KFF’s External Funding
We support our operations at KFF from our endowment and from external funds, which mostly come from foundations and a small number of individual donors. We use external funds chiefly for the incremental costs of projects we could not otherwise undertake. Today external funding represents about 30% of our overall operating budget. Our role as an independent source of information on national health issues requires that we maintain full, independent control of everything we do in our funding relationships whether funders are supporting our policy analysis, our polling, or our journalism produced by our newsroom KFF Health News.
While we have a sizeable endowment for a national non-profit organization, we could not play the national role we play today without the external funding we receive. External funding has also led us to work with organizations we would not otherwise forge strong relationships with, making KFF – which as part policy, polling, and news organization does not fall neatly into any community – not only a “grantee” but a fuller participant in the foundation and non-profit community. We greatly value these connections and the opportunities to expand our impact they bring.
Because our independence is central to our credibility and our role, our Board of Trustees has adopted guidelines which govern our relationships with all funders. In sum these guidelines require that:
- Any external funding advances our mission, program priorities, and objectives;
- It will be used primarily for incremental costs; and,
- Our external funding never compromises KFF’s credibility, independence, or reputation in any way, and hopefully will enhance them.
KFF has never received federal government funding. Since we analyze, poll about, and report on what the government does and fails to do in health care, we have not felt it was appropriate to accept such funding. KFF also does not charge for services or our information, nor do we generate business revenues even as our legal status as a public charity enables us to do so. We are concerned that long-term doing so might cause the organization to follow the money not our mission. These “rules of the road” we have operated with since Drew Altman founded the modern day KFF in 1991 mean fewer resources for us but enable us to play our role as a trusted source of health policy information.
External support for KFF includes:
AARP
Arnold Ventures
California Health Care Foundation
California Wellness Foundation
Dogwood Health Trust
Gates Foundation
Georgia Health Foundation
Georgia Health Initiative
Georgia Health News, Inc.
Headwaters Health Foundation of Western Montana
Jesse Parker Williams Foundation
John A. Hartford Foundation
Leona M. and Harry B. Helmsley Charitable Trust
Michigan Health Endowment Fund
Milbank Memorial Fund
Missouri Foundation for Health
Montana Healthcare Foundation
Moses Taylor Foundation
Nathan Cummings Foundation
Open Philanthropy
Pacific Business Group on Health (with funding from the West Health Institute)
Peterson Center on Healthcare
PRX (with funding from the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation)
Rita Allen Foundation
Robert Wood Johnson Foundation
Silicon Valley Community Foundation (Mackenzie Scott Donor-Advised Fund)
Silver Century Foundation
Susan Thompson Buffett Foundation
Walgreens Co. (for National HIV Testing Day)