The Long Tail of Foundation Funding: A $35B+ Opportunity for Research Institutions
With the ongoing turbulence in federal funding for scientific research and now the government shutdown, I've been scanning the landscape for other sources of support.
After months of work analyzing more than 700,000 IRS tax returns, I'm convinced there is a significant opportunity to grow funding from private foundations and nonprofits, which together distribute $100B+ in grants annually in the U.S.
The Scale of Philanthropic Science Funding
A 2024 article in Scientific Reports (Nature Portfolio), "Mapping Philanthropic Support of Science," finds that philanthropic funding to research institutions has reached about $30B per year in recent years, rivaling NIH levels. The authors show that the top 200 funders account for 66% of total science funding, but that "the long tail of the many smaller funders represents a considerable cumulative impact."
What the IRS Data Shows
From my analysis of IRS returns, around 6,000 foundations give $1M+ per year, with at least one grant to a university or college:
- The top 200 foundations account for $49B in annual giving
- The long tail of smaller funders distributes another $35B
A few large foundations give hundreds of millions annually, but thousands of smaller funders still move billions collectively.
The Opportunity
In other words, a relatively small set of mega, name-brand funders dominates the conversation — Gates, Ford, Robert Wood Johnson — but there is a large long tail of smaller and mid-sized foundations quietly moving billions of dollars every year, and universities are only capturing a small fraction of this.
| Foundation Tier | Count | Annual Giving |
|---|---|---|
| $250M+ | 51 | Mega-funders |
| $50–100M | 149 | Major funders |
| $25–50M | 275 | Large funders |
| $15–25M | 305 | Mid-size funders |
| $5–15M | 1,261 | Growth opportunity |
| $1–5M | 3,791 | Extended long tail |
The foundations in the $1M–$15M range represent over 5,000 funders that most research institutions aren't systematically tracking or engaging.
What This Means for Researchers
If you're an individual researcher, oversee a research lab, or lead a department, center, or school and want to dig into this private funding landscape, feel free to . I'm happy to share more detail on what I'm seeing in the data.