“Gradually and then suddenly.”
In an inverse sense, Ernest Hemingway’s quip about how he went bankrupt could be said to describe an array of family foundations and funds helmed by living donors whose assets have exploded in value in recent years following years of steady or slower growth.
FoundationMark founder and President John Seitz recently put together a spreadsheet listing the 40 foundations that received the most incoming contributions for the December 2023 fiscal year end. It contained many of the usual suspects. Topping the list was the Gates Foundation, which received $4 billion in incoming contributions. Other high-profile entrants included the Michael and Susan Dell Foundation ($3.6 billion), the Bloomberg Family Foundation ($1.2 billion) and the Walton Family Foundation ($570 million).
What I found most striking about the list, though, is that at least a third of the entries were place-based, under-the-radar family foundations. While it remains to be seen if their leaders decide to expand the foundation’s public profile or geographic purview, what’s irrefutable is that they should be moving substantially more money out the door compared to 2022.
Here are quick overviews of three of them. (Also check out IP’s recent coverage of six more philanthropies that got a lot bigger in 2023 here and here.)
Walter Scott Family Foundation
2022 assets: $1.7 billion.
2023 contributions: $736 million.
Year-over-year increase in assets: 25%.
Walter Scott Jr. was born in Omaha in 1931 and spent his professional career with Kiewit Corporation, an Omaha-based engineering and construction company that had $16.8 billion in revenue in 2024, where, among other roles, he served as chairman and CEO.
In 1987, Scott married Suzanne Marshall Scott, who had been the founding executive director of the Omaha Zoo Foundation. Suzanne passed away in 2013. According to Forbes, Scott, a lifelong friend of Warren Buffett who sat on the Berkshire Hathaway board, owes the bulk of his family’s $4.2 billion fortune to the fact that when he passed in 2021, the family owned 6% of Berkshire Hathaway Energy.
The Walter Scott Family Foundation is one of the Scott family’s six foundations. In the fiscal year ending December 2023, it received a $736 million contribution from a family trust. The book value of its total assets was $1.6 billion and it disbursed 58 grants totallng $146 million. At $52 million, the largest grant flowed to the affiliated Suzanne and Walter Scott Foundation, which has a public website.
The next three largest grants went to three Nebraska-based organizations’ capital campaigns — Downtown Riverfront Trust ($25 million), the Omaha Performing Arts Society Foundation ($15 million) and the University of Nebraska Foundation ($10 million). Roughly 60% percent of grants flowed to Nebraska-based organizations. Other grantmaking priorities included museums, health and social services.
Haplotace Foundation
2022 assets: $47 million.
2023 contributions: $556 million.
Year-over-year increase in assets: 1,272%.
The oldest Form 990 I was able to pull up on the Birmingham, Alabama-based Haplotace Foundation was from 2001, when it was known as the JJE Charitable Foundation. Its director was J. Bibb, and its treasurer was Henry Barclay III, who, as of 2023, was the foundation’s president and treasurer.
The foundation, which does not appear to have a public website, received $556 million in contributions in 2023, most of which came in the form of publicly traded securities from an Atlanta-based entity called Harvest Trust. Its end-of-year fair market value of all assets stood at $645 million.
In 2023, the foundation’s net value of noncharitable-use assets — that is, the pool of money it can pull from to make qualifying distributions like grants and salaries — was $119 million. This suggests the $556 million in contributions came into the foundation too late in the year to increase the net value of noncharitable-use assets.
The foundation disbursed four grants to three recipients totaling $1.7 million: The Central Alabama Community Foundation ($908,000), Presbyterian Church in America Foundation (two grants totaling $830,500) and Oregon’s Mission Increase ($5,000). The foundation earmarked $902,805 for compensation to its three full-time officers, each of whom was paid $300,935.
Related Inside Philanthropy Resources:
For Subscribers Only
Denise and Michael Kellen Foundation
2022 assets: $97.2 million
2023 contributions: $500 million
Year-over-year increase in assets: 480%
Born in Berlin in 1914, Stephen Max Kellen moved to New York in 1937 and became a successful investment banker and prominent arts philanthropist.
He passed away in 2004 and was survived by his wife, Anna-Maria Kellen (who died in 2017), daughter, Marina K. French, and a son, Michael. With his wife Denise, Michael runs the Denise and Michael Kellen Foundation — he is president/treasurer and she is vice president.
According to the foundation’s Form 990 for the fiscal year ending December 2023, its $500 million in contributions came from the Anna-Maria and Stephen Kellen Foundation, which was established in 1984 and where Michael Kellen serves as president and Marina K. French as vice president.
The Denise and Michael Kellen Foundation disbursed a total of $4 million through 18 grants for the fiscal year ending December 2023. The largest grants went to longtime recipient Schwarzman Animal Medical Center in New York City ($1.25 million), Denise’s alma mater Wellesley College ($1 million), and Rockefeller University ($350,000), where Michael has been a trustee since 2017; Denise serves on the Rockefeller University Council.
This January, the Schwarzman Animal Medical Center announced the completion of its new Denise and Michael Kellen Institute for Surgical Care, as part of its $125 million expansion. The couple are also a committed supporter of melanoma research — Denise was diagnosed with melanoma in the 1990s and sits on the Melanoma Research Alliance board.
Other under-the-radar foundations that received large contributions in 2023 in Seitz’s analysis include the Bill Gatton Foundation ($688 million) and the Betty Wold Johnson Foundation ($288 million).
