immediate aftermath of disasters, has regularly been a top recipient of funding from big foundations and other donors.
› Donor-advised funds give more.
The nine-year review shows Americans are channeling more money from donor-advised funds to support disaster relief. DAFs allow people to get an immediate tax deduction for contributions to their accounts and then send funds to causes they care about. But there is no requirement for the money to go to a working charity within a certain time frame.
The increase in giving to disaster causes comes as giving to donor-advised funds has grown sharply over the last few years..
Donor-advised funds and corporations have frequently contributed to relief for severe weather disasters during the past nine years.