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U.S. foundation assets increased $170 billion, or 11.5%, to $1.636 trillion during 2024. Foundation assets have grown at a compound annual growth rate of 8.8% during the past five years, or a cumulative 50% since 2019. The assets doubled during the past decade.
The asset growth has been fueled by a mix of investment returns and incoming contributions, accounting for about 75% and 25% of the increase respectively.
The estimates are from FoundationMark, which tracks 40,000 of the largest foundations in the United States. Giving by those foundations is in record territory, increasing to an estimated $105 billion during 2024, surpassing the $100 billion mark for the first time. Giving has grown at an annualized 8.2% rate since 2019, according to the FoundationMark data.
Foundation giving in 2024 increased 6.6% to $105.2 billion. This projection is based on historic giving rates and current asset levels. Foundation giving in the study is tracked as the output of two variables: 1) payout rate, and 2) asset level. The payout rate has consistently been in a narrow range of 6.8% to 7.2% of the three-year average asset levels for more than 10 years. Asset level is the estimated current value of foundations’ assets as of December 31. Combining these two variables yields the 2024 giving estimate which assumes that foundations maintain their giving rate of just more than 7% of average assets.
Total giving and the three-year rolling average asset level are very highly correlated, more so than the relationship between giving and total assets, the data shows. Overall foundation giving is largely determined by the three-year rolling average asset level, not simply year on year changes.
FoundationMark estimates that foundation performance was essentially flat during the fourth quarter of 2024, but up 13.4% for the year. Foundation performance of 13.4% for 2024 trailed the traditional balanced institutional portfolio consisting of 60% U.S. stocks and 40% U.S. bonds, which returned 15%. Similarly, over longer periods, foundations have lagged the passive benchmark. In the five-year period to December 2024, foundations gained 7.3% per year compared to the 60/40 portfolio’s gain of 8.7%, and the 10-year numbers were 6.9% for foundations and 8.5% for the 60/40 portfolio.
