Source: Inside Philanthropy

This has been a year like no other across the world of philanthropy. The Trump administration’s fast-moving attack on causes and nonprofits long championed by foundations took everyone by surprise and has left the sector scrambling since Inauguration Day. 

At times, it’s all felt like a bad nightmare, as billions of dollars in federal grants disappeared, along with entire government agencies, programs and databases. Vulnerable groups — starting with immigrants — have suddenly found themselves living in fear, while major cities have confronted military occupation. Meanwhile, the nonprofit sector itself has faced unprecedented threats to its independence, with universities the first targets, but growing signs that liberal foundations and their grantees will be next. 

In many ways, funders have risen to the moment. They’ve banded together to defend themselves, created emergency funds to help their grantees, and in quite a few cases, committed to higher payout rates. A handful of leaders across the sector have repeatedly spoken out against the travesties unfolding in Washington. 

In other ways, though, the past year has underscored the sector’s lack of dynamism. In tracking the programs, grants and budgets of top foundations over the past year, it’s hard to see much overall change from 2024. As we wrote this summer, “everything has changed — except the funding priorities.” Most grantmakers have only modestly increased payout, despite record gains in the stock market, and few have upended long-standing priorities to free up more resources for the emergency at hand. If we had to grade philanthropy’s response to Trump 2.0, we’d give it a “C.”

Alas, that mixed assessment is how we often see philanthropy at IP: as a world with many bright spots and an abundance of purposeful energy, but also far too much unrealized potential. This year, all these usual highs and lows have been compounded by the backdrop of political trauma. Here, we try to capture this dramatic kaleidoscope in our annual IPPYs. We hope you enjoy.

The 2025 IPPYs

Philanthropist of the Year: MacKenzie Scott

Yes, her again for this category. But who else can compete? Scott outdid herself in 2025, disbursing $7.1 billion — a noticeable uptick over last year’s figure of approximately $2 billion. As in previous years, the composition of the funding — large, unrestricted gifts to historically undercapitalized organizations — earned her this year’s title, although we do wonder how Scott’s giving will ultimately contribute to large-scale structural change. 

Runner-Up: Bill Gates

While we’ve long been ambivalent about Gates’ technocratic grantmaking, there are occasional moments when we want to stand up and cheer — and never more so than when he announced in May that his foundation would double its spending over the next 20 years, pumping out at least $200 billion in funds desperately needed to offset U.S. foreign aid cuts. 

Foundation Leader of the Year: John Palfrey

Even as many foundation CEOs run for cover in the face of the Trump blitzkrieg, MacArthur’s John Palfrey hasn’t hesitated to stand up for the once-bipartisan ideal of a strong, independent philanthropic sector. Meanwhile, he’s played an essential behind-the-scenes role in ensuring that foundations and their grantees are as ready as they can be for whatever attacks come their way. 

Trend of the Year: Fear

It’s everywhere, across the sector. From the biggest foundations to the smallest nonprofits, leaders have been consumed by anxiety about how a combination of cruel libertarianism and growing authoritarianism will affect their institutions and the people they serve.

Cause of the Year: Survival 

The fear is warranted. Strongman leaders have succeeded in crushing independent civil society in multiple countries over recent decades, using a now-honed playbook. Could that happen here, in Tocqueville’s America? Maybe. In the meantime, just keeping the lights on is a challenge for many nonprofits amid devastating cuts. 

Biggest Unanswered Question: What To Do Now?

How can philanthropy help America again move forward toward a stronger, more inclusive democracy and widely shared prosperity? We’ve offered our own ideas on that all-important question, but we haven’t seen many answers from foundation leaders themselves, who’ve been busy playing defense. Let’s hope that changes in 2026. 

Most Promising New Foundation Leader: Heather Gerken

Gerken, a constitutional lawyer, is exactly the leader the Ford Foundation would seem to need right now, as it looks to shore up U.S. democracy and fend off possible investigations. As things turn out, though, her biggest challenge may be streamlining an institution that last year made 2,288 grants to 1,814 grantees worldwide across nine programs and spent a quarter of its $1 billion budget on overhead. 

Foundation Leader We’ll Miss the Most: Darren Walker

Walker didn’t “swing that ax hard” at Ford’s bloat the way we urged him to do early on. Instead, he embraced the foundation’s heft and built on its legendary power to set both the agenda and ethos of institutional philanthropy. That made him the most influential foundation head in recent memory — even as the social justice left that Ford helped to bankroll ended up in a ditch.

