# The Standing Institutions: Twelve Nonprofits You Know, and the Markets They All Depend On

The Smithsonian, Georgetown, AARP, the Kennedy Center, a pilots' union, and a university's own insurance company, read from their tax returns. Different missions, the same five ways to pay for it, and the same markets underneath.

Author: J.A. Watte
Published: July 4, 2026
Source: https://jwatte.com/blog/the-standing-institutions/

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[The companion to this post](/blog/the-working-ledgers/) read seven research institutions from their tax returns and found the whole spectrum of nonprofit finance between MITRE, which holds almost nothing, and the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, which holds $27 billion. This one turns the same lens on twelve institutions most Americans have actually heard of: the Smithsonian, Georgetown, AARP, the Kennedy Center, a pilots' union, a refugee agency, a captive insurance company, a couple of universities, a donor-advised fund, and Michael Dell's foundation. Different missions entirely. But read from their filings, they sort into just five ways of paying for a mission, and underneath the four that hold money, the same markets keep turning. Every figure below is from a public Form 990, and the interesting part is always the same: how the money comes in, where it is kept, and what it is exposed to.

## The endowed: where the market is an engine

Five of these institutions run substantially on invested money, which means they compete for returns in the same public and private markets as every pension fund and every retirement account.

**The Smithsonian Institution** is the grandest hybrid in American nonprofit life. It took in $1.96 billion, and about $1.09 billion of that was a federal appropriation from Congress, roughly 62 percent of its budget, which funds its 21 museums, the National Zoo, and a collection of more than 155 million objects ([Smithsonian FY2024 budget](https://www.si.edu/newsdesk/releases/smithsonian-fiscal-year-2024-federal-budget-totals-more-1-billion)). But it is not a normal charity. It is a trust instrumentality of the United States, chartered by Congress in 1846 out of the bequest of James Smithson, an Englishman who never once set foot in the country ([Smithsonian history](https://www.si.edu/newsdesk/factsheets/brief-history-smithsonian-institution)). Alongside the appropriation sits a roughly $2.6 billion endowment, held almost entirely in commingled and alternative funds, competing in the markets like any university's. So the Smithsonian is two institutions in one balance sheet: a government bureau funded by appropriation, and an investor with a multi-billion-dollar portfolio. In 2025 the difference stopped being academic, when a presidential order directed a review of the content of its exhibits and the leverage behind it was the federal half of the money ([White House, Executive Order 14253](https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/2025/03/restoring-truth-and-sanity-to-american-history/)). Net assets stand at $6.13 billion, and it has depreciated nearly half of its $6.4 billion in buildings, because a museum is mostly building.

**Georgetown University** is what a leveraged research university looks like from the inside. It took in $2.09 billion, most of it tuition, and holds a $3.36 billion endowment, of which about 73 percent sits in alternatives rather than public stocks, the smallest endowment among the top twenty American universities and the reason its books look the way they do ([The Hoya, Georgetown endowment](https://thehoya.com/news/georgetown-endowment-drops-3-percent-remains-lowest-of-top-20-schools/)). The oddest number on the return is that Georgetown's net assets without donor restrictions are negative, about $116 million below zero. That is not distress. It is leverage: nearly all the wealth is locked in a donor-restricted endowment, the campus was built with $300 million in tax-exempt bonds, and what is left unrestricted is outweighed by the debt against it. Founded in 1789 as the oldest Catholic and Jesuit university in the country, it installed a new president, Eduardo Peñalver, on July 1, 2026 ([Georgetown](https://www.georgetown.edu/news/49th-president-penalver/)). Its small endowment, so often a disadvantage, turned into a shield in 2025: the new federal endowment tax exempts schools below a per-student threshold, and Georgetown, at roughly $162,000 of endowment per student, falls under it.

