For the first time in recent memory, a community foundation has vaulted into the top ranks of philanthropic asset holders.
The Silicon Valley Community Foundation announced today that it now has $13.5 billion in assets, more than the Ford Foundation, which held $12.5 billion at the end of 2016, the most recent figures available.
The only other foundations with more money in their reserves are the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, which listed its assets at $40.3 billion, before Bill Gates earmarked Microsoft shares worth $4.6 billion to his philanthropy, and the Open Society Foundations, which received gifts over the past few years from founder George Soros that put its endowment at about $18 billion.
Emmett Carson, Silicon Valley Community Foundation’s president, said his fund’s growth demonstrates how donors are changing — and how community foundations need to adapt to those changes.
“People who might have once opted to create a private foundation new feel far more comfortable that a community foundation can meet their needs.”
Silicon Valley was formed in 2007 when two community foundations merged, creating a $1.7 billion pool of assets.
‘A New Animal’
For a community foundation to be in the ranks of philanthropies created by the world’s wealthiest is a remarkable milestone.
The second largest community foundation is the Tulsa Community Foundation, with $4.2 billion in assets. No other community foundations have more than $3 billion at the ready.
Carson said his foundation has grown because it’s been willing to take different approaches than other community funds. While it gives substantial funds locally, as do most community foundations, it also helps its donors give nationally and around the world.
“We are a new animal,” Carson said. “We are pioneering a model for community foundations for the 21st century.” (That model has been controversial in the nonprofit world. See a Chronicle opinion article that Carson wrote to explain the approach and rebut some of the criticisms.)
Last year Silicon Valley foundation made $1.3 billion in grants. California organizations received $515 million. The bulk of in-state funding, $436 million, went to Bay Area nonprofits.
While the foundation boasts of being the largest donor to regional charities in Silicon Valley, the overall percentage of its grants in the Bay Area has declined since 2013, when more than half of its support went to local groups.
Meanwhile, 105 million went to nonprofits in 66 countries outside the United States, making Silicon Valley one of the biggest grant makers to overseas organizations.
Zuckerberg-Chan Gift
Carson declined to provide details on the size or identity of last year’s largest donors. In total, the foundation attracted $1.4 billion in new gifts in 2017.
In recent years, it has benefited from the largess of Silicon Valley tech donors, including Facebook co-founder Mark Zuckerberg and his wife, Priscilla Chan.
According to documents filed with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, the couple gave company shares in November then worth $162.4 million to a donor-advised fund housed at the foundation. That gift follows about $1.5 billion in contributions they have made since 2012.
Different From Ford
Carson, who spent five years earlier in his career managing grant programs at the Ford Foundation, stressed that by design, private grant makers like Ford are very different from community foundations.
“I cut my teeth at the Ford Foundation,” he said. “I can say firsthand we are no Ford Foundation.”
Community foundations face fewer restrictions on policy advocacy, and their grants are largely made with input from donor-advised-fund holders like those who opened the 2,000 accounts managed by the Silicon Valley Community Foundation.
Meanwhile, grant decisions at private foundations like Ford, Carson said, are overseen by board members.
Though his foundation is fueled by mega-donors like Zuckerberg, Carson highlighted the foundation’s grass-roots relationships, which allow it to “discuss social issues in a way private foundations, even when they want to, don’t have the same credibility as a bottoms-up institution has in that work.”
No Geographic Limitations
Some of the Silicon Valley Community Foundation’s growth came from well outside the foundation’s Mountain View office.
In late 2016, the foundation’s announced it was establishing an East Coast presence, with Maeve Miccio, vice president for strategic partnerships, working to attract gifts, primarily in the New York area.
Part of the foundation’s pitch to hedge-fund managers and financiers was that it could process complex financial instruments and handle virtual currencies and shares of companies as they prepare themselves for publicly traded markets. By the end of 2017, the foundation’s assets that originated in the New York area grew from $267 million to just under $400 million.
At their best, community foundations represent the aspirations of their donors and should not be confined to a particular geography, Carson said.
“We want to be a full-stop, full-service shop for people with a multitude of interests and that has enabled us to grow from donors locally and increasingly meet the needs of donors in other places.”
