Big Bull Market Boosts Foundations
When the 1980s dawned, the Dow Jones Industrial Index stood at less than one thousand. By March 1999, that same index had crossed the ten thousand mark. There were 13 billionaires in the United States in 1982; by 1997, that number had jumped to 170 (“Philanthropy in America,” 1998). The wealth generated by this twenty-year bull market was unprecedented in U.S. history.
Foundations, of course, bobbed along on this rising tide of money. In 1980, the Foundation Center's Foundation Directory counted approximately twenty-two thousand foundations of all types, with the largest in asset value being the Ford Foundation at $2.76 billion. Only the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation joined Ford above the charmed $1 billion ...
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