Amid meltdown, charitable gifts in US fell in 2008

Charitable giving by Americans fell by 2 percent in 2008 as the recession took root, only the second year-to-year decline in more than a half-century, according to an authoritative annual survey released Wednesday.

Particularly hard hit were social-service charities, which suffered a 12.7 percent drop in donations at a time when most of them were reporting increased demand for their services.

The last previous overall drop in giving was in 1987, the year of the record-shattering Black Monday stock market collapse.

The Giving USA Foundation, which has conducted the survey since 1956, expressed relief that the 2008 decrease was not worse, given that …