The Bainum Family Foundation raises its spending ceiling to 10% of its endowment, against about 4% in recent IRS filings

The Bainum Family Foundation, a Washington, D.C., funder that works on early childhood, will raise its annual spending commitment to as much as 10% of its endowment, its board chair, Scott Renschler, wrote on November 5.

The post, on the foundation's website, pairs the higher spending with a new Catalytic Capital Portfolio, a carveout of 5% of the foundation's investments for impact investments aimed at the early childhood field. "For me, impact investing is not primarily an investment strategy. It is a stewardship responsibility," Renschler wrote. The board, he said, believes responsible stewardship includes putting more resources to work now.

The post gives no dollar figure, no start date and no prior rate. So we went to the foundation's federal tax returns to see what it has been spending, and what a 10% commitment would mean against that record.

How much has the foundation been spending?

About 4% of its investment assets a year from 2019 to 2023, by our count, down from a little over 5% from 2012 to 2015, the year its assets more than doubled. We used two figures from each Form 990-PF, the annual return private foundations file with the IRS: qualifying distributions, which is the money a foundation spends on charitable work, including running its own programs, and the minimum investment return, which the form sets at 5% of the value of the assets a foundation holds for investment. Multiplying that return by 20 gives the asset base, and dividing distributions by the base gives the rate.

Our source is the data ProPublica's Nonprofit Explorer extracts from IRS e-filed returns, which covers these nine years. The returns for fiscal 2016 through 2018 and for the two most recent years, through June 2025, are not in that extracted data, so they are not in the table. The asset base is an average over each year, which is why it trails the year-end figures.

The jump in 2015 is the reason the rate fell. The foundation's year-end assets went from $232.6 million in June 2014 to $540.3 million in June 2015, a year in which its return reported $317.1 million in contributions received. Spending rose afterward, to $32.8 million by fiscal 2023, but not as fast as the asset base.

Why could it spend less than 5%?

Because it files as a private operating foundation, a foundation that mainly runs its own charitable programs rather than only making grants. The IRS says operating foundations are not subject to the excise tax on failure to distribute income, the penalty behind the 5% payout rule that applies to most private foundations.

Operating foundations have their own tests instead. Under the income test, a foundation must spend at least 85% of its adjusted net income or its minimum investment return, whichever is less, directly on its own charitable activities, the IRS says. It must also pass one of three further tests, for assets, endowment or support, measured over a four-year period. Bainum's returns report the endowment test, and the figure on that line in every year we checked equals two-thirds of the minimum investment return, which works out to about 3.3% of the asset base. Its spending cleared that line in all nine years.

Much of the money goes to work the foundation does itself. In fiscal 2023, the return reports $10.3 million in grants paid to others, against $32.8 million in qualifying distributions. The foundation's website describes two areas of work, early childhood and what it calls legacy programs, and a vision of "a society where all children thrive."

What would 10% mean in dollars?

Roughly $75 million a year, if the rate were applied to assets the size of the foundation's most recent reported total. The IRS master file of exempt organizations, as shown by ProPublica, lists $752.8 million in assets for the foundation's year ended June 2025. Ten percent of that is about $75.3 million, or 2.3 times the $32.8 million the foundation spent in fiscal 2023.

That figure is our arithmetic, not the foundation's, and it comes with three limits. The post says "up to 10%," which is a ceiling, not a target. It says "endowment," which may be defined more narrowly than total assets. And we have not seen the foundation's investment policy statement, which the post cites. On the same rough base, the 5% impact portfolio would be in the range of $37 million, though the post defines it as a share of the foundation's broader investments, not of total assets.

How does it compare with other foundations?

Ten percent is well above most public commitments we have seen. The MacArthur Foundation first set a payout floor of at least 6% for 2025 and 2026, and its president, John Palfrey, wrote on September 2 that it would extend that floor through 2028. MacArthur estimates it spent $647 million, or 7.1%, in 2025, and plans to return to a 5.25% target after 2028.

Small foundations often run higher. Foundation Source, which administers private foundations, reported an average payout of 7.1% across 1,237 client foundations in 2025, with the smallest paying out the most relative to size. At the other end, the very wealthiest families give about 1.2% of their assets a year, according to the Bridgespan estimate we covered in our story on slow philanthropy.

What can other funders and grantees take from this?

In our view, two things. A commitment stated as a ceiling and a percentage tells grantees less than a budget in dollars, and the gap matters here because the foundation's own record sits so far below the new number. Anyone can check the result: the foundation's next returns will show whether the money actually goes out, and our guide to reading a Form 990 shows where to look.

The return for the year that ended June 30, 2026, is the first that could show the change. Private foundations' returns are due on the 15th day of the fifth month after the year ends, or six months later with the IRS's automatic extension, which puts this one between mid-November 2026 and mid-May 2027.