Thursday, August 09, 2007

A new kind of foundation list

Hedge fund managers are notoriously competitive, even with (especially with?) their foundations.

HedgeCo lists the top 25 foundations created by hedge fund managers - by asset size and rate of growth. In case you care, here are the data:
  • The top 25 hedge fund foundations now have $3.52 billion in assets. That is an increase of 76.8% over the $1.99 billion in assets the previous year.
  • Gifts to these foundations in same time period totaled $865 million, a 190% increase over previous year
  • Biggest hedge fund foundations are (top 3, hit the link for more):
  1. George Soros, Open Society Institute
  2. Julian Robertson, Robertson Foundation
  3. Jim Simons, Simons Foundation


Here's a tip to purveyors of industry data (Foundation Center, Independent Sector, Giving USA, etc.) - its not enough to track philanthropy by region, issue or type of foundation - you need to start collecting data by "employment of endower" - e.g. software, hardware, hedge fund, steel magnate, banking, telecommunications, etc. etc.

Oy.

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