Who funds University of Pittsburgh?
248 private foundations reported grants to University of Pittsburgh in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania totaling $68.9 million across 313 grants in tax years 2023 to 2025. The largest funder was Orland Bethel Family Foundation, with $27.7 million.
From the funders' IRS Form 990-PF filings.
- Foundation funders248
- Grants reported313
- Total received$68.9 million
- Funders taking applications40
Foundations that fund University of Pittsburgh
| Foundation | Purpose given | Grants | Amount |
|---|---|---|---|
| Orland Bethel Family Foundation | General operating | 4 | $27.7 million |
| Richard King Mellon Foundation | Toward ten-year support of the university's construction and launch of a facility at hazelwood green to catalyze economic development strategy focused on building facilities for manufacturing cell, gene, and antibody-based therapies to treat human diseases | 3 | $10.3 million |
| Gates Foundation | Tuberculosis | 5 | $2.8 million |
| The Susan Thompson Buffett Foundation | Program support | 2 | $2.8 million |
| Hillman Family Foundations | Lifex operational and programming support | 6 | $2.3 million |
| The Baszucki Family Foundation | Support the project elucidating neurobiological mechanisms underlying the therapeutic effect of the ketogenic diet in bipolar disorder (bd): a multidisciplinary mechanistic study being conducted by mary philips, md. | 1 | $2.2 million |
| The Heinz Endowments | To support the pitt center for sustainable business toward self-sufficiency, and to motivate increased sustainability & further serve as a catalyst for the region to develop into a national model for a clean economy | 13 | $1.7 million |
| Salvitti Family Foundation Ima | General support | 1 | $1.0 million |
| Charles Koch Foundation | General operating support | 1 | $988,334 |
| Wellcome Leap Inc | Global health research | 2 | $965,179 |
| John Templeton Foundation | Magnetically levitated diamond crystals as tabletop probe for macroscopic quantum mechanics & gravity | 2 | $800,000 |
| The William & Flora Hewlett Foundation | For support of networked student-centered practices | 1 | $628,936 |
| The Andrew W Mellon Foundation | To support a call for concepts research project | 2 | $600,000 |
| Shear Family Foundation Inc | Various programs | 1 | $600,000 |
| The Freeman Foundation | General support | 1 | $556,182 |
| The Simons Foundation Inc | Putting genes associated with autism in their neurobiological context by transcriptomic and proteomic analyses | 5 | $554,466 |
| The Tepper Foundation | General support | 1 | $500,000 |
| Good Ventures Foundation | Tb vaccine research | 1 | $500,000 |
| William T Grant Foundation Inc | Improving the use of research evidence in multilingual learner policy and practice: research-practice partnership engagement with state education agency leaders | 2 | $480,636 |
| Gismondi Family Foundation Co Mr John | Gismondi neighborhood education program | 4 | $396,500 |
| Alfred P Sloan Foundation | To develop approaches to creating and characterizing levitated, macroscopic quantum superpositions that could eventually be used to probe the quantum nature of gravity | 3 | $392,312 |
| The Mascaro Family Foundation | To support the mascaro family auditorium | 3 | $375,000 |
| The Rita and Burt Tansky Foundation | General Charitable Purposes | 1 | $375,000 |
| B K Simon Family Charitable Fdn-Tr | General operating | 1 | $330,000 |
| Bny Mellon Foundation of Southwestern Pa | Pc | 1 | $250,000 |
| The Chatham Foundation | Charitable | 1 | $250,000 |
| The Steven & Kathy Guttman Family Foundation Inc | To further the foundation's mission | 1 | $250,000 |
