How we count

Where the numbers come from

Every private foundation in the United States files IRS Form 990-PF each year, and the filings are public. We read them through ProPublica's Nonprofit Explorer, which carries the filed figures from 2011 onward and a link to each original document. Net worth is Forbes' real-time estimate on the day we update (2026-10-05).

What each number means

Paid out is the grants the foundation reported paying to charities (Form 990-PF, Part I, line 25), added up across every filed year. This is the number we rank on: money that actually left.

Put in is what the foundation received. The donor generally deducts it from taxes in the year it goes in, even if the foundation holds it for years.

Still sitting is the foundation's assets at the end of its latest filing. Private foundations only have to pay out about 5% of their assets a year (the legal minimum is shown on each profile).

Felt like takes the paid-out total as a share of today's fortune and applies the same share to a typical American family's net worth, $192,900 (Federal Reserve, Survey of Consumer Finances 2022). It answers one question: what would the same generosity look like for an ordinary family?

What we leave out, and why

We only count foundations that are clearly the person's own: their name, their city, their family. Look-alikes are excluded (the Bezos Family Foundation, for example, belongs to Jeff Bezos' parents). Money given directly, through donor-advised funds, through LLCs such as the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative LLC, or overseas does not appear in these filings. Where that is most of someone's giving, we list them apart instead of ranking them.

Comparing a lifetime of grants with today's fortune is deliberate: it is the giving measured against what they hold now. Fortunes rise and fall, so every figure is dated, and we re-run the numbers when new filings arrive.

Corrections and right of reply

If a figure is wrong or a foundation is missing, write to hello@richvsreality.com with the filing. We correct quickly, for free, and note the change. Nothing on this site can be paid to remove.