Charities Bracing For a Long, Hard Winter

Lehman Brothers CEO Dick Fuld may have helped ignite the financial apocalypse, but consider this: In 2006, through his Kathy and Richard S. Fuld Jr. Family Foundation, Fuld also gave away over $5 million. The Lehman Brothers Foundation further gave $39 million last year to charity or for the charitable giving of its workers " many of whom are now unemployed or considerably less secure about their own financial futures.

That's bad news for the many nonprofits and smaller foundations that depended on Lehman's largesse. Indeed, as the financial crisis takes down some of the richest houses on Wall Street, the effects will ripple out to the charities that rely on them and serve the poorest in America's big cities and the rest of the world. The stock market crash has already damaged the endowments of big foundations, universities and hospitals, while charitable giving from ordinary citizens seems to have decreased out of financial fear.