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Major Donor Says Finances Forced Cuts

David Gelbaum, a wealthy investor in clean technology, confirmed on Wednesday that, because of financial constraints, he had been forced to sharply reduce his donations to the American Civil Liberties Union and two other organizations.

Mr. Gelbaum, an intensely private philanthropist who has long insisted on anonymity in exchange for his gifts, said in a statement that he had made more than $380 million in donations over the last four years to the A.C.L.U. and two other organizations, the Sierra Club and the Iraq-Afghanistan Deployment Impact Fund of the California Community Foundation.

“I am willing to be publicly named now because my investments in alternative, clean energy companies have placed me in a highly illiquid position as a result of the general credit crisis in the American and world financial systems,” Mr. Gelbaum said.

He issued the statement after an article in The New York Times on Wednesday described how the loss of his annual donation of more than $20 million would cause further cost-cutting at the A.C.L.U. “The shift in my financial circumstances is the cause of the reduction in giving, and not any disapproval or dissatisfaction with the programs,” Mr. Gelbaum said in his statement. “To the contrary, I hope they will thrive with the generous support of many other donors, large and small.”

Over the last four years, Mr. Gelbaum gave $246.6 million to the fund set up by the California Community Foundation to support nonprofit groups offering assistance to the families of troops deployed in Iraq and Afghanistan. The foundation said he was the sole contributor to the fund. A statement on the foundation’s Web site says, “In the spring of 2009, all of the IADIF funds were allocated, and further applications for funding are not being accepted.”

The A.C.L.U. received $93.5 million over the same period, and the Sierra Club $47.7 million, Mr. Gelbaum said in his statement.

A version of this article appears in print on  , Section A, Page 27 of the New York edition with the headline: Major Donor Says Finances Forced Cuts. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe

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