The most urgent question animating the philanthrosphere right now is whether grantmakers are boosting funding to nonprofits reeling from federal cuts.
Marguerite Casey Foundation is dipping into its endowment to increase its funding commitments, while the Henry Luce Foundation’s ramp-up could affect its long-term grantmaking capacity. The MacArthur Foundation has taken a more measured approach, raising its charitable payout to at least 6% for 2025 and 2026. Meanwhile, we can assume that an unknown number of foundations are standing pat, guided by the belief that supporting future grantees overrides moving more money out the door now.
Count Stupski Foundation CEO Glen Galaich as one of the many observers who believe that philanthropy needs to do more. “Funders have used language like, ‘We’re in an unprecedented crisis,’ or ‘We’re going off a cliff,’” he told me. “But many of them have done little to nothing.”
Stupski Foundation has taken a dramatically different approach.
Launched in 1996 by former Charles Schwab COO and President Larry Stupski and his wife Joyce, an entrepreneur and former educator, it reorganized as a spend-down, with plans to close in 2029. In July, however, the foundation, which supports organizations in San Francisco and Alameda Counties and Hawai’i across four core issue areas — Early Brain Development, Food Justice, Postsecondary Success and Serious Illness Care — announced it had accelerated its grantmaking by awarding 76% of remaining funds in 2025 “in response to threats to our communities.”
As a result, Galaich, who has called on philanthropy to give more on his “Who Gives?” Substack and “Break Fake Rules” podcast, anticipates that the foundation’s grantmaking operations will wrap up ahead of schedule in 2026 or early 2027.
“Obviously, the context influences us,” he said. “The Food Justice program is moving very aggressively, given what they anticipate is coming. The health program, which is inclusive of all of our serious illness care and early brain development work, is moving very aggressively for fear of what could happen with Medicaid in California. Those are definitely motivating factors, but staff also have a mindset of moving money, as opposed to holding onto it.”
The Stupski Foundation’s spend-down timeline
The Stupskis established the foundation as an operating foundation focused on transforming public education. Larry passed away in 2013, and the following year, Joyce reestablished it as a spend-down grantmaking foundation.
Galaich, who previously served as CEO of the Philanthropy Workshop (now Forward Global), was hired in December 2015 and promoted to CEO in June 2016. In September 2019, the foundation announced its spend-down strategies, pledging to disburse $250 million over the next 10 years. When the pandemic hit, the foundation, taking Joyce’s lead, provided extensive COVID-related support, moving more funding than it had accounted for in its spend-down strategy, while simultaneously maintaining preestablished funding levels with its grantee partners.
Upon Joyce’s passing in 2021, the foundation received $219.7 million, which included funds from her estate, and a charitable remainder trust from Larry that she oversaw. In light of the contribution, Galaich and his team debated prolonging its spend-down. Instead, they decided to stick with the plan to close the foundation as a legal entity in 2029, but expedite the spend-down of grantmaking assets by the end of 2027.
In January 2024, Director of Communications Claire Callahan provided an update on the spend-down in an essay noting the foundation had disbursed $300 million, or approximately 60% of its total endowment. “Awaiting us in 2024,” she warned, “is a national election that will shape our policies, systems, culture and climate through our closing date.”
Stupski staff decides to accelerate spending down in June
While the Stupski Foundation board has full grantmaking authority, they allocate funds at the start of the year to the staff, who then independently make grants without further board engagement. The board, however, has access to staff grantmaking decisions on a quarterly basis.
Earlier this year, the board decided to allocate an additional $35 million with the expectation that it would be spent between 2025 and 2028. However, in June, staff decided to move it all out the door in 2025. The increase, according to the Stupski Foundation’s press release, was made in “direct response” to “alarming attacks on our democracy, health, education and food systems.”
I was curious to see if the foundation’s decision to accelerate its spend-down was an anomalous development, so I reached out to Nick Tedesco, who, as president and chief executive officer of the National Center for Family Philanthropy, works closely with leaders who are grappling with how to balance short-term response while preserving long-term grantmaking capacity.
“While there are not many examples of family foundations deciding to spend down or accelerate a planned spend-down in light of the current needs and political climate, we are hearing many questions from families regarding how spending down might impact their future commitments and timelines,” Tedesco said via email. “There’s a sense of urgency from some foundations to quicken their pace in giving, and in some cases, this could mean spending down all their assets to meet the needs of their communities.”
Stupski Foundation estimates its grantmaking between 2019 and 2029 will total approximately $371 million. All told, Larry and Joyce donated a combined $723 million to their foundation and individual nonprofits.
Direct services providers are bracing for more pain in 2026
With the conversation about philanthropy stepping up to assist nonprofits grappling with federal cuts rightfully focused on what’s already occurred, we sometimes forget — or perhaps choose to forget — that even more disruption is on the horizon.
Stupski Foundation, Galaich explained, has made some program-related investments to community lenders that provide low-interest bridge loans to service entities, like a food provider, that have contracts with federal agencies. The service provider buys the food, distributes it and eventually gets paid back by the government.
“We’ve been told by all our community lenders that the government will honor their 2025 contracts, but no one is preparing to be able to deliver service in 2026,” Galaich told me. In other words, the administration’s clawback of federal funding in 2025 is a mere dress rehearsal for even more painful cuts coming down the pike.
“These are standard, ‘feed the people’ programs, and the cuts mean that you’re looking at hundreds of billions of dollars that will not be in circulation in the social sector next year, and people aren’t talking about it,” Galaich said. He previously counted himself among the many funding leaders who didn’t believe the cuts would materialize, until, as he noted in his newsletter, the director of a Hawai’i food program told him, “We’re scraping by for now. But next year? The money vanishes.”
Calling on funders to give more now
Galaich’s post acknowledged that “there is no way philanthropy can fill all the holes.” But during our call, he said the familiar argument that foundations need to stick around forever to address tomorrow’s problems doesn’t justify the field’s “enormous prioritization of perpetuity over humanity.”
“Foundations invest to get compounded growth so they can live in perpetuity, but they don’t take the same position when it comes to problems,” he told me. “Imagine if we had addressed climate change 20 years ago. I’m not saying we would have ended climate change, but now, the challenges are so severe that foundations are throwing up their hands and saying, ‘We can only do limited things now,’ which directly counters this theory that we need foundations to solve future problems.”
Galaich also alluded to a point I made in a pre-Trump 2.0 post calling on foundations to reconsider slow-dripping 5% — and sometimes less — of noncharitable-use assets to grantmaking, salaries and travel expenses until the end of time, and it’s that there will be plenty of money to confront tomorrow’s problems. “We’re coming upon a wealth transfer that will bring as much as $18 trillion into charitable accounts,” he said. “Why wouldn’t philanthropy spend down $2 trillion now, knowing we’ve got that much coming in? I just can’t get my head around it.”
What Galaich can do is make a compelling case for a world without Stupski Foundation and its perpetual grantmaking peers doling out 5% of noncharitable-use assets during a time of acute suffering.
“I think we’ve convinced ourselves and everybody else that we [foundations] need to be around forever,” he said, “when, at the end of the day, we’re a tax shelter that gives charitable assets — and we barely do that.”
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