Megadonor We’ll Miss the Most: Jackie Bezos

“Forget Jeff Bezos. His parents, Mike and Jackie, are the people to know,” we wrote in 2014, when IP first started to track this unlikely top philanthropy act, one that parlayed an early investment in Amazon into a powerhouse foundation, where Jackie was a driving force. She died in August. 

Arts Donors We’ll Miss the Most: “Old World” Patrons

Arts philanthropy lost five influential benefactors in 2025 — Wallis Annenberg, Leonard Lauder, Tad Taube, Glorya Kaufman and Agnes Gund. Though younger donors are coming up, it’s unlikely these heavyweights will be replaced anytime soon — if ever.

Mega Donation of the Year: The Dells’ $6.25 billion 

Funders tend to steer clear of directly funding individuals to boost generational wealth, which is why Michael and Susan Dell’s $6.25 billion donation to fund 25 million children’s savings accounts is so unprecedented. There’s a lot to like about the gift, but, as is the case with most mega gifts nowadays, there are also causes for concern.

Biggest Hot Mess: Rockefeller Philanthropy Advisors

The influential fiscal sponsor and consulting firm found itself at sea following the departure of longtime head Melissa Berman and through the turbulent tenure of her successor, Latanya Mapp. One takeaway: Even sector institutions with long track records that look strong from the outside may be anything but.

Most Promising New Green Funder: Rainier Climate

Spearheaded by Steve and Connie’s son Sam Ballmer, the centibillionaire family’s growing climate giving may well be the world’s largest in the coming years — as long as one MacKenzie Scott doesn’t keep outdoing herself on this issue.

Worst Philanthropy of the Year: Paying for Trump’s Ballroom

What kind of charitable donors give to illegally demolish part of a historic building and erect a structure that preservationists say will dwarf the rest of the White House? We dug into that question and the answers aren’t pretty. 

Payout Bump of the Year: Marguerite Casey’s Big Move

Forget 6%. The Marguerite Casey Foundation committed to nothing less than a 500% spending jump past its typical yearly average, dedicating $130 million “to protect communities under political attack.” It’s a great reminder that grantmakers have a vast spectrum of options to choose from between 5% and spend-down.

Philanthropic Action Heroes of the Year: The PRO Team

With USAID in tatters from Elon Musk’s chainsaw, a team of global aid experts came together to stand up Project Resource Optimization (PRO), identifying cost-effective humanitarian interventions and connecting them with funding before they disappeared. The results so far: over $110 million raised across nearly 80 projects.

Funding Intermediary of the Year: GiveWell

The metric-driven grantmaker has quietly become one of the world’s largest private global health and development funders, now moving more than $400 million a year from tens of thousands of donors to high-impact organizations. GiveWell’s success is a reminder that effective altruism isn’t just still a thing. It’s becoming a bigger thing. 

Most Intriguing Philanthropic Movement: Abundance

This was a big year for the “abundance agenda,” as funders dug deep to support organizations committed to creating more housing, clean energy and more affordable healthcare. Abundance is a promising lens for megadonor giving and righting the liberal philanthropic ship. But it’s also a recipe for tension in the progressive philanthrosphere. 

Foundation Program We’ll Miss the Most: BUILD

It’s the end of an era with Ford’s shuttering of its Building Institutions and Networks (BUILD) initiative, which disbursed $2 billion in unrestricted funds over the past 10 years. Fortunately, the program will continue to influence Ford’s broader grantmaking, although what that may look like remains to be seen.

Zombie Idea That Won’t Die Award: Education vouchers

First proposed to preserve segregation, and long championed by Christian nationalists, vouchers have well-heeled friends in the conservative billionaires who’ve been working to promote the model, despite evidence that it results in poor student outcomes, funnels money away from public schools, and often benefits wealthy families.

Worst Friend to His Own Grantees: Bill Ackman

What kind of philanthropist gives many millions of dollars to support global development, biomedical research and the arts — and then backs a president who attacks his causes and grantees with a meat cleaver? 

Worst Friend to Everyone Else’s Grantees: Elon Musk

It’s not a good look when the richest person on the planet slashes programs that keep the poorest people in the world alive. But Musk did more than gut USAID, which could lead to millions of child deaths. DOGE also cut off myriad streams of grant funding to nonprofits. Meanwhile, Musk’s own philanthropy, such as it is, remains nothing to write home about.  

