Which Foundations Recently Reported?
Foundations are required to submit a detailed account of their financial position once a year including the composition and value of their holdings, the recipients of their grants, and their operational expenses. FoundationMark receives this data on a rolling monthly basis and uses it to estimate investment performance for every foundation, as well as calculate other financial metrics, enabling foundations to benchmark their performance versus peers.November filings include:
- 12,170 foundation filings of the total 48,100 foundations in the FoundationMark Universe
- $697.4 billion of $1.3 trillion in total foundation assets
- $41.6 billion of $81.2 billion in total grants paid
List of Tables
- Top 10 by Assets
- Top 5 by Investment Performance - Over $100 million
- Bottom 5 by Investment Performance - Over $100 million
- November Filings by Asset Level
- November Filings: Top 10 States by Assets
| Ten Largest Foundations Filings in November 2023 | ||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Assets $ in billions | Foundation Name | Location | Period End | Grants | FoundationMark 3-Yr Star Rating* | |
| 1 | $16.4 | Ford Foundation | New York, NY | Dec 31, 2022 | $713.4 million | 5-Star |
| 2 | 13.8 | Robert Wood Johnson Foundation | Princeton, NJ | Dec 31, 2022 | $610.2 million | 5-Star |
| 3 | 12.8 | William & Flora Hewlett Foun… | Menlo Park, CA | Dec 31, 2022 | $560.4 million | 5-Star |
| 4 | 11.5 | Bloomberg Family Foundation Inc | New York, NY | Dec 31, 2022 | $977.3 million | 5-Star |
| 5 | 10.6 | Foundation To Promote Open S… | New York, NY | Dec 31, 2022 | $449.9 million | 5-Star |
| 6 | 8.3 | Gordon E And Betty I Moore F… | Palo Alto, CA | Dec 31, 2022 | $383.0 million | 5-Star |
| 7 | 8.3 | David And Lucile Packard Fou… | Los Altos, CA | Dec 31, 2022 | $440.3 million | 5-Star |
| 8 | 8.2 | John D & Catherine T Macarth… | Chicago, IL | Dec 31, 2022 | $191.4 million | 5-Star |
| 9 | 8.2 | Andrew W Mellon Foundation | New York, NY | Dec 31, 2022 | $591.9 million | 5-Star |
| 10 | 6.9 | Walton Family Foundation Inc | Bentonville, AR | Dec 31, 2022 | $545.2 million | 5-Star |
| *The FoundationMark 3-Yr Star Rating reflects the foundation's investment performance versus the foundation universe. Foundations whose investment performance ranked in the top 20% are shown as 5 -Stars, the next 20% as 4-Stars and so on. | ||||||
Estimated Investment Performance
Investment performance has a direct and measurable impact on charitable giving, or put simply, the better foundations' investments perform, the more money they have to carry out their philanthropic missions. As noted above, FoundationMark uses data pulled from public filings to estimate the investment performance for every foundation with over $1 million in assets, over 48,100 foundations in all. FoundationMark uses these performance estimates to create representative indices and peer group statistics to provide foundations with tools to asses their financial performance.
In this note, we highlight just the top and bottom five foundations of the 944 foundations with assets over $100 million which filed returns in November, but any trustee can request a free report detailing their foundation's performance, here.
An illustrative example of the impact of better investment performance can be seen in the two tables below. Using the sample set of November filings, one can see that foundations in the first table performed about 30% per year better than the group in the bottom table, amounting to billions of dollars difference in cumulative investment gains.
