Silicon Valley Community Foundation Raised $985 Million in 2012

From Foundation Center

The Silicon Valley Community Foundation has announced that it attracted $985 million in new gifts last year, making 2012 its most successful fundraising year since the foundation was created by the merger of the Community Foundation Silicon Valley and the Peninsula Community Foundation in 2006.

Total contributions in 2012 more than doubled the nearly $470 million the foundation received in 2011, although some $500 million of the total came from Facebook co-founder Mark Zuckerberg’s gift of eighteen million shares of Facebook stock in December. In addition, 138 new funds were established at the foundation in 2012, bringing the total number of funds under its umbrella to more than 1,650, while assets under management grew to $2.9 billion. In 2012, the foundation awarded $292 million in grants to nonprofits working locally, nationally, and around the world.

One of the largest community foundations in the world and the largest single funder of nonprofits in the Bay Area, SVCF ranks among the top twenty U.S. funders by total giving, based on 2011 data, according to the Foundation Center. In 2012, the foundation ranked thirty-first on the Chronicle of Philanthropy’s top 400 fundraising list, with $472 million in contributions, not counting the Zuckerberg gift, up from a hundred and thirtieth the previous year.

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Cantor Fitzgerald Relief Fund Donates $10 Million to Sandy Relief

From Foundation Center

Cantor Fitzgerald, the New York City-based financial services firm that lost more than two-thirds of its employees in the 9/11 attacks on the World Trade Center, has announced a $10 million donation to help families affected by Superstorm Sandy.

Launched by the Cantor Fitzgerald Relief Fund in conjunction with Cantor Fitzgerald and its affiliate BGC Partners, the Hurricane Sandy Family Support Program will distribute a total of $10 million in the form of $1,000 prepaid debit cards to ten thousand families with children in nineteen schools in communities in Brooklyn, Queens, Long Island, Staten Island, and New Jersey that were hit hard by Sandy. The schools selected for assistance are in communities where Cantor employees live or have other connections.

“We understand the tremendous loss that has shaken so many families and are committed to provide money directly to those in need,” said Cantor Fitzgerald and BGC Partners chair and CEO Howard W. Lutnick. The firm had to relocate about five hundred employees from one of its offices in lower Manhattan when the storm flooded the area, Lutnick told the Associated Press. That office has yet to reopen.

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Fiscal Cliff Deal Expected to Increase Charitable Giving

From Foundation Center

The individual income tax provisions adopted by Congress to avoid the fiscal cliff will boost charitable giving by an estimated $3.3 billion, or 1.3 percent, in 2013, an analysis by the Urban Institute finds.

According to the brief, What Does the Fiscal Cliff Deal Mean for Nonprofits? (5 pages, PDF), the American Taxpayer Relief Act of 2012 will result in increased charitable giving primarily because it raises the top marginal tax rate from 35 percent to 39.6 percent for taxable income above $400,000 for individuals and $450,000 for couples. Taxpayers who itemize deductions can continue to deduct charitable contributions at their full marginal income tax rate, which means donors in the top tax bracket will see their after-tax cost of giving fall from 65 cents on the dollar to 60.4 cents, or by 7 percent. The brief suggests that all $3.3 billion of the estimated increase in charitable giving will come from a 2.5 percent increase in giving by taxpayers in the top income quintile.

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