Not all major transformations in philanthropy begin with a public plan or a famous name; sometimes, a family fortune simply transferring to a new grant-making institution can quietly shift the balance of funding. This highlights the importance of tracking institutions that suddenly appear with assets exceeding half a billion dollars; they reveal not only new donors but also early trends in impact-making.

A new wave is quietly forming; grant-making institutions born from family fortunes, legacies, or massive financial transfers suddenly find themselves among the major donors. In this context, Inside Philanthropy has spotlighted three new institutions, each surpassing the half-billion dollar threshold, making them worthy of attention in the coming years.

Although these institutions are still limited in their public presence, their asset size gives them a funding capacity that surpasses many private foundations in the United States. It is not just about large numbers, but about the ability of these entities to influence grant-making priorities and direct resources toward areas that are becoming more prominent in the American philanthropic landscape.

The rise of these institutions is linked to a broader context sometimes referred to as the great wealth transfer, where vast amounts of wealth move from one generation to another, especially as the baby boomer generation ages. As a result, new names appear annually in tax and grant records, some quietly starting their work, while others quickly become influential players in the philanthropic sector.

Elizabeth C. Deluca Foundation: Restaurant Wealth Serving Health Education

The first institution is the Elisabeth C. Deluca Foundation, established by the widow of Fred DeLuca, one of the founders of the Subway restaurant chain. The importance of this foundation lies in the family's significant financial background, as well as the association of the DeLuca name with several charitable organizations arising from the wealth of the global chain.

Founded in 2020, the foundation's assets rose to about $644 million after a significant financial boost in 2024. Although based in Florida, a considerable portion of its grants was directed towards Connecticut, with other grants reaching multiple states such as Indiana, Mississippi, and Texas.

The pattern of grants shows that the foundation tends to support health education, particularly nursing.

In this regard, the University of Connecticut received substantial grants to support scholarships and research and the nursing college, while the foundation's grants also included organizations working on training healthcare professionals and developing career pathways in the health field.

This point is particularly significant because nursing, despite its crucial role in healthcare systems, does not always receive the funding attention commensurate with its impact. Thus, this foundation may represent a model of a new donor choosing a practical and vital area instead of trending or more media-friendly fields.

This recalls, in the Saudi context, the model of Al-Rajhi University as one of the non-profit development projects connected to the Al-Rajhi Endowments.

The meaning here is not about similar numbers or legal structures, but about the deeper idea: when philanthropic money does not merely provide transitory support, but rather enters into building long-term educational and healthcare competencies. Nursing, medicine, and applied sciences are not just service areas, but the human infrastructure for any sustainable healthcare system.

Puffin Bay Foundation: A New Donor from the World of Internet Archiving

The second institution is the Puffin Bay Foundation, led by Brewster Kahle, known for founding the Internet Archive, a nonprofit initiative aimed at preserving and archiving the internet, as Kahle was also a co-founder of Alexa Internet, which was later sold to Amazon.

What stands out about this foundation is its rapid rise; by early 2024, it virtually did not exist, yet it ended the same year with assets of about $679 million and did not wait long before beginning to disburse funds, offering nearly $90 million in grants in its first year—a high spending rate compared to many institutions that favor caution after receiving substantial assets.

However, the troubling aspect here relates to transparency. The total amount spent by the foundation in its first year went to a directed fund at Morgan Stanley Global Impact Funding Trust, a type of fund that makes tracking the ultimate beneficiaries more difficult since grants flowing from it do not always detail the connection between each donor and the final support destination.

Hence arises the paradox: the founder's name is associated with a project that grants the public broader ability to track internet history, while the new foundation appears, thus far, less clear in stating its grant destinations, making the coming years revealing as to whether the institution will adopt a higher level of transparency commensurate with its founder's background.

In the Saudi context, this meaning can be drawn closer to King Abdulaziz Foundation, not as a private grant-making institution, but as an institutional model for preserving national memory and gathering documents and sources and making them accessible.

The common idea here is that impact is not always about building a school or funding a charity; sometimes the impact is in preserving memory, organizing knowledge, and making it accessible and searchable and beneficial.

George and Beverly Rawlings Endowment Foundation: Insurance Wealth Transformed into a Family Endowment

The third institution is the George and Beverly Rawlings Endowment Foundation, legally established in 2019, but it did not have significant assets before 2024.

That year, the foundation received about $530 million from a fund associated with its founder, George Robert Rawlings, who passed away the previous year.

Rawlings's wealth is linked to The Rawlings Company, a company specializing in reducing medical claim costs for insurance providers. The article mentions that the sale of the company in 2024 was likely one of the factors that contributed to the substantial increase in the foundation's assets.

Despite the massive new assets, the foundation awarded only a limited number of grants that same year. One of these grants was to an animal shelter providing care and accommodation for farm animals that did not receive proper care, which may indicate a potential future interest of the foundation in animal welfare.

The bulk of the spending went to The Rawlings Foundation, a family Christian organization established by George Rawlings's father, which opens up two possibilities: either the new foundation may serve as a conduit for funds to an existing family organization, or its board may have chosen in the first year to support a familiar entity before expanding the scope of grants later.

This pattern is well-known in the Saudi experience through family endowments, with notable examples including the charitable endowments of Muhammad bin Abdulaziz Al-Rajhi.

The point of comparison here is not solely in the religious or social field but in the structure of the idea: a businessman builds a fortune, then this fortune transforms into a charitable entity that endures beyond him, requiring governance, clear spending areas, and mechanisms to prevent the impact from being confined to a narrow circle.

Why does this topic matter to the nonprofit sector?

These three examples reveal that new philanthropic wealth does not always appear as institutions with clear media presence or publicly announced strategies: sometimes, a major donor starts quietly, and their funding vision may lag behind their asset size, and their funds may flow through financial instruments that do not give the public a complete picture of the ultimate beneficiaries.

The article also clarifies that the new grant-making institutions are not alike; there must be a foundation clearly directing towards health education and nursing, another with significant spending capacity still ambiguous in its direction due to the use of a directed donor fund, and a third that may evolve into a financial arm of an existing family organization or later broaden its grant pathways.

For the nonprofit sector, monitoring such institutions is not a mere intellectual luxury; understanding wealth sources, the way grant-making institutions are formed, their transparency levels, and their primary areas of interest helps organizations read funding trends before they solidify into established patterns.

Ultimately, the significance of these institutions is not just in their assets exceeding half a billion dollars, but in the deeper question: how will these new wealth translate into social impact? Will they turn into clear and direct grants, or remain within financial structures that make tracking their effects difficult?

Source: Editorial translation adapted from an article published in Inside Philanthropy titled:Meet 3 New $500-Million-Plus Grantmakers by Michael Kavate, published on March 12, 2026.

This formulation is non-exclusive and has been prepared to suit the audience of Third Bank while preserving the original source's literary rights.