Donations to the nation’s biggest charities dropped 11 percent last year, a decline that was the worst in the two decades since The Chronicle started its Philanthropy 400 ranking of the organizations that raise the most from private sources.
Nonprofit organizations say they don’t expect to have done much better by the time 2010 ends. More than one in four of the groups provided projections for 2010, and the median change they predicted was an increase of just 1.4 percent.