Over the past 20 years, the philanthropic status quo has been dramatically upended by private foundations led by living mega-donors. Hailing from fields like tech, media and finance, the usual suspects — Bill Gates, Michael Bloomberg, the Buffetts and plenty more — have moved enormous amounts of money out the door seemingly unconstrained by institutional friction, all while making the kinds of big bets that more tight-laced “legacy” foundations could only dream of.
While these observations aren’t particularly new, we’re now able to back them up with some degree of quantitative rigor.
We took a deep dive into the most recently available Candid data on 85 private foundations overseen by living donors, looking at how much each entity disburses, how much it spends on overhead and top grantmaking priority areas. We also collected identical data for legacy funders like the Hewlett, Mellon and Kresge foundations. Our analysis excludes funders like MacKenzie Scott and the Ballmers who do not have foundations, nor does it capture extensive giving made through donor-advised funds (DAFs).
Note that while this data is several years old (from circa 2017–2019) due to the fact that organizations have three years beginning from the due date of the return to make Form 990s available, the data nonetheless provides an illuminating look into how living donors approach their giving through the private foundation model.
Let’s get a lay of the land by looking at the top 10 foundations of living mega-donors before digging into some more granular findings.
Top living donor foundations by total funding disbursed (2017-2019)
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Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation: $13.7 billion
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Bloomberg Family Foundation: $2 billion (figure excludes grants disbursed in 2018)
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Susan Thompson Buffett Foundation: $1.9 billion
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Walton Family Foundation: $1.5 billion
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Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation: $900 million (Note: Gordon Moore passed away earlier this year)
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JPB Foundation (Barbara Picower): $697 million
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Wellspring Philanthropic Fund (Andrew Shechtel, C. Frederick Taylor): $674 million
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NoVo Foundation (Peter and Jennifer Buffett): $656 million
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Howard G. Buffett Foundation: $520 million
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Sherwood Foundation (Susie Buffett): $568 million
Other donors whose foundations are in the dataset include those established by Sergey Brin, Charles and Liz Koch, Lynn Schusterman, Paul Singer, Eric and Wendy Schmidt, Michael and Susan Dell, Stanley and Fiona Druckenmiller, Jeff Skoll, Oprah Winfrey and Mike and Jackie Bezos. Also in the dataset are foundations started by Pam and Pierre Omidyar and Priscilla Chan and Mark Zuckerberg, who combine traditional 501(c)(3) grantmaking with the political giving and impact investing capacities of an LLC.
Total assets
In 2019, these 85 living donor foundations had a combined $155.5 billion in total assets, or $104.5 billion with the Gates Foundation removed from the dataset.
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