| The Leona M and Harry B Helmsley Charitable Trust | Single cell multimodal omics analysis of colonoscopic biopsy-derived immune cells in crohns disease | 1 | $237,102 |
| Kenneth Rainin Foundation | Explore the immunomodulatory consequences of protist-derived metabolites in ibd | 2 | $225,000 |
| Anne G Carson Charitable Trust | General support | 1 | $223,738 |
| Whitehall Foundation Inc | Biological Research | 3 | $222,000 |
| Ncmic Foundation Inc | Research Grant | 1 | $221,500 |
| Additional Ventures Foundation | Single ventricle research fund | 1 | $220,000 |
| John Nesbit Rees & Sarah Henne Rees Charitable Fou | Scholarships | 2 | $216,667 |
| The Giorgio Foundation | Nf1 medical research | 1 | $215,000 |
| Doris Duke Charitable Foundation Inc | Upmc hillman cancer center academy | 1 | $214,500 |
| Edward P Evans Foundation | Support scientific research | 1 | $200,000 |
| Mukaiyama Rice Foundation | Rice engineering tech | 1 | $190,000 |
| Posner Foundation of Pittsburgh | Unrestricted/ general use | 1 | $175,000 |
| Ipmn Global Foundation | Fundraising | 1 | $175,000 |
| The David and Lucile Packard Foundation | Fellowships for Science and Engineering | 1 | $175,000 |
| The Wallace Foundation | To study ways in which community-based programs use the arts to support the well-being of youth. | 1 | $171,466 |
| Edgar Levenson Trust | General support | 1 | $162,042 |
| McElhattan Foundation | General support | 1 | $160,000 |
| The Grable Foundation | To support a cohort-based early literacy professional development model for preschool educators | 8 | $150,000 |
| Sontag Foundation | For the exempt purposes of this organization | 1 | $150,000 |
| Owens Samuel T Jr Decd | Scholarships | 1 | $135,000 |
| The Spencer Foundation | Collaborative research | 1 | $134,529 |
| The Arlyn Gilboa Foundation | General support | 1 | $127,000 |
| Rosenau Family Research Foundation | Disclosure of Newborn Screening Results for KD in Pennsylvania | 1 | $125,000 |
| Target ALS Foundation Inc | Biomedical research | 1 | $125,000 |
| The Clark Hunter Foundation | Education | 1 | $117,000 |
| The Commonwealth Fund | Developing Low-Cost State Policies to Help Uninsured and Underinsured People Gain Quality Marketplace Coverage | 1 | $115,487 |
| Russell Sage Foundation | Individual worker-owner census | 2 | $114,705 |
| The Nancy Taylor Foundation for Chronic Diseases Inc | "serum cytokine profiles in localized scleroderma" by kathryn torok, md | 1 | $108,000 |
| The Mattei-Rothschild Foundation Inc | Scholarship fund, current use scholarshipnon-cash donationdate of gift: 6/30/25description of property: 85 shares of invesco qqq trust etf; 90 shares of spdr s&p 500 etfbook value of property: $25,511method used to calculate book value: quoted market price on date of acquisitionmethod use to calculate fair value: quoted market price on date of grant | 1 | $102,496 |
| The Lawerence I & Blanche H Rhodes | See attachment | 1 | $100,000 |
| Broadhurst Family Foundation | Pitt football championship fund and student athletic success fund | 1 | $100,000 |
| Merlo Family Foundation | General & Unrestricted | 1 | $100,000 |
| Reinecke Family Charitable Foundation | General purpose | 1 | $95,000 |
| James T and Rose M Perryman Family Foundation | Scholarships for qualified students | 1 | $86,200 |
| Samuel & Emma Winters Foundation | General support | 1 | $85,299 |
| James & Noel Browne Charitable Trust | For education programs | 1 | $75,000 |
| Society of Family Planning | Exploring patterns of LARC use | 1 | $75,000 |
| The Frazier Foundation | Provide assistance with charity's exempt purpose | 1 | $75,000 |
| John B and Jarmila Maiorana Fdn | General support | 1 | $73,086 |
| Rike Paul for Univ PGH Schl Med-Tr | General operating | 1 | $70,000 |
| Amerihealth Caritas Foundation | Project grant | 1 | $70,000 |
