Due to its large holdings of battered National City Corp. stock and a 16.2 percent year-to-year drop in the value of its assets, the McCune Foundation recently put a stop on any new grant applications until June.

"We have not suspended funding," said foundation director Hank Beukema in an e-mail, "just temporarily turned off the intake process for initial inquiries."

McCune is one of the Pittsburgh area's largest philanthropic groups, serving as a source of funding for hundreds of local nonprofits every year. In 2007, the foundation approved 170 grants to 154 organizations totalling $28.9 million. Eighty-one percent of the grants went to nonprofits in southwestern Pennsylvania.

Among its largest gifts were $2 million to the biotechnology booster group Pittsburgh Life Sciences Greenhouse; $1.5 million to the Pittsburgh Partnership for Neighborhood Development, which invests in Pittsburgh's many neighborhood development organizations (Mr. Beukema is chairman of the board); $1.5 million to the Pittsburgh Zoo & PPG Aquarium; and $1.5 million to the Carnegie Library of Pittsburgh Foundation.

McCune still expects to give away about $25 million this year, Mr. Beukema said, despite its hold on new applications until summer.

McCune's late founder Charles McCune, chairman of the former Union National Bank, asked in 1979 that the foundation bearing his name give away all of its money by 2029. With that end date in mind, the foundation has been giving away an average of $25 million to $30 million a year, with plans to accelerate the rate of giving in the years ahead.

But the recent drop in McCune assets has less to do with a 2029 deadline and more to do with recent market conditions. A year ago in mid-February, McCune had $643 million in assets, but as of last week McCune's assets had dropped to $539 million -- a 16.2 percent decrease. A portion of the drop can be attributed to the subprime mortgage troubles of National City, which was hit particularly hard last year by the slowdown in housing and resulting credit crunch. In fact, the Cleveland bank eliminated 3,400 positions.

The piece of McCune's portfolio tied to bank stock -- a stake that initially was Union National but changed to National City after a series of mergers -- began dropping last year, according to its financial statement for the year ending Sept. 30, 2007. At the time, McCune owned 4.83 million shares of National City common stock, and value of the foundation's National City shares were already down 31 percent year over year, from $176.8 million to $121.2 million. National City's shares are now trading at $16.42, down 57 percent from its 52-week high.

There was a time in the 1980s and 1990s when the two families that oversee the McCune foundation vied with the bank for control over spending and decision making. Now, investment transactions are "at the discretion of National City," the foundation's trustee, according to the foundation's Sept. 30 financial statement, but McCune chairman Jamie Edwards "has the authority to direct distributions and sales" of National City stock.