**The Catholic University of America** shows what happens when the market cannot save you. The national university founded by the U.S. Catholic bishops in 1887, it took in $425 million, mostly tuition, and ran a $22.5 million deficit. Its president disclosed a $30 million structural deficit in December 2024 and said the university had covered gaps with reserve transfers for a decade, a practice it must now stop ([National Catholic Reporter](https://www.ncronline.org/news/catholic-university-faces-30m-structural-deficit-amid-higher-education-headwinds)). In May 2025 it cut about 7 percent of its workforce ([Catholic Review](https://catholicreview.org/catholic-university-of-america-cuts-7-percent-of-workforce-amid-30-million-deficit/)), and Moody's downgraded it into the Baa range with a negative outlook. It holds roughly $342 million in investments and $167 million in bonds, but a tuition-dependent school running a structural deficit cannot invest its way out. Its reserve competes in the same markets as Georgetown's, and it is simply too small to bridge the gap between what the school spends and what students pay.

**The Aspen Institute** had a very good year. It took in $444 million, nearly double the prior year, because in August 2024 the Bezos Family Foundation gave it $185.7 million, the largest gift in its history, most of it a permanent endowment for a new center ([Aspen Institute](https://www.aspeninstitute.org/news/aspen-institute-announces-center-for-rising-generations/)). Founded out of a 1949 gathering in Aspen to mark Goethe's bicentennial, the Institute runs on philanthropy and a growing endowment, and that single gift lifted its net assets from $408 million to $647 million and added a new perpetual leg to a convener that had leaned on annual giving. Its roughly $255 million portfolio is now mostly permanent endowment, invested in the markets like the rest.

**The John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts** is, like the Smithsonian, a hybrid of appropriation and endowment, and it spent 2025 proving how much governance can matter. It took in $307 million, presents theater and dance and music, produces the Kennedy Center Honors, and holds a $558 million balance sheet including a $149 million endowment that is 84 percent permanent. By statute it is both a living memorial to President Kennedy and the national performing arts center, and its federal appropriation pays to maintain the building while ticket sales and donations fund the programming ([Kennedy Center](https://www.kennedy-center.org/our-story/history/)). In February 2025 President Trump removed the board, had himself elected chairman, and replaced its leadership, prompting artists to cancel ([NPR](https://www.npr.org/2025/02/12/nx-s1-5294697/trump-kennedy-center-chairman)). The endowment did not move. The board did. It is a reminder that for an institution part-funded by the government, the risk that matters is not always in the market.

And one of these is not an operating institution at all but a pure grantmaker. **The Michael and Susan Dell Foundation** is a private foundation holding a corpus of about $7.77 billion, built by the Dell founder and his wife since 1999 to work on children's education, health, and family economic stability across the United States, India, and South Africa. Unlike the endowed institutions above, which spend their investment income on their own programs, a private foundation invests its corpus and gives the money away, paying out roughly 5 percent a year, about $308 million in grants in 2024. Its 2025 headline was extraordinary and timely: a $6.25 billion pledge tied to the federal "Trump Accounts" savings program launching July 4, 2026 ([Chronicle of Philanthropy](https://www.philanthropy.com/news/michael-and-susan-dell-donate-6-25-billion-to-encourage-families-to-claim-trump-accounts/)). The corpus competes in the markets like any endowment; what makes it a foundation rather than an operating institution is simply the direction the money flows, outward.

## The government-funded: solvency by appropriation

Two of these institutions live the way [MITRE and the Aerospace Corporation](/blog/the-working-ledgers/) do, on federal money passed through them, holding almost nothing, and one of them shows the model's danger more starkly than any research lab.

**The Henry M. Jackson Foundation for the Advancement of Military Medicine** is the medical-research version of a pass-through. Authorized by Congress in 1983 and named for Senator Henry Scoop Jackson, it exists to manage research programs, grants, and staff for the military medical community, and it manages more than 700 grants and contracts ([HJF](https://www.hjf.org/about-hjf)). It took in $629 million, almost all of it federal research funding, spent $613 million, and keeps net assets of only $173 million and a portfolio of about $75 million. Like the FFRDCs, it is a thin-margin channel, not an endowment, and its solvency is the flow of federal research money, not a reserve.

