Grantmaking organizations in the Kansas City area boast combined assets of nearly $4.7 billion and give away about $310 million a year, but some local nonprofit leaders contend that grantseeking has become more difficult as donor-advised funds have grown in popularity, the Kansas City Star reports.

The Greater Kansas City Community Foundation, for example, is home to more than 620 donor-advised funds that, together, account for $368.4 million of its assets and last year represented almost $38 million of its giving. According to the New York City-based Foundation Center, Kansas City-area foundations — including three of the nation's hundred largest, the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation, the Greater Kansas City Community Foundation, and the Hall Family Foundation — give about $310 million annually to nonprofit agencies, although that amount has remained relatively flat over the past few years, in part because of sagging stock market returns.

Yet most of the area's nonprofits are small and struggling financially. Of the 7,252 registered nonprofits in the region, only 2,333 have annual revenues of more than $25,000. "The nonprofit sector is among the slowest to come back as the economy begins its turnaround," said David Renz, director of the University of Missouri-Kansas City's Midwest Center for Nonprofit Leadership. "Of the organizations we're working with, three-fourths were running in the red last year."

Renz added that many area nonprofits are cutting services and staff, exploring earned-income ventures, and "looking for more creative ways to raise money, such as using the Internet to raise funds from new sources."