Private Foundation Assets Up 48 Percent Since Recession, Report Finds

(Press release, Nov. 14, 2014) — Foundation Source, the nation's largest provider of comprehensive services for private foundations, released a new report looking exclusively at the investment behavior of private foundations with less than $50 million in assets. Foundations of this size constitute 98 percent of the 84,000 private foundations in the United States. Trends in Private Foundation Investment details how these foundations fared from 2008, the low point of the Great Recession, through the end of 2013.
The report findings are based on the actual investment holdings, asset balances and expenses of 238 Foundation Source clients (a sample of the company's more than 1,200 clients). Because there is scant publicly available information regarding the asset allocation and returns of private foundations of this size, this report fills an information gap for high-net-worth donors, financial advisors and private wealth managers. The complete report can be downloaded here.