What do Heritage Foundation IRS Form 990 filings for 2022 and 2023 list in grants and major contributors, and how to read them?
Executive summary
The Heritage Foundation’s Form 990 returns for 2022 and 2023 are public documents that report the foundation’s grants, contributors, governance disclosures and related-party transactions — available from the IRS and reproduced by services such as ProPublica and on Heritage’s own financial page [1] [2] [3]. The filings show modest grantmaking totals reported on the tax returns, disclosures of contributions from trustees or affiliated organizations in notes and Schedule L, and standard compensation and governance schedules; however, public summaries alone do not always list every donor (Schedule B may be redacted) or fully explain organizational affiliations without cross-checking the full 990 and schedules [4] [5] [6] [7].
1. What the public filings are and where to find them
Form 990 is the IRS information return most large tax‑exempt organizations file annually, and the Heritage Foundation’s returns for recent years are available as raw IRS data and page images via the IRS and in reconstructed form on ProPublica’s Nonprofit Explorer and Heritage’s financial transparency page [1] [2] [3] [4]. Researchers are advised to use the raw or reconstructed 990s on ProPublica because they include schedules (for example, Schedule I for grants to organizations and Schedule L for interested‑person transactions) that are key to understanding grants and contributor disclosures [4] [5] [6].
2. What the 2022 and 2023 returns list for grants
The tax filings report grant‑making activity and award totals in the main return and in Schedule I when applicable; third‑party aggregators that pull from the Heritage 990 indicate the Foundation reported hundreds of thousands to low‑millions in grants rather than being primarily a pass‑through grantmaker — Instrumentl’s 990 summary, for example, reports $1,660,000 in grants in 2023 and a smaller number in 2022, reflecting the 990 line items that list grants paid and recipients [8]. ProPublica’s full filing pages reconstruct the same grant fields from the IRS raw data so readers can verify individual grantees and amounts in the schedules attached to each year’s Form 990 [4].
3. What the returns show about “major contributors” and related parties
Form 990 includes sections for significant contributors and requires disclosure of transactions with “interested persons” on Schedule L; Heritage’s filings explicitly record material support from board members and organizations tied to trustees in the years ended 2023 and 2022, and note specific business transactions involving officers or their family members as required by the form [5] [9]. The filings also include Schedule J disclosures on compensation and bonuses for key employees and Schedule L entries for employment or business dealings with relatives or affiliated entities, which CharityWatch used to document bonuses and a listed employment transaction involving an officer’s spouse in the 2023 filing [9].
4. How to read the relevant parts of a Heritage Form 990 (practical guide)
Start with Part I for high‑level revenue/expense and Part III for program accomplishments, then turn to Part VIII and Schedule O for revenue detail and accounting notes; look to Schedule I for any listed grants to other organizations and to Schedule L to identify transactions with officers, board members or their affiliates, because those schedules are where related‑party gifts, employment and business transactions must be reported [2] [5] [6]. Use the IRS Form 990 instructions to interpret line numbers — for example, Line 1 aggregates gross contributions and grants received — and remember that detailed contributor names may be omitted from public copies if Schedule B is legally redacted, so absence of names in a public 990 doesn’t prove absence of major donors [7] [10].
5. Limits, alternative readings and why context matters
The 990 is an information return, not an audit report; it discloses what the filer reports and can include aggregated or redacted donor information by law, so claims about "hidden donors" or conversely about total transparency must be tempered by recognizing Schedule B rules and the difference between consolidated audited financial statements and IRS reporting [4] [10]. Critics highlight board member and affiliate contributions and high executive compensation as governance concerns using the 990 data (as CharityWatch did), while defenders argue that such entries are routine disclosures required by the IRS and consistent with large policy nonprofits’ funding models; the primary objective reading the filings should be verification by consulting the actual schedules on ProPublica or the IRS rather than relying on summary headlines [9] [4].