Paul Carttar and Jed Emerson, William and Flora Hewlett Foundation

How do funds flow within the nonprofit sector? What are the major sources of funds and which nonprofits receive the most funds? Jed Emerson and The Bridgespan Group teamed up to address these and other thought-provoking questions about the intricate world of nonprofit funding. Money Matters presents the findings of this data-driven research project, tracking the $900B of funds that flowed to nonprofit organizations in 1998.

Some of the findings may surprise you. For example, private foundations, despite their high profile, provided less than 2% of the funds flowing into the sector. And commercial institutions, which tend to apply "for-profit" standards of creditworthiness to qualifying borrowers, accounted for over 98% of the debt capital. Amassing and analyzing a vast body of data, the authors paint a robust picture of nonprofit funding dynamics.

With this factbase established, the authors step back to interpret their findings in a concluding section. They pose provocative questions about how well current funding mechanisms are functioning. Money Matters is a first step down the path towards assessing resource allocation efficiency in the nonprofit sector, and as such it is important as much for the questions it raises as for those it is able to address.