IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/h/elg/eechap/20808_17.html
   My bibliography  Save this book chapter

Private foundations: past research and future opportunities

In: Research Handbook on Nonprofit Accounting

Author

Listed:
  • Arthur Allen
  • Brian McAllister

Abstract

At the cost of tax benefits provided to donors, private foundations provide substantial societal benefits with payouts of $85 billion in 2018 as well as oversight of public charities. Foundations are a unique organizational form and are self-perpetuating. Compared with public charities, they have less oversight by regulators and donors. Despite their importance and unique nature, private foundations have received relatively little attention by academic researchers. We describe the institutional background of private foundations and their applicable IRS regulations. We discuss the limited data which has been available to prior researchers as well as newly available data sources. Our survey of the literature is organized by the core activities of foundations: donations, investments, payouts, and grantmaking. We also survey literature regarding state regulations. Finally, we discuss additional research needed to help regulators optimize societal benefits and inform boards and managers on improving foundation governance, investment performance and grant effectiveness.

Suggested Citation

  • Arthur Allen & Brian McAllister, 2023. "Private foundations: past research and future opportunities," Chapters, in: Daniel Tinkelman & Linda M. Parsons (ed.), Research Handbook on Nonprofit Accounting, chapter 17, pages 316-337, Edward Elgar Publishing.
    • Handle: RePEc:elg:eechap:20808_17
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.elgaronline.com/doi/10.4337/9781800888289.00026
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:elg:eechap:20808_17. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Darrel McCalla (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.e-elgar.com .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.