Rhode Island · Nonprofit
BROWN UNIVERSITY
BROWN UNIVERSITY (Rhode Island) receives grants from 1283 organizations whose IRS filings report $1,164,780,880 to it, the largest being FIDELITY INVESTMENTS CHARITABLE GIFT FUND ($237,295,355). 844 of them have funded it in more than one year, and 51% of the money arrives through donor-advised or pass-through sponsors rather than from an institution directly. BROWN UNIVERSITY administers funds for other donors, so those contributions arrive into funds it holds rather than supporting a program it runs itself.
- Revenue FY2025
- $2.1B
- Funders on record
- 1,283
- Grants received
- $1.2B
- Net assets
- $8.9B
Hosts funds for others
BROWN UNIVERSITY administers funds on behalf of other donors. The grants recorded as coming in are contributions into those funds, so they count custody rather than support for a programBROWN UNIVERSITY runs itself. This page therefore states the flows and does not draw the comparisons it would draw for an operating charity: concentration, funder retention, grant dependency and the peer field are all left out, because each of them would read a vehicle as if it were a program.
Paid out
$317M
Recipients
401
Contributions on record
$1.2B
Donors on record
1,282
Payments out are 0.27x the contributions on record, so the balance accumulates rather than passing straight through.
The organization over time
Each line starts at 100 in 2017, so what you read is the shape rather than the size: 150 means half as much again as 2017, 50 means half. The number beside each label in the key is where it ended.
Balance sheet
Total assets and total liabilities at each year end, in dollars. The largest one-year move in total assets was 2020 to 2021, from $6.9B to $9.8B (+42%).
How it's funded, over time
Each bar is one year's revenue split into where it came from, and every bar is the same height — these are shares, not amounts, so a year that raised twice as much looks the same size. Hover a bar for the split.
Government-grant reliance: 2017 14% · 2018 14% · 2019 13% · 2020 14% · 2021 11% · 2022 15% · 2023 18% · 2024 18% · 2025 15%. Grants only. Government contracts and fees sit inside program revenue.
Surplus & reserves
Operating surplus or deficit each year, and months of liquidity in hand. 1 of the last 9 reported years ran a deficit.
reserve
Leadership and staff
The officers, directors, trustees and key employees listed on each return. Joined and no longer listed compare each filing with the year before, matching people by surname and first initial; a year after a gap, or a roster under three people, has no comparison.
Who funds it, year by year
2017 → 2023: the base broadened from 341 funders to 548 funders, grant income rose $65M → $174M.
123 of 1283 of your funders are donor-advised or pass-through sponsors (tagged DAF) — 51% of grant dollars received. That money is really individual donors directing a sponsor; the institutions to cultivate are the non-DAF funders.
Left out of every figure on this page: $9.3M from one payer (an institutional transfer, not a grant programme, largest Brown University Charitable Trust). These are real filings, and they are not money BROWN UNIVERSITY raised.
From the IRS filings of BROWN UNIVERSITY’s funders (the co-funder graph). Top 30 of 1283 funders by total. Association, not causation. Trends are read to FY2023, the last fiscal year that has finished arriving. FY2024–FY2026 are still being filed and are shown unshaded; they do not move any figure on this page.
Where its funders are
51% of BROWN UNIVERSITY's grant income arrives through donor-advised or pass-through sponsors, whose addresses record where the money is held rather than where the donor is. Of the $566M that is directly attributable, 84% of it comes from funders outside Rhode Island, across 47 states.
In-state vs out-of-state, by year
Funder states come from each funder’s own filing. $598M arriving through sponsors registered in 32 states is excluded from the map and the split above: a sponsor holds money on a donor’s behalf, so its registered address would place those dollars somewhere no donor need ever have been. Trends are read to FY2023, the last fiscal year that has finished arriving. FY2024–FY2026 are still being filed and are shown unshaded; they do not move any figure on this page.
Government funding BROWN UNIVERSITY receives
Grants and contracts to this organization from federal (USASpending) and state checkbooks, reconciled to its EIN. $1.9B on record.
- Department of Health and Human Services$1.3B
- National Science Foundation$306.7M
- Department of Defense$155.9M
- National Aeronautics and Space Administration$49.7M
- Department of Energy$41.9M
- Department of Education$32.3M
Federal grants vs contracts are distinguished; state line items keep their reported category. Matched by name + geography (the BMF), so coverage is partial and precision-first.
Read directly from this organization’s own Form 990, as neutral context.
Where the money goes
91% of spending goes to programs.
Governance
Public support
89%
Share of support from the public (Schedule A) — the basis for its public-charity status.
Footprint & structure
Files a return copy in 41 states
Part of a family of 21 related entities
- BLH Mortgage Purchaser LLC · disregarded
- Blh Mortgage Holdings LLC · disregarded
- Camber Base LLC · disregarded
- River House Holdings I LLC · disregarded
- Brown University Research Foundation · exempt
Screen this organization
A dated, signed PDF of the compliance screen for BROWN UNIVERSITY: IRS status (Business Master File, Publication 78, auto-revocation), the OFAC sanctions lists, the Internal Revenue Bulletin, and California registration, with the Rev. Proc. 2018-32 §8.01 reliance elements stated element by element. Generated from the current files at the moment you download it.
Screens are triage, not determinations; a source that cannot be read reports not screened, never clear. Screen this nonprofit · How the screen works · on the API as GET /api/screening/{ein}?format=pdf
Questions and answers
- Who funds BROWN UNIVERSITY?
- BROWN UNIVERSITY (Rhode Island) receives grants from 1283 organizations whose IRS filings report $1,164,780,880 to it, the largest being FIDELITY INVESTMENTS CHARITABLE GIFT FUND ($237,295,355). 844 of them have funded it in more than one year, and 51% of the money arrives through donor-advised or pass-through sponsors rather than from an institution directly. BROWN UNIVERSITY administers funds for other donors, so those contributions arrive into funds it holds rather than supporting a program it runs itself.
- How many funders does BROWN UNIVERSITY have?
- IRS filings report 1283 organizations giving $1,164,780,880 in grants to BROWN UNIVERSITY, 844 of which have funded it in more than one year.
- Who is the largest funder of BROWN UNIVERSITY?
- FIDELITY INVESTMENTS CHARITABLE GIFT FUND is the largest funder on record, with $237,295,355 in grants. The full list of funders is on this page.
- How can an organization like BROWN UNIVERSITY find more funders?
- Start with the funders already giving here, then look at the foundations that back similar organizations in Rhode Island. The funding by cause and by state pages list the largest funders for a given area and how to approach them.
These figures are read directly from IRS Form 990 / 990-PF e-file XML: this organization’s own return for FY2025 (financials across 2017–2025), and the filings of 1283 funders that report grants to it. “On record” means captured in the filings we have parsed — a funder that does not e-file, or whose grant detail is not itemized, will not appear. Filings run roughly 12–24 months behind. Trends on this page end at FY2023, the last fiscal year that has finished arriving; later years are shown and marked, and move no figure. Data on this page was exported October 22, 2026. What this page cannot tell you · view filing