• Skip to main content
  • Skip to secondary menu
  • Skip to primary sidebar
  • Skip to footer
News and Analysis of Foundation Investment Performance
  • About
    • Our Story
    • About Private Foundations
    • About FoundationAdvocate
  • Newsletters
    • Winter 2023
    • Autumn 2022
    • Summer 2022
  • Lists & Links
    • Press
    • Lists
      • Celebrities
      • Finance
    • Links
    • Foundation Fun
  • Are You a Foundation?
  • Contact Us

Incoming Contributions

By

Five Years of Substantial Growth from Incoming Contributions

Foundations have two primary sources of asset growth, 1) investment returns, and 2) new contributions.  At FoundationAdvocate, we spend the lion’s share of out time focusing on investment returns, but we thought it would be interesting to understand a little more about the incoming contributions.  

Private foundations are an increasingly important source of funding for charities overall, as foundation-giving now accounts for nearly 18% of total philanthropic support, up from 15% in 2003 (Giving USA Report).

Although foundations are required to pay out 5% of their assets each year in grants and operating expenses, many contribute more. In fact, aggregate disbursements have been about 8% of beginning total assets. 

Who Has Been Giving To Foundations?

A lot of the new money flowing into foundations has come from technology entrepreneurs (i.e., 8 in the list below are from the Bay Area, plus Gates and Dell). These are in addition to other, familiar names in philanthropy (Walton, Bloomberg and Buffett to name a few)..

Biggest Inflows in the Past Thre Years

Asset Growth

The combination of incoming contributions and investment performance pushed foundation assets to the $1 trillion mark in 2017. 

If you’d like a state-by-state look, visit the State List or FoundationIQ. 

Filed Under: Newsletters, Trustee Resources, August 2019, Foundation Facts, Articles Tagged With: With Editor

Primary Sidebar

Topics

Performance

Expenses

Trustee Resources

Foundation Facts

Quarterly Newsletters

Newsletters

  • Winter 2023
  • Autumn 2022
  • Summer 2022
  • Spring 2022

Subscribe to Newsletter

Footer

Are you a trustee?

Interested in a free FoundationMark report on your foundation’s investment performance? click here

Contact Details

E-Mail: info@FoundationAdvocate.com

Visit Our Related Websites

FoundationMark.com and FoundationIQ.com

Copyright © 2023 Foundation Financial Research, LLC