Trade Center Memorial Makes Debut on Philanthropies List

The World Trade Center Memorial Foundation has joined the annual honor roll of American nonprofits that received the most private support last year.

The organization, which raised $115 million in 2006, ranked no. 158 on a list of 400 entities compiled by the Chronicle of Philanthropy. The list is published in the Chronicle's November 1 issue.

At the top of the list was United Way of America in Alexandria, Va., with $4.1 billion raised. No. 400 was the Eisenhower Medical Center in Rancho Mirage, Calif., in the midst of a $200 million capital campaign, with $42 million raised.

The World Trade Center Memorial Foundation, which began operations in May 2005, in 2006 reported donations totaling $115 million. By June 1 of this year, it had raised $300 million of its $350 million goal for the building of a memorial and museum at the World Trade Center site. The fund-raising feat is impressive, as the foundation's president quit in May 2006 after criticism for rising costs and delays. Mayor Bloomberg then stepped in as chairman of the foundation.

"It is a big deal that it raised enough money to get on the list," the editor of the Chronicle of Philanthropy, Stacy Palmer, said of the new entrant from New York. "They put a lot of effort into bringing in a lot of very big gifts and saying, 'We need to go ahead and move forward on this.'"

The foundation's gifts come from all over the country, but New York-based donors have given the most generously. Mr. Bloomberg and philanthropist David Rockefeller have each contributed $15 million. The Starr Foundation contributed the largest gift thus far, of $25 million. The chairman of the Starr Foundation, Maurice Greenberg, has a long friendship with the former chairman of the Lower Manhattan Development Corporation, John Whitehead, who initially oversaw the memorial project. More recently, the then attorney general, Eliot Spitzer, led an investigation of Mr. Greenberg. Now Mr. Spitzer has a seat on the board of the foundation.

The foundation reported that it spent $3.2 million, or 2.8% of its income, on its fund-raising activities in 2006.

Cultural, educational, and health care institutions in New York also made the Philanthropy 400. The Museum of Modern Art was the top museum on the list, at no. 125, with $133.5 million in private donations. Behind MoMA was Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts, in the midst of a huge campaign to redevelop its campus, at no. 143 with $121 million raised. New York State's two Ivy League universities, Cornell and Columbia, made the top 35 behind Stanford, Harvard, and Yale universities and ahead of New York University.

Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center was the highest-ranked health care facility on the list, at no. 32, with $306 million in private donations in 2006, ahead of Dana Farber and the Mayo Clinic and general care hospitals. The top-ranked general care hospital, at no. 79, was also in New York: NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital raised $196 million in 2006.

The Chronicle characterized the gains in giving between 2005 and 2006, at 4.3%, as "modest." The most upwardly mobile categories were donor advised funds, with a 32% increase in 2006 over 2005; arts, with a 17.5% increase, and community foundations, with a 19% increase.

The Chronicle survey also detailed the organizations that brought more than half their total giving in the last three months of the year. New Yorkers were particularly generous during this time period to the Robin Hood Foundation, which received 45% of its donations in December 2006, as well as to institutional investment vehicles such as the Citigroup Global Impact Funding Trust and the Goldman Sachs Philanthropy Fund.

One factor accounting for Robin Hood Foundation's intake at the end of the year is its annual holiday card campaign. The foundation creates holiday cards featuring artwork by well-known artists; this year's are Mark Rothko and Cindy Sherman.

Donors are asked to make a donation for each person on their holiday card mailing list. The cards are also printed with a message that a donation has been made in the recipient's honor.