Science

Comparing Institutional Endowments

I’m very interested in the idea of context. Too often, we compare things—cities, people, whatever—to what is convenient. But this fails to give us the proper context. I explored this when it comes cities and big data, but I thought it would also be interesting when it comes to institutional endowments to examine their context, […]

I'm very interested in the idea of context. Too often, we compare things—cities, people, whatever—to what is convenient. But this fails to give us the proper context. I explored this when it comes cities and big data, but I thought it would also be interesting when it comes to institutional endowments to examine their context, comparing different types of institutions to each other and their place in the ranking.

So I compiled some data about the various endowments of different institutions. The datasets are a little old—they were collected about a year and a half ago—so some of these numbers are going to be a bit out of date, but the rankings are likely to be approximately correct, and give you the right flavor.

I included data for universities, philanthropic foundations, and prep schools. And also, for good measure, I threw in the Vatican. (raw data available in the links, so you can play at home!)

Interestingly, most of the list includes a nice mixture of foundations and universities, relatively evenly mixed. Here are the top ten, with the foundations in blue and the universities in black:

  1. Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation
  2. Harvard University
  3. Yale University
  4. Princeton University
  5. The University of Texas System
  6. Stanford University
  7. Ford Foundation
  8. J. Paul Getty Trust
  9. The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation
  10. Massachusetts Institute of Technology

As you can see, universities and philanthropic foundations, despite their different missions, often deal with similar amounts of money. And in full disclosure, my employer, the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation, shows up at #67, near the University of Washington.

The first prep school, Philips Exeter Academy, doesn't show up until #145, so these institutions, unsurprisingly, seem to be playing in their own league. And lest you think the Catholic Church has a huge amount of money, the Vatican doesn't show up until #159, near Bowdoin College and the Broad Art Foundation.

Of course, there is certainly more (including fancy visualizations) that can be done with these datasets. But I think it's important to just begin thinking about endowments of different types of institutions and doing unexpected comparisons.

Top image:Brian Glanz/Flickr/CC