| Louise & Ferdinand Mulert Fund | General support | 1 | $69,588 |
| Resmed Foundation | Medical research | 1 | $64,629 |
| Laura and John Arnold Foundation | To improve community safety policies and practices in prosecutors' offices. | 2 | $63,059 |
| Mark Cuban Foundation | General purpose | 1 | $61,666 |
| Research Corporation dba Research Corporation for Science Advancement | Using Photocatalytic Reduction to Isolate and Study Intermediates in Nanoparticle Formation Reactions | 1 | $60,000 |
| Puri Family Giving Fund | Puri Family Scholarship fund | 1 | $60,000 |
| Dickson J Z & Agnes F-Dickson Prizes | Scholarships | 1 | $57,721 |
| The Klingenstein Third Generation Foundation | Adhd & depression fellowship | 1 | $50,000 |
| Claude Worthington Benedum Foundation | For the institute of politics to effectively support regional social policy issues through convening key stakeholders, conducting research, and engaging in communications-based activities (over two years) | 1 | $50,000 |
| Management As A Liberal Art Foundation | Support educational leadership program | 1 | $50,000 |
| The Pruina Corporation | General operating support | 1 | $50,000 |
| Aldrich Foundation | Support pitt student athletes and hail to heroes football celebration | 1 | $50,000 |
| Novogradac Rivers Foundation | Neurosurgery skull base research and innovation fund | 1 | $50,000 |
| Donaldson H-Pitt Sch Soc Work | General operating | 1 | $49,018 |
| Eqt Foundation | Eqt energize your education award | 4 | $48,500 |
| Rodgers H for U of P & P A B | General operating | 1 | $45,854 |
| Miller K A for Univ of PGH | General operating | 1 | $42,500 |
| Health and Welfare Foundation of Southern Chester County | Education | 1 | $42,000 |
| Fisa Foundation | Support for a research collaborative on reproductive health care | 1 | $40,000 |
| The Society for Analytical Chemists of Pittsburgh | Starter grant | 1 | $40,000 |
| Michael and Suellen Weir Foundation Inc | Charitable | 1 | $40,000 |
| Charles F Spang Foundation | General support | 1 | $38,444 |
| Univ of Pitts Observatory Fund | Observatory fund | 1 | $37,914 |
| The Blanche and Dewayne Wivagg Charitable | Scholarship | 1 | $37,500 |
| The Frank E Rath Spang & Company Charitable Trust | Unrestricted contribution to public charity | 1 | $35,000 |
| Elva S Smith Trust UW | Scholarship | 1 | $32,637 |
| Shirlie & Owen Siegel Foundation | General charitable purpose | 1 | $32,000 |
| The Melampy-Lawrence Charitable Trust | Education | 1 | $30,000 |
| Opportunity Foundation | Charitable | 1 | $30,000 |
| Tomayko Foundation | Charitable | 1 | $30,000 |
| Frances K & John K Tsui Foundation | Public charity support | 2 | $30,000 |
| George W Causey | General support | 1 | $29,095 |
Using this list
A foundation that already gives to University of Pittsburgh gives in its field and region, so the list doubles as a prospect list for similar organizations in Pittsburgh. Open a foundation to see its application rules, typical grant and every other grant it paid.
Questions people ask
Who funds University of Pittsburgh?
Orland Bethel Family Foundation, Richard King Mellon Foundation, Gates Foundation, The Susan Thompson Buffett Foundation and Hillman Family Foundations, and 243 more, according to their IRS Form 990-PF filings.
How much does University of Pittsburgh get from foundations?
$68.9 million in 313 reported grants from 248 private foundations in tax years 2023 to 2025. Government grants and gifts from individuals are not included.
Which of these funders accept applications?
Orland Bethel Family Foundation, Gates Foundation, Hillman Family Foundations, The Heinz Endowments and Charles Koch Foundation say in their filings that they accept applications.