News and Analysis of Foundation Investment Performance

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How Are Foundations Doing? July 2019 Topic: Is Bigger Really Better?

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Once a month, FoundationAdvocate selects one topic in foundation-investment performance to highlight.  This month’s topic is the relationship between a foundation’s total assets and its performance. The chart below shows the performance of two subsets of foundations, those with assets between $1-$2 million and those with over $500 million. As you can see from the … [Read more...] about How Are Foundations Doing? July 2019 Topic: Is Bigger Really Better?

FoundationMark 15 Asset Allocation

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The FoundationMark 15 The FoundationMark 15 (“FM 15”) is a selection of 15 of the largest and best-known private foundations in the United States. Most private foundations, like those comprising the FM 15, rely on their investment returns as an important, and, often, their only, source of income to support their philanthropic goals.  To view the performances and full … [Read more...] about FoundationMark 15 Asset Allocation

Giving Has Been Growing

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Charitable Disbursements up 40% in the Past Five Years As the chart below shows, private foundations have increased their annual philanthropic support (green line) by nearly 40%, from $54 billion (FY2013) to $73 billion (Most Recent), an increase of $19 billion per year. Also growing at a rapid pace have been incoming contributions (blue line) with new contributions … [Read more...] about Giving Has Been Growing

The Institutional Approach

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Setting A Course In a related article, Who Controls The Money?, we discussed different approaches to managing foundation assets.  In this article we discuss the "Institutional Approach". Of the 45,000 foundations we estimate that only about 5% follow the institutional approach described below that is more common in endowments.  It bears noting that the 2,000 or so … [Read more...] about The Institutional Approach