• 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

Resources

FoundationAdvocate does not offer investment advice or recommend service providers, but we do occasionally comment on general investing concepts and provide some background information on investment concepts and theory as well as provide links to external articles that we believe are insightful.

Articles

Payout Ratios – Why is it so Complicated to Get a Simple Answer?

One would think that calculating a payout ratio is a very straightforward task.  You just need a numerator and a denominator, therefor simple division leaves

Read More »

First Quarter 2021 Performance Round-Up

Each quarter we pull together the published results of three leading measures of foundation performance, the FoundationMark GIV Index, the Northern Trust Foundation and Endowment

Read More »

Universe Comparison

In our efforts to track and report on the investment performance of foundations, we have found five organizations that publicly report their results  Each organization

Read More »

Fourth Quarter 2020 Performance Round-Up

Each quarter we pull together the published results of the leading measures of foundation performance, the FoundationMark GIV Index, the Northern Trust Foundation and Endowment

Read More »

FoundationMark Adds Peer Group Analysis

FoundationMark, has recently rolled out a new feature – peer group analysis.   Foundations have been badly underserved in terms of available financial benchmarking resources. The

Read More »

Third Quarter 2020 Performance Round-Up

Each quarter we pull together the published results of three leading measures of foundation performance, the FoundationMark GIV Index, the Northern Trust Foundation and Endowment

Read More »

Second Quarter 2020 Performance Round-Up

Each quarter we pull together the published results of three leading measures of foundation performance, the FoundationMark GIV Index, the Northern Trust Foundation and Endowment

Read More »

How Much do Foundations Give Per Year?

Measuring Giving in Dollars and as a Percent of Assets Examining foundation giving is best approached from two perspectives, first, in terms of actual dollars

Read More »

Measuring Foundation Asset Levels

Last summer our research indicated that foundation assets crossed the $1 trillion threshold for the first time at some point in 2017, about 18 months

Read More »

Foundations Disburse 8% of Average Assets in Grants and Expenses per Year

Mandated Five Percent is a Floor Not a Ceiling Most people in the philanthropic world are familiar with the 5% payout requirement that nonprofits must

Read More »

Asset Allocation Different Perspectives

One of the most basic concepts in portfolio management is that asset allocation typically determines the lion’s share of investment returns.  If your portfolio is

Read More »

First Quarter Update: How the Stock Market Decline is Likely to Affect Foundation Assets and Giving

How Much are Foundation Assets Down? Preliminary March estimates from our affiliate, FoundationMark, indicate that foundation assets are down about 12.7% since the beginning of

Read More »

Asset Allocation Doesn’t Change Much Even in Crises

The chart above shows that foundation asset allocation hasn’t varied much year to year.  Two long term trends have been a reduction in cash and

Read More »

Expect a Slowdown in Giving

Market Effects on Foundation Giving Giving USA provides the results of annual surveys (below) which show the historical perspective on foundation giving. One can see

Read More »

Fourth Quarter 2019 Performance Round-Up

Each quarter we pull together the published results of three leading measures of foundation performance, the FoundationMark GIV Index, the Northern Trust Foundation and Endowment

Read More »

FoundationMark 15 Asset Allocation

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

Read More »

Giving Has Been Growing

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

Read More »

The Institutional Approach

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

Read More »

Who Controls The Money

Setting A Course The title of this article, Who Controls The Money?, is intentionally provocative.  In the foundation world it is an easy answer, the

Read More »

Risk & Return = Volatility and Performance

Risk & Return: Yale’s Long Term Expectations By Asset Class Yale’s endowment report is an incredible resource for investors. One reason it should be required

Read More »

1% Better Investment Performance – Implication for Charitable Giving

The Math is Simple Private foundations have $1 trillion in assets. An incremental 1% return on investment would yield an additional $10 billion….per year…every year.

Read More »

Links

Nonprofit Performance Links FoundationAdvocate is owned and operated by the same parent company as FoundationMark, publisher of the “Better Benchmarks for Private Foundations” indices, and

Read More »

Incoming Contributions

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,

Read More »

FoundationMark Portfolio Strategies Classification

FoundationMark Portfolio Strategies Investments – Others*: There is a distinct line on the IRS form requiring the fair market value of a foundation’s holdings in

Read More »

Disclosed Investment Expenses

Why “Disclosed” Qualifier Foundation Advocate and our related company, FoundationMark, very consciously uses the qualifying term “disclosed” whenever referring to investment expenses for a very

Read More »

The Endowment Model: A Brief Overview

The “endowment” model of investing, often simply referred to as the “Yale” model, after Yale’s legendary Chief Investment Officer, David Swenson, who literally wrote the

Read More »

Is Our Foundation Getting the Most Bang for Our Buck?

There is a core question in managing money that is very difficult to answer, which is How hard is our money working? One hears about

Read More »

Accuracy Explainer

How Accurate are the FoundationMark Estimates? After learning that our affiliate, FoundationMark, estimates the investment performance of foundations, the first questions one might ask is

Read More »

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