| 5 Year Performance Leaders: Nov 2023 Filers, Assets Over $100 million* | ||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 5 Yr Performance (annualized) | Foundation Name | Assets $ in millions | Location | Period End | 5 Yr Investment Gain/(Loss) | |
| 1 | 29.0% | Foundation For A Just Society | $1,257.5 | New York, NY | Dec 31, 2022 | $944.5 million |
| 2 | 28.6% | The Heising-Simons Foundation | 847.2 | Los Altos, CA | Dec 31, 2022 | 821.9 million |
| 3 | 24.9% | Jen-Hsun & Lori Huang Foundation | 1,011.8 | Palo Alto, CA | Dec 31, 2022 | 603.0 million |
| 4 | 23.6% | Crankstart Foundation | 3,853.4 | San Francisco, CA | Dec 31, 2022 | 2.4 billion |
| 5 | 23.4% | Mitchell Kapor Foundation | 150.4 | Oakland, CA | Dec 31, 2022 | 60.8 million |
| Important note: Foundations may have different fiscal periods. | ||||||
| 5 Year Performance Laggards: Nov 2023 Filers, Assets Over $100 million* | ||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 5 Yr Performance (annualized) | Foundation Name | Assets $ in millions | Location | Period End | 5 Yr Investment Gain/(Loss) | |
| 1 | (6.3%) | Paulson Family Foundation | $998.3 | New York, NY | Dec 31, 2022 | ($426.7) million |
| 2 | (4.5%) | Poplar Foundation | 121.5 | Memphis, TN | Dec 31, 2022 | (44.4) million |
| 3 | (4.1%) | Hagan Trust | 271.9 | Columbia, MO | Dec 31, 2022 | (65.4) million |
| 4 | (2.6%) | Foundation For A Greater Opportunity | 146.1 | Sunny Isles Beach, FL | Dec 31, 2022 | (17.4) million |
| 5 | (2.6%) | Malone Family Land Preservation Foundation | 122.6 | Encampment, WY | Dec 31, 2022 | (14.9) million |
| Important note: Foundations may have different fiscal periods. | ||||||
Recently Reported Assets and Grants by Foundation Size
Total foundation assets are concentrated among the largest. Those with over $100 million had $547.8 billion in total assets, representing 78.5% of all foundations' assets reported in November.
Foundations with over $100 million made $29.3 billion in grants in their most recently reported year, representing 70.4% of grants reported in November.
| November Filings by Asset Level | |||
|---|---|---|---|
| Asset Level | Number | Total Assets | Grants |
| Over $500 million | 209 | $398.8 billion | $20.8 billion |
| $100 - $500 million | 735 | 149.0 billion | 8.5 billion |
| $50 - $100 million | 750 | 52.4 billion | 3.7 billion |
| $25 - $50 million | 1,115 | 39.6 billion | 3.2 billion |
| $10 - $25 million | 1,946 | 30.9 billion | 2.6 billion |
| $5 - $10 million | 1,924 | 13.8 billion | 1.3 billion |
| $2 - $5 million | 2,952 | 9.6 billion | 1.1 billion |
| $1 - $2 million | 2,257 | 3.3 billion | 468.6 million |
| Total | 11,888 | $697.4 billion | $41.6 billion |
Recently Reported Assets and Grants by State
The top three states, New York, California, and Texas accounted for 47.6% of total assets and 48.2% of total grants reported in November.
| November Filings: Top 10 States by Assets | |||
|---|---|---|---|
| Total Assets | State | Number | Grants |
| $147.4 billion | New York | 1,726 | $8.7 billion |
| 138.8 billion | California | 1,634 | 8.9 billion |
| 45.9 billion | Texas | 916 | 2.4 billion |
| 30.0 billion | Illinois | 510 | 1.7 billion |
| 28.2 billion | Pennsylvania | 494 | 1.6 billion |
| 25.4 billion | Massachusetts | 469 | 1.4 billion |
| 21.3 billion | New Jersey | 358 | 1.1 billion |
| 17.6 billion | Michigan | 285 | 1.3 billion |
| 17.1 billion | Florida | 595 | 948.2 million |
| 16.9 billion | Maryland | 258 | 968.4 million |
*Important Notes: Just like individuals, foundations are required to file a return the with the IRS each year. Unlike individuals, foundation returns are open to public inspection. In their filings, foundations must disclose a great deal of information including detailed financial statements, asset holdings, and grant recipients. All information is believed accurate but not warranted.
About FoundationMark: FoundationMark tracks the investment performance of private foundations and publishes free benchmarking metrics for the foundation community. FoundationMark's universe consists of over 40,000 foundations representing over 98% of total foundation assets.
Are you a foundation? Foundation trustees can request a free report on their foundation detailing their performance and other metrics versus peers by requesting it here.
Contact:
John Seitz
JSeitz@FoundationMark.com
(646) 844-0605