Women and Girls’ Champion of the Year: Melinda French Gates

French Gates continued to step up her giving for women and girls, zeroing in on areas like medical research and health access. Her $250 million Action for Women’s Health open call recently announced its recipients: 80-plus organizations from around the globe. 

Most Dubious Philanthropic Commitment: The Giving Pledge

We’ve stopped breaking out the champagne after learning a donor has signed the Giving Pledge. That’s because, 15 years after its launch, research suggests a majority of deceased signatories didn’t fulfill their pledge to give at least half of their wealth to charity, either while living or upon death. 

Most Surprising Higher Ed Funding Surge: HBCUs

A deluge of gifts from MacKenzie Scott, the Arthur Blank Family Foundation and others, as well as an unexpected funding boost from the Trump administration, suggests that after decades of insufficient philanthropic support, historically Black colleges and universities have settled into a thriving, post-pandemic “new normal.” 

Philanthropy Critic of the Year: Glen Galaich

Who better than a philanthropy insider to critique the sector? From his perch as head of the Stupski Foundation and with a hard-hitting Substack, Galaich has offered tough advice and choice words to peers, pushing them to move money faster. Meanwhile, Stupski accelerated its spend-down to support grantees navigating federal funding cuts.

Runner Up: Donald Trump

No president in history has ever singled out philanthropists and foundations for public criticism, much less pledged to investigate them — until Trump went after the Soros family and Open Society Foundations earlier this year. 

Philanthropy Power Couple to Watch: Jose E. Feliciano and Kwanza Jones

Only in their 50s, this duo is supporting arts, education and economic mobility with a focus on communities of color, while modeling what it looks like when next-gen donors bring culture and business discipline into the same room. 

Biggest — and Most Mysterious — Philanthropic Newcomer: The OpenAI Foundation

Under OpenAI’s restructuring, the rebranded OpenAI Foundation has a $130 billion stake in the newly formed public benefit corporation, making it, at least on paper, far larger than even the Gates Foundation. It’s pledged to “health and curing diseases” and “technical solutions to AI resilience,” but many questions remain unanswered.

Donor Organizer of the Year: Haley Bash

While she doesn’t corral the kind of big bucks that some donor organizers do, Bash — who founded Donor Organizer Hub — is a leader in evangelizing the idea that anyone can catalyze fundraising networks, bringing urgently needed new resources to undercapitalized organizations working to make change. 

Most Intriguing Heir: Phoebe Gates

The youngest Gates has long had an interest in reproductive rights, but it wasn’t until she helped create the Women’s Health Co-Lab with partners including her mother and ICONIQ, that we realized this is someone IP should start watching more closely. 

Global Funding Blind Spot of the Year: Sudan

Escalating violence, death and the displacement of millions have prompted scant attention from most international funders, though courageous home-grown volunteer networks have done a lot with a little.

Gala Circuit Scandal of the Year: The Matthew Pietras Affair

He was once a rising star on the New York arts funding scene, but Pietras’ death in May came alongside the revelation that he’d concocted a false front as a well-to-do donor while stealing from his employers.

Biggest Climate Funding Head-Scratcher: Bill Gates’ break-up letter

The megadonor’s memo framing climate funding and global development as a zero-sum contest left many advocates perplexed, and some climate deniers claiming victory. But it could have a silver lining: its emphasis on people-centered climate action.

Worst Interview of the Year: Marc Benioff’s Chat With the New York Times

It’s hard to recall a big-name philanthropist doing more damage to his brand than Benioff did in October when he praised Trump and supported deploying the National Guard to San Francisco. The result? A “Bay Area uproar” and a massive pile-on, including by fellow megadonors Laurene Powell Jobs and Ron Conway. 

Philanthropy Book of the Year:“The Radical Fund”

John Fabian Witt’s history of a nearly forgotten social justice foundation from the early 20th century offers a timely look at how innovative and courageous philanthropy can catalyze change. 

Maverick Award: Arnold Ventures

Always one to watch, Laura and John Arnold’s outfit continues to take its signature, evidence-based approach to interesting places, including a dive into cutting healthcare costs, helping scale programs that work, and figuring out how to make prisons less awful.

Celebrity Philanthropists We’ll Miss the Most: Rob and Michele Reiner

The legendary Hollywood director and his wife were pillars of activist Hollywood, putting their money, name and network behind a long list of important causes over many years. They will be greatly missed.