Providence’s nonprofit organizations provide essential services and sustain our social and cultural life. Nonprofits provide low-cost health care services, housing and meals for low-income neighbors. They offer us access to books, music, theater and visual arts. They nurture, educate and enrich our young people. They protect our environment and work to make our city more beautiful, livable and safe.
Many outside of the nonprofit world believe that charitable and community foundations, such as the Rhode Island Community Foundation provide a major share of the income needed to maintain these critical nonprofit services through grants. In fact, foundations provide only a tiny share of all nonprofit income.
On average among all US nonprofits, fees for services (like tuition) provide almost half of nonprofit income. Governments make up more than 30 percent of nonprofit income in the forms of grants and contracts, often linked to services nonprofits perform on behalf of government. Individual gifts and bequests are the next largest share at 10 percent. Grants from foundations make up just three percent of overall nonprofit revenue in the United States according to the most recent estimates. (Separate Rhode Island data is not available.)
Averages do not reflect the reality of individual nonprofits, particularly the small organizations with budgets under $1 million that that constitute 90 percent of the whole sector. For these groups, a well-timed and sizeable grant can make an enormous difference, providing the angel investments needed to meet emerging community needs or to take successful pilot programs to scale. A major grant can be a seal of approval that inspires confidence from individual and corporate donors. And because our grant makers engage with dozens or hundreds of potential grantees and their issues each year, they often have the perspective and prestige to influence how many more public and private dollars are used to support nonprofit services.
Below are a few examples of grants given by Providence-based foundations to citywide organizations:
71 – number of foundations based in Providence which awarded a grant during 2022
$1.4 billion – net assets of the Rhode Island Community Foundation, Providence’s (and Rhode Island’s) largest grantmaker as of the end of 2023
$77.1 million – total amount of grants awarded by the Rhode Island Community Foundation in 2023 (5.5 percent of net assets).
$25,236 – awarded to the Providence Animal Rescue League by the Rhode Island Community Foundation in 2022
$7,500 – grant amount received by Southside Community Land Trust from the Textron Charitable Trust in 2023
$30.7 million – net assets of the June Rockwell Levi Foundation, a supporting organization of the Rhode Island Community Foundation, in 2022
$2,500 – unrestricted grant amount received by Day One from the Loescher Charitable Trust in 2023
$469,340 – granted to Mount Hope Neighborhood Association by the Ralph R Pappito & Barbara A Pappito Private Family Foundation in 2022
$40,000 – awarded to Amos House by the June Rockwell Levi Foundation, a supporting organization of the Rhode Island Community Foundation, in 2022
$210,000 – awarded by the Helene & Bertram Bernhardt Foundation to Temple Beth El for educational programs in 2022
Sources:
Foundation Directory Online (available at Providence Public Library)
The Rhode Island Foundation Annual Report 2023
Nini Stoddard is a proud Providence resident. After living abroad as the child of a US diplomat, she returned to the United States to attend college. She lived in Connecticut and enjoyed working as a librarian, as a director of a regional non-profit, and as a prospect researcher. Nini moved to Providence in 2006 to work at Brown University as a senior prospect researcher. Now retired, she loves local history and volunteering.
Jonathan Howard is Co-founder of Cause & Effect, Inc., a consulting company that provides strategic planning facilitation, fund development planning and board strengthening to mission-driven organizations. He is a long- time resident of Providence.
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