A 105.9 Billion Dollar Endowment, Read From Its Own Filing

This article records tradition as it has been passed down and reported. Its sources are not yet part of the atlas's verified catalogue.

Lilly Endowment's own most recently filed Form 990-PF, the annual regulatory filing the Internal Revenue Service requires of every private foundation, read here through ProPublica's Nonprofit Explorer digitisation of that filing, reports total revenue of about 5.13 billion dollars against total expenses of about 3.96 billion dollars for the fiscal year ended 31 December 2025, with total assets of roughly 105.9 billion dollars, a scale that places it among the very largest private foundations operating in the United States today.

The bulk of that enormous asset value reflects the market price of the Endowment's own concentrated holding of Eli Lilly and Company stock, inherited directly from its 1937 founding gift, rather than a diversified investment portfolio built up independently of the family company over the decades since. As a private foundation under United States tax law, Lilly Endowment is required to file that Form 990-PF publicly every year, making its finances, including its religion grantmaking, a matter of public record rather than private disclosure known only to its own trustees.