How The Chronicle Conducted Its Survey of America’s Largest Grant Makers

By Noelle Barton

The Chronicle’s annual survey of the nation’s largest private foundations is based on the

financial information of 185 grant makers.

A Chronicle questionnaire, completed by 131 of those foundations, provides the bulk of the information in this survey. The newspaper obtained data on the remaining foundations from their informational tax returns, which must be made available to the public.

Assets among the 122 foundations that provided figures for the fiscal year ending in 2007 totaled $217.9-billion, up 8 percent from the 2006 total of $201.1-billion. The 10 wealthiest foundations accounted for $114.3-billion of those assets, or 52 percent.

Biggest Foundation

With assets of $38.9-billion, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, in Seattle, remains the largest in the country. Removing this organization from the survey pool leaves $179-billion in total assets, and the nine other wealthiest foundations accounted for $75.4-billion of those assets, or 35 percent.

Including Gates, grants paid by the 119 foundations that provided data about their grant making in 2007 totaled $10.3-billion. That figure is up 20 percent from 2006, when grants paid totaled $8.6-billion.

To determine the pool of foundations selected to participate in the survey, The Chronicle relied on information supplied by the Foundation Center, an organization in New York that conducts research on grant makers.

The center ranked the 150 largest private grant makers by their assets and the amount they gave away during the most recent fiscal year for which data were available.

Foundations had to have assets of at least $310-million, or have awarded at least $16-million in grants in the fiscal year ending in 2006, the most recent year for which all the foundations had audited financial information. The Chronicle also included organizations that met those standards in the 2007 fiscal year.

Fifty-four grant makers that met this year’s requirements to be included declined to participate in the survey. Some cited a small staff as a reason for not participating, while others said it is their policy not to participate in surveys. Figures for those organizations came from their most recently completed Form 990-PF, the informational tax returns filed with the Internal Revenue Service.

Data Collection

The Chronicle sent a request to all foundations in the survey pool for their Forms 990-PF in January, and followed up with additional requests. Federal law requires that the form be made available within 30 days of such a request.

All foundations contacted for the survey either provided The Chronicle with their Form 990-PF or made it available online for public inspection.

Many figures for 2007 are estimated or unaudited, and thus subject to change, grant makers told The Chronicle. In a few cases, foundations submitted figures for the fiscal years ending in 2007 and 2008; for those, figures also may have been estimated or unaudited.

Readers should take care when examining a foundation’s giving and asset figures from year to year, as changes may not necessarily signal a change in financial condition or policy at a foundation. Some grant makers cited either strong or weak performance in the stock market as reasons for their increase or decrease in assets.

Foundations that are set up as “pass through” funds — meaning they receive and distribute all their assets each year — are also included in the survey and their status is noted on the tables.

Data from all organizations for which The Chronicle obtained financial information are presented in a searchable database online. Go to: http://philanthropy.com/premium/stats/foundation.

The foundation survey was compiled by Noelle Barton, Maria Di Mento, Audrey Hill, Candie Jones, and Heather Joslyn.