The stock-market surge that has caused many foundation endowments to soar has led to a record number of big grants, the Foundation Center says. The number of grants worth $2.5-million or more jumped to 193 in 1996, up from 165 the previous year, according to a new Foundation Center report.

The two largest grants: $203-million from the Robert W. Woodruff Foundation in Atlanta to support medical education at Emory University and $140-million from the Moody Foundation in Galveston, Tex., to build a recreational and educational complex there that will include an aquarium and a science center.

The findings, published in the most recent edition of The Foundation Grants Index, are based on a survey of 1,010 foundations. Foundations represented in the report make up just 2.5 per cent of all grant-making foundations, but their giving accounts for more than half of all grant dollars awarded in the country.

Total giving by the foundations surveyed amounted to nearly $7.3-billion last year, an increase of almost $1-billion, or 15 per cent, over the amount awarded the previous year. But since the sampling base changes from year to year, the report focuses most of its analysis on the breakdown of grants rather than the total amount allocated.

As in the past, educational institutions received the largest share of grants -- 25.4 per cent. But without the Woodruff grant to Emory, the amount going to education would have dipped to the lowest level in the 1990s.

What’s more, support for efforts to improve elementary and secondary education dropped off dramatically, from 11.3 per cent of all foundation grants to support education in 1995 to 5.4 per cent last year.

In 1996, foundation giving to human-services charities -- the second-largest category -- rose to 17.3 per cent, up from 16.5 per cent the previous year. But that total was buoyed greatly by the $140-million Moody grant. Without that grant, the share going to human services would have dropped sharply.

Support for health charities declined from 17.3 per cent of foundation spending to 16.2 per cent last year. Foundation giving to arts and culture -- 12.4 per cent of all grants -- saw a slight rise over 1995, the worst year on record, when arts grants fell to 12 per cent of all foundation grants.

ADVERTISEMENT

Copies of The Foundation Grants Index 1998 can be obtained from the Foundation Center, 79 Fifth Avenue, New York 10003-3076; (800) 424-9836 or (212) 620-4230; fax (212) 807-3677. The cost is $165, plus $4.50 for shipping the first copy and $2.50 for each additional copy. The book can also be ordered from the center’s World-Wide Web site (http://www.fdncenter.org).