The COVID-19 pandemic greatly accelerated a long-running 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.
