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Private Foundation Payout Ratio
Qualifying distributions as a share of net noncharitable-use assets, non-operating foundations, by tax year, %
Plays the chart through its history. Pauses are where the data set a record or moved most.
All foundations together · Continuation · the recent trend, flattening · 3 years
Typical foundation (median, $1M+) · Continuation · the recent trend, flattening · 3 years
Dashed: the projection from the latest reading. Shaded: the range about two in three outcomes land in. A projection, not a promise.
Palanor calculation from IRS Form 990-PF e-file returns (public domain), one return per foundation per tax year. A tax year is published once the IRS has posted the two following years of returns. Tax year 2021 is left out: a large share of its returns is missing from the IRS's public e-file release. Non-operating foundations face a minimum payout each year; carry-overs and a year to correct shortfalls mean one year under it is not a violation.
Do foundations give near the legal floor or above it? The aggregate is weighted by the biggest endowments; the median shows a typical foundation.
What this chart reads
- Private Foundation Payout Ratio, Aggregate (U.S., Annual)as “All foundations together”latest 2024-12-31
- Private Foundation Payout Ratio, Median (U.S., Annual)as “Typical foundation (median, $1M+)”latest 2024-12-31
Sources
Private Foundation Payout Ratio, Aggregate (U.S., Annual). Source: IRS Form 990 series e-file returns (Form 990-PF), tax years 2020 on, read and totalled by Palanor; one return per foundation per tax year, the latest filed. U.S. Government work, public domain. Source: Internal Revenue Service.
Private Foundation Payout Ratio, Median (U.S., Annual). Source: IRS Form 990 series e-file returns (Form 990-PF), tax years 2020 on, read and totalled by Palanor; one return per foundation per tax year, the latest filed. U.S. Government work, public domain. Source: Internal Revenue Service.
Charts are drawn from Palanor's signal library and recomputed from source data on every view. Transformations (changes, indexing, year-on-year rates) are Palanor's.