Giving In Today's Economy

We are not sounding an alarm that there will be a collapse of charitable giving in 2009. Clearly, conditions are ripe for both an economic and philanthropic breakdown. We may suffer a worst-case scenario: the Dow Jones Industrial Average declining to 5000; charitable giving plummeting 20 percent or more. But, at press time (that is to say, mid-December 2008), no one can know yet what 2009 will bring.