With endowments struggling to generate robust returns, experts wonder if charities and foundations should tighten their belts — or lower their expectations.
Daily News Roundup: Trump Set to Exempt Faith Groups From Birth-Control Rule
A draft White House regulation would let religiously affiliated nonprofits opt out of the Obamacare mandate that workplace health plans include contraceptive care. Also, Illinois shuts down a controversial telemarketer, and Michael Bloomberg talks about the fight against noncommunicable diseases.
Innovative nonprofits and foundations are turning to impact investing to attract commercial capital to their causes. But some observers worry the investments that blend social and financial returns could change the way donors think about charitable giving.
Commercial giants like Goldman Sachs and BlackRock are the big players in a burgeoning field, but philanthropic institutions increasingly view their investments as tools to tackle the world’s toughest problems.
By NICOLE WALLACE
Features Editor
What Happens to Giving as Impact Investing Grows?
Some donors say the strategy is changing how they give in powerful ways; others doubt that it can displace traditional philanthropy, especially with causes like feeding the hungry.
By NICOLE WALLACE
Features Editor
Building the Market for Impact Investments
Charities and foundations are tackling gaps in impact investing’s infrastructure to help fulfill the field’s promise of social and environmental change.
By NICOLE WALLACE
Features Editor
Impact-Investing Pioneers Take Stock
For more than a decade, the Heron and Northwest Area foundations have invested their endowments with the goal of spurring social good. They’re drawing on lessons learned to tweak their approaches.
By NICOLE WALLACE
Features Editor
Inside Ford’s Billion-Dollar Bet on Mission Investing
Fifteen years after putting money from its program budget into Tesla as part of its environmental and economic-development strategy, the foundation is staking a hefty chunk of its endowment on similarly mission-focused investments.
By Alex Daniels
Senior Editor, Foundations
How Nonprofit Endowments Performed
This interactive database has survey data collected by The Chronicle on hundreds of nonprofit endowments going back to 2003. New to this year’s report is historical information on hundreds of groups using information from IRS form 990s and 990PFs.
By Peter Olsen-Phillips
Contributor
How The Chronicle Compiled Its 2017 Report on Nonprofit Endowments
We surveyed hundreds of large nonprofits about their investment funds and drew data from IRS filings by more than 7,000 charities and foundations.
By Peter Olsen-Phillips
Contributor
When Government Pulls Back, Donors Don’t Always Step Up, Study Says
Upending conventional wisdom, West Virginia University researchers found that gifts to libraries declined after cuts in public funding. Still unknown: whether the findings apply to other types of charitable giving.
By Alex Daniels
Senior Editor, Foundations
Daily News Roundup: Trump Targets Obamacare Rule Opposed by Faith Charities
The White House is set to relax the mandate on birth-control coverage in employee health-care plans, which religious nonprofits have fought bitterly. Also, a political scientist looks at the NAACP’s leadership crisis, and Charlotte, N.C.'s property boom disrupts a major charity program.
As a Slimmed-Down Tax Plan Grows More Likely, Nonprofits Shudder
Charities fear a drop in donations even if Congress charts a far less ambitious course than President Trump’s proposal.
By Alex Daniels
Contributor
Daily News Roundup: Trump Breaks Presidential Tradition on Service Programs
The president’s budget plan slashes service programs that have long enjoyed support from both Republican and Democratic administrations. Also, wealthy Arabs begin to embrace large-scale public giving, and Texas is poised to let adoption organizations bypass prospective parents based on their faith or sexual orientation.
Daily News Roundup: Major Nonprofit Hospitals Spend Millions on Advertising
Also, media mogul and $500 million art donor Jerry Perenchio dies, and a new app aims to harness President Trump’s Twitter habit to raise money for progressive causes.
Daily News Roundup: Chicago Family Gives $100 Million for Immune-System Research
Also, medical groups say President Trump’s proposed cuts in HIV/AIDS funding could cause the virus to surge again in Africa, and the head of the Conrad Prebys Foundation sues trustees over a payment to the late San Diego philanthropist’s son.