**The U.S. Committee for Refugees and Immigrants** is the most exposed institution in either of these posts, and 2025 nearly proved it fatally. One of the national refugee resettlement agencies that contract with the State Department and Health and Human Services, with roots going back to 1911, it took in $403 million, about 99 percent of it government grants, spent $395 million, and holds net assets of just $35 million against a portfolio of only $6 million. There is no cushion here at all, and no market exposure to speak of, which is the same thing said twice. In January 2025 a presidential order suspended the refugee admissions program and froze the funding, and resettlement agencies laid off much of their staff before a federal court intervened ([White House, Executive Order 14163](https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/2025/01/realigning-the-united-states-refugee-admissions-program/); [NPR](https://www.npr.org/2025/02/12/nx-s1-5288819/refugee-agencies-federal-funds-layoffs)). An institution that runs on federal money and keeps no reserve has answered the "how long" question in the most precarious way available: exactly as long as the appropriation continues, and not one day past a stop-work order.

## The dues-funded: reserves in the market

Two of these institutions are funded by their members, and both invest the resulting reserves in the markets like any pension.

**AARP** is the strangest membership organization in America, because most of its money does not come from members. It reported $10.97 billion in revenue for 2024, but that was a one-time event: UnitedHealth paid roughly $9 billion up front to restructure the deal that licenses the AARP name to its insurance products, most of which AARP books as deferred revenue to recognize over more than a decade ([Axios](https://www.axios.com/2025/10/10/unitedhealth-aarp-health-coverage-medicare)). In a normal year AARP takes in about $1.7 to $2 billion, and royalties from lending its brand to insurers, not the roughly $20 membership dues, are about 90 percent of it, running around three times what dues bring in ([KFF Health News](https://kffhealthnews.org/news/article/aarp-health-marketing-partnerships-medicare-medigap/)). Founded in 1958, it represents some 38 million members, and it invests a reserve of roughly $2.9 billion in the markets, a portfolio that the $9 billion windfall briefly swelled past $12 billion. The long-running criticism writes itself: an organization that lobbies on Medicare while earning hundreds of millions from insurers who sell to seniors has a conflict baked into its balance sheet, and a 2011 congressional inquiry concluded it likely could not survive financially without those royalties.

**The Air Line Pilots Association** is a union with a war chest. The largest pilots' union in the world, founded in 1931 and representing more than 80,000 pilots at 42 airlines, it took in $382 million, almost all of it member dues set at a percentage of pilot pay ([ALPA](https://www.alpa.org/bios/jason-ambrosi)). Because dues track pay, the airline pay boom of 2022 through 2024, when major carriers signed contracts raising pilot pay by a third to nearly half, drove ALPA's revenue to records and left it with a $101 million surplus. It holds $497 million in net assets and a $483 million investment portfolio, including a strike and contingency fund it built after the bruising strikes of the 1980s, invested in the same markets everyone else is in. Flush enough that it has begun returning tens of millions in dues to members and moving to cut the dues rate, ALPA is the rare institution in these two posts whose solvency problem is a surplus.

## The financial machines: where money is the product

The last two institutions are the purest expression of the thesis running through both of these posts, because for them investing is not a way to fund the mission. It is the mission.

**ImpactAssets** is a donor-advised fund sponsor with almost $3 billion in assets, grown to about $4.6 billion by late 2025, spun out of the Calvert Foundation in 2010 to do one thing: let donors take an immediate tax deduction and then direct the money into impact investments rather than simply park it ([ImpactAssets](https://impactassets.org/about-us/)). It runs on administrative fees on those assets, which is why a $680 million operation employs so few people. It is a machine for putting charitable dollars into the markets, including private impact funds, on behalf of donors who have already given the money away but still choose where it invests. The money is both the charity and the portfolio at once.

**Fiat Lux Risk and Insurance Company** is the most quietly remarkable institution in either post: the University of California's own insurance company. Its name is the university's motto, let there be light, and it was formed in 2012 to insure UC's own risks instead of buying all its coverage on the commercial market ([UC Office of the President](https://www.ucop.edu/risk-financing/captive.html)). It took in $621 million in premiums from the university, holds $2.02 billion in assets against $1.45 billion in insurance loss reserves, and invests roughly $1.06 billion of premium float in the markets to back those reserves, exactly the way a commercial insurer or a reinsurer does. It has no employees. It ran a $21 million underwriting loss in the year, covered by its float and its capital, which is simply what insurance does in a bad year. A public university has, in effect, built itself a billion-dollar investment fund whose job is to sit in the markets and pay the university's claims, the same float model that runs the entire insurance industry, operated by a school for its own benefit.

## The one finding under all twelve

Sort twelve of the most familiar names in American institutional life by how they pay for themselves, and they fall into five buckets: endowed, government-funded, dues-funded, gift-funded, and the pure financial machines. Four of those five hold money, and every dollar of the money they hold is invested in the same equity and security markets that a retiree, a state pension, and a sovereign wealth fund are all invested in too. The Smithsonian's endowment, Georgetown's, AARP's reserve, ALPA's strike fund, Fiat Lux's insurance float, Dell's corpus, and ImpactAssets' donor pool are all buckets in the same well, competing for the same returns, rising and falling on the same tides. Only the ones that hold almost nothing, the Jackson Foundation and the refugee committee, sit the market out, and they pay for it in a different currency: total exposure to the federal budget, with no reserve to soften a bad year. Read enough of these filings and the lesson stops being about any single institution. It is that almost every enduring institution in the country, whatever its mission says on the front page, is somewhere in the same market you are, and the tax return is where you find out exactly where.

## Related reading

- [The Working Ledgers](/blog/the-working-ledgers/): the companion post, seven research institutions from MITRE to HHMI, read the same way.
- [The Endowment That Employs Its Scientists](/blog/howard-hughes-medical-institute-ledger/): HHMI, the purest case of an institution that is really an investor.
- [How Deathless Money Invests](/blog/how-deathless-money-invests/): the taxonomy of institutional money that this series built on the foundations.
- [The Quiet Shelf](/blog/quiet-shelf-rocky-mountain-foundations/): where the ledger-reading method began.

## Fact-check notes and sources

- **All financial figures** are read directly from each organization's most recent public IRS Form 990, available free at [ProPublica's Nonprofit Explorer](https://projects.propublica.org/nonprofits/): the [Smithsonian Institution](https://projects.propublica.org/nonprofits/organizations/530206027) (EIN 53-0206027, fiscal year ending September 2024); [Georgetown University](https://projects.propublica.org/nonprofits/organizations/530196603) (EIN 53-0196603, fiscal year ending June 2024); [the Catholic University of America](https://projects.propublica.org/nonprofits/organizations/530196583) (EIN 53-0196583, fiscal year ending April 2025); [the Aspen Institute](https://projects.propublica.org/nonprofits/organizations/840399006) (EIN 84-0399006, calendar year 2024); [the John F. Kennedy Center](https://projects.propublica.org/nonprofits/organizations/530245017) (EIN 53-0245017, fiscal year ending September 2024); [the Michael and Susan Dell Foundation](https://projects.propublica.org/nonprofits/organizations/364336415) (EIN 36-4336415, a Form 990-PF for calendar year 2024, fair market value of assets about $7.77 billion); [the Henry M. Jackson Foundation](https://projects.propublica.org/nonprofits/organizations/521317896) (EIN 52-1317896, fiscal year ending September 2024); [the U.S. Committee for Refugees and Immigrants](https://projects.propublica.org/nonprofits/organizations/131878704) (EIN 13-1878704, fiscal year ending September 2024); [AARP](https://projects.propublica.org/nonprofits/organizations/951985500) (EIN 95-1985500, calendar year 2024); [the Air Line Pilots Association](https://projects.propublica.org/nonprofits/organizations/360710830) (EIN 36-0710830, calendar year 2024); [ImpactAssets](https://projects.propublica.org/nonprofits/organizations/262048480) (EIN 26-2048480, calendar year 2024); and [Fiat Lux Risk and Insurance Company](https://projects.propublica.org/nonprofits/organizations/461828839) (EIN 46-1828839, fiscal year ending June 2024).
- **The Smithsonian's federal appropriation (about $1.09 billion, roughly 62 percent of its budget), its 1846 founding on the Smithson bequest, its status as a trust instrumentality, and the 2025 executive order on exhibit content**: [Smithsonian FY2024 budget release](https://www.si.edu/newsdesk/releases/smithsonian-fiscal-year-2024-federal-budget-totals-more-1-billion), [Smithsonian history](https://www.si.edu/newsdesk/factsheets/brief-history-smithsonian-institution), and [Executive Order 14253](https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/2025/03/restoring-truth-and-sanity-to-american-history/).
- **Georgetown's endowment being the smallest of the top twenty and about 73 percent alternatives, the negative unrestricted net assets as a leverage feature, the 1789 founding, the July 2026 presidential transition, and the endowment-tax exemption**: [The Hoya](https://thehoya.com/news/georgetown-endowment-drops-3-percent-remains-lowest-of-top-20-schools/), [Georgetown's history](https://www.georgetown.edu/who-we-are/our-history/), and [Georgetown's announcement of President Peñalver](https://www.georgetown.edu/news/49th-president-penalver/).
- **Catholic University's $30 million structural deficit, decade of reserve transfers, 2025 layoffs, and 1887 founding**: [National Catholic Reporter](https://www.ncronline.org/news/catholic-university-faces-30m-structural-deficit-amid-higher-education-headwinds) and [Catholic Review](https://catholicreview.org/catholic-university-of-america-cuts-7-percent-of-workforce-amid-30-million-deficit/).
- **The Aspen Institute's $185.7 million Bezos Family Foundation gift and its 1949 origin**: [Aspen Institute](https://www.aspeninstitute.org/news/aspen-institute-announces-center-for-rising-generations/) and [Wikipedia, "Aspen Institute"](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aspen_Institute), attributed.
- **The Kennedy Center's dual memorial-and-arts-center statute, its federal-building-plus-private-programming funding, and the February 2025 board takeover**: [Kennedy Center history](https://www.kennedy-center.org/our-story/history/) and [NPR](https://www.npr.org/2025/02/12/nx-s1-5294697/trump-kennedy-center-chairman).
- **The Dell Foundation's 1999 founding, focus areas, roughly 5 percent payout, and the $6.25 billion 2025 pledge**: [Wikipedia, "Michael & Susan Dell Foundation"](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_%26_Susan_Dell_Foundation), attributed, and [Chronicle of Philanthropy](https://www.philanthropy.com/news/michael-and-susan-dell-donate-6-25-billion-to-encourage-families-to-claim-trump-accounts/).
- **The Jackson Foundation's 1983 congressional authorization and research-management role**: [HJF](https://www.hjf.org/about-hjf) and [10 U.S.C. 178](https://uscode.house.gov/view.xhtml?req=granuleid:USC-prelim-title10-section178&num=0&edition=prelim).
- **USCRI's roots to 1911, its role as a federal resettlement contractor, and the January 2025 suspension of the refugee program and its funding**: [USCRI history](https://refugees.org/history/), [Executive Order 14163](https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/2025/01/realigning-the-united-states-refugee-admissions-program/), and [NPR](https://www.npr.org/2025/02/12/nx-s1-5288819/refugee-agencies-federal-funds-layoffs).
- **AARP's one-time $9 billion UnitedHealth payment, the royalty-versus-dues revenue structure, the 1958 founding, and the conflict-of-interest criticism**: [Axios](https://www.axios.com/2025/10/10/unitedhealth-aarp-health-coverage-medicare) and [KFF Health News](https://kffhealthnews.org/news/article/aarp-health-marketing-partnerships-medicare-medigap/).
- **ALPA's 1931 founding, membership, dues-as-percentage-of-pay model, the 2022 to 2024 pay boom, and the contingency fund**: [ALPA](https://www.alpa.org/bios/jason-ambrosi) and [Air Line Pilot / ALPA on the Major Contingency Fund](https://www.alpa.org/news-and-events/air-line-pilot-magazine/mcf-myths).
- **ImpactAssets as a donor-advised fund sponsor founded in 2010 out of the Calvert Foundation, and its impact-investing focus**: [ImpactAssets](https://impactassets.org/about-us/).
- **Fiat Lux as the University of California's captive insurer, formed in 2012, its motto-derived name, and the self-insurance-plus-reinsurance model**: [UC Office of the President](https://www.ucop.edu/risk-financing/captive.html) and the [DC Department of Insurance](https://disb.dc.gov/release/disb-applauds-fiat-lux-receiving-outstanding-captive-award).

*This post is informational and historical, not financial, tax, or investment advice. All figures are reproduced from public filings and the public record. Organizations and individuals are discussed from the public record as nominative fair use, with no affiliation implied and nothing endorsed by any of them. Characterizations of investment posture describe filing schedules, not recommendations.*


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