Pennsylvania · Nonprofit
DREXEL UNIVERSITY
DREXEL UNIVERSITY (Pennsylvania) receives grants from 726 organizations whose IRS filings report $222,989,958 to it, the largest being THE LENFEST FOUNDATION INC ($14,150,000). 403 of them have funded it in more than one year.
- Revenue FY2025
- $1.5B
- Funders on record
- 726
- Grants received
- $223M
- Net assets
- $1.4B
What Drexel University does
Mission
Drexel University fulfills its founder's vision of preparing each new generation of students for productive professional and civic lives while also focusing its collective expertise on solving society's greatest problems. Drexel is an academically comprehensive and globally engaged urban research university, dedicated to advancing knowledge and society and to providing every student with a valuable, rigorous, experiential, technology-infused education, enriched by the nation's premier co-operative education program.
As stated on its FY2025 Form 990.
Programs
Instructiondrexel is a comprehensive national research university dedicated to providing quality undergraduate, graduate and professional education featuring excellent academics, state-of-the-art technology and a focus on real-world learning and service. Drexel is classified as an r1 research university in the carnegie classification of institutions of higher education - a rank that denotes the highest level of research activity, held by just 37 private universities around the country. Drexel disclosed 56 new inventions and received 25 new united states patents in fiscal year 2025. The university's mission serves traditional, adult and online students. Drexel offers nationally accredited programs that meet the changing needs of society, including more than 100 bachelor's degree programs and more than 120 graduate and professional degree programs organized in 17 colleges and schools: college of arts and sciences; school of biomedical engineering, science and health systems; bennett s. Lebow college of business; college of computing & informatics; school of education; college of engineering; charles d. Close school of entrepreneurship; pennoni honors college; thomas r. Kline school…
$1,061,601,628 spentof which $425,377,015 as grants$1,111,509,131 earned by the program83% of program spendingResearchdrexel researchers work across disciplines to increase the world's store of knowledge and translate that new knowledge into solutions with tremendous positive impact on society. Typically, the university receives about $110 million per year in research expenditures. The university is committed to using its research and technological expertise to become an even more powerful economic engine for greater philadelphia, helping to create new high-tech businesses and jobs. Drexel is creating an ecosystem of innovation in and around university city. This ecosystem will ultimately benefit students, through co-ops and career opportunities; faculty, through collaborative research and training; and the surrounding community, through the creation of pipelines to employment.this commitment is at the heart of schuylkill yards, a $3.5 billion mixed-use project with development partner brandywine realty trust on university real estate adjacent to philadelphia's amtrak 30th street station. In partnership with wexford science and technology, drexel is also extending ucity square, a multi-billion-dollar development, through a facility that houses k-8 public schools and an academic building…
$172,735,685 spentof which $19,333,350 as grants$26,168,369 earned by the program14% of program spendingPatient care/public serviceit is Drexel University's patient care mission to serve the community through the delivery of high-quality, cost-effective health care services, including programs of health promotion and disease prevention. All clinical services are provided with careful regard for the individual patient and their family. The university's clinical practices provide patient-centered health care in a variety of services including general internal medicine, hiv/aids, student health, addiction medicine, psychiatry, eating disorders, and optometry, among others.
$40,812,616 spent$28,531,429 earned by the program3% of program spending
The 3 programs described on its FY2024 Form 990, listed largest first by expense. Program spending in total: $1,275,149,929.
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. The shaded band is where the middle 50% of its peers' revenue would sit, given their growth.
Balance sheet
Total assets and total liabilities at each year end, in dollars. The largest one-year move in total assets was 2022 to 2023, from $2.4B to $2.8B (+17%).
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 8% · 2018 8% · 2019 8% · 2020 8% · 2021 13% · 2022 9% · 2023 10% · 2024 9% · 2025 9%. Grants only. Government contracts and fees sit inside program revenue.
15% of DREXEL UNIVERSITY’s revenue is contributions — more donation-reliant than the typical peer (14% for the typical peer).
Surplus & reserves
Operating surplus or deficit each year, and months of liquidity in hand. 4 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 161 funders to 281 funders, grant income rose $13M → $31M.
69 of 726 of your funders are donor-advised or pass-through sponsors (tagged DAF) — 17% 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: $55k from one payer (the payer shares this organization's board, largest The Academy of Natural Sciences of Philadelphia). These are real filings, and they are not money DREXEL UNIVERSITY raised.
From the IRS filings of DREXEL UNIVERSITY’s funders (the co-funder graph). Top 30 of 726 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.
How concentrated its funding is
DREXEL UNIVERSITY has a broad base — no single funder exceeds 6% of grant income, and it takes 26 funders to reach half.
the vertical line marks half of all grant income — 26 funders to its left
50% of the income these shares are computed over arrives through pass-through sponsors or from payers whose filings do not say what kind of payment it is. Concentration is still measured over all of it, because the money is real; what it does not support is a claim about how many institutions have chosen to fund DREXEL UNIVERSITY.
Largest funder’s share by year: 2017 6% · 2018 8% · 2019 19% · 2020 37% · 2021 6% · 2022 8% · 2023 9% — growing more concentrated.
“Effective funders” = inverse Herfindahl index (1 / Σ shareᵢ²) — the number of equal-sized funders that would give the same concentration. 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.
How long its funders stay
42% of DREXEL UNIVERSITY's funders are still giving 3 years after their first grant; 56% give in more than one year at all.
Share of funders still giving k years after their first recorded grant, pooled across every acquisition cohort. A funder counts as retained in a year only if it made a grant that year. Measured to FY2023, the last fiscal year that has finished arriving — a funder cannot be counted as lapsed in a year most filers have not reached.
Where its funders are
53% of DREXEL UNIVERSITY's grant income comes from Pennsylvania funders.
In-state vs out-of-state, by year
Funder states come from each funder’s own filing. $38M arriving through sponsors registered in 22 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.
Against its field
DREXEL UNIVERSITY's funding base is broadening — from 161 funders to 281 as grant income climbed.
this organization peer median middle 50% of peers· 684 education nonprofits over $100M, FY2025
Government funding DREXEL UNIVERSITY receives
Grants and contracts to this organization from federal (USASpending) and state checkbooks, reconciled to its EIN. $921.6M on record — $919.8M federal, $1.7M state.
- Department of Health and Human Services$559.4M
- National Science Foundation$123.4M
- Department of Education$104.4M
- Department of Defense$81.5M
- Department of Energy$16.1M
- Environmental Protection Agency$5.9M
- NJ$1.3M
- DE$338k
- VT$49k
- CT$12k
- MA$6k
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.
Organizations like DREXEL UNIVERSITY
Organizations whose mission and program text most resemble this one, by semantic similarity over every organization in the US filings — the closest peers, and often the clearest route to shared or prospective funders.
In Pennsylvania
Nationally
Read directly from this organization’s own Form 990, as neutral context.
Where the money goes
87% of spending goes to programs.
Governance
Public support
87%
Share of support from the public (Schedule A) — the basis for its public-charity status.
Footprint & structure
Files a return copy in 11 states
Part of a family of 11 related entities
- Dragon Risk Limited Co · disregarded
- Drexel Global Initiatives LLC · disregarded
- Drexel University Online LLC · disregarded
- Academic Assets Inc · exempt
- Academic Properties Inc · exempt
Screen this organization
A dated, signed PDF of the compliance screen for DREXEL 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 DREXEL UNIVERSITY?
- DREXEL UNIVERSITY (Pennsylvania) receives grants from 726 organizations whose IRS filings report $222,989,958 to it, the largest being THE LENFEST FOUNDATION INC ($14,150,000). 403 of them have funded it in more than one year.
- How many funders does DREXEL UNIVERSITY have?
- IRS filings report 726 organizations giving $222,989,958 in grants to DREXEL UNIVERSITY, 403 of which have funded it in more than one year.
- Who is the largest funder of DREXEL UNIVERSITY?
- THE LENFEST FOUNDATION INC is the largest funder on record, with $14,150,000 in grants. The full list of funders is on this page.
- How can an organization like DREXEL UNIVERSITY find more funders?
- Start with the funders already giving here, then look at the foundations that back similar organizations in Pennsylvania